43
Killer of 14-year-old Struthers boy sues police
Bush alleges civil-rights violations in suit
YOUNGSTOWN
Teddy Foltz’s killer wants $33 million for alleged civil-rights violations surrounding his infamous murder trial.
Zaryl G. Bush, 49, serving 33 years to life for torturing and killing the 14-year-old Struthers boy in 2013, filed a federal civil suit against Struthers police earlier this month, according to court records.
The suit claims the media maelstrom surrounding the case placed “enormous amounts of pressure on the Struthers Police Department to apprehend a suspect.”
They soon made Bush, the boyfriend of the boy’s mother, Shain Widdersheim, the “prime target for the crime before one thread of evidence was produced,” the filing states. It also claims Bush had “a loving relationship” with Foltz and his younger twin brothers, though that “never materialized during the investigation.”
Investigators said Bush regularly beat and verbally abused the three boys and forced them to walk on hot coals. Teddy, who was forced to stand or run outside in freezing weather, had frostbite on his feet when he died.
The suit says Struthers detectives Jeffrey Lewis and Raymond Greenwood conspired to manufacture or manipulate evidence to implicate Bush, including altering or falsifying witness statements and failing to interview witnesses who had “vital and key information to clarify and/or refute the facts of the investigation.”
The suit also questions Widdersheim’s integrity as a “key witness” in the case, though her account of the incidents changed several times throughout the investigation.
She also was convicted and sentenced to 15 years for allowing the boy’s abuse to continue.
The suit also claims “multiple inflammatory statements to the local media” from Struthers police hindered his chance at a fair trial.
Bush’s suit demands $33 million in compensatory and punitive damages from the department, for the rights violations and “defamation of character.”
The 7th District Court of Appeals in 2014 denied appeals from Bush and Widdersheim. In 2015, Bush filed to withdraw his guilty plea and be granted a new trial and was denied. A 2016 filing shows Bush sought visitation rights to his own children while in prison, but was again dismissed.
Struthers Police Chief Tim Roddy declined to speak directly to the federal suit as he hadn’t seen it, but he backed up the police work involved in Bush’s prosecution.
“We followed the book. He was never mistreated and was given due process from the moment he became a suspect. He even had an attorney present while we searched his and his girlfriend’s house,” he told The Vindicator on Tuesday.
Lewis remains an officer with the Poland Township Police Department. Greenwood was fired from the Struthers department in 2014 after an internal investigation into his untruthfulness and insubordination, according to a letter penned by Mayor Terry Stocker at the time.