Teen in Craigslist case looks dazed in court

ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS

Asso­ci­ated Press

CALDWELL — A teen accused of mur­der made his first pub­lic court appear­ance Tues­day on charges he was part of a deadly rob­bery team that lured vic­tims with a phony job ad, appear­ing dazed as a judge post­poned a hear­ing on whether he should be tried as an adult.

The 16-year-old boy appeared briefly in a court­room in Noble County. A juve­nile judge put off the hear­ing because the boy’s father, who wasn’t present, hadn’t received proper notice of new charges filed last week. The next hear­ing will prob­a­bly hap­pen in a cou­ple of weeks, the judge said.

The Akron teenager faces juve­nile charges of aggra­vated mur­der, com­plic­ity to aggra­vated mur­der, attempted mur­der and com­plic­ity to attempted mur­der in the death of one man and the shoot­ing of another. He is a junior at Stow Munroe City Schools, about 40 miles south­east of Cleve­land, and is being held at a juve­nile deten­tion cen­ter in Musk­ingum County.

The boy wore sneak­ers, dark slacks, a shirt and a rain jacket as he was led into court with his hands cuffed in front of him, appear­ing slightly stunned. He didn’t speak dur­ing the hear­ing or after­ward as police hus­tled him into a police car.

His mother sat on a bench directly behind him dur­ing the short hear­ing, rock­ing back and forth and appear­ing on the verge of tears. She left the cour­t­house hur­riedly and gave only a few fleet­ing com­ments as she walked briskly to a black pickup across the street.

“We’re pray­ing for the fam­i­lies and the vic­tims,” she said to reporters. After she got into the pas­sen­ger seat, she rolled the win­dow down and said, “God bless you all. Do the right thing. Get the truth.”

Author­i­ties say the teenager was involved in a scheme in which appli­cants answer­ing a Craigslist ad for a phony job at a nonex­is­tent cat­tle ranch in Noble County, 90 miles south of Akron in rural south­east­ern Ohio, were robbed, then killed. Author­i­ties say they have con­nected two bod­ies to the scheme and iden­ti­fied one other man who was shot but escaped.

The teen was ques­tioned by the FBI and arrested in mid-November sev­eral days after Scott Davis, of South Car­olina, said was shot in the arm and escaped after he answered the ad.

The body of Nor­folk, Va., res­i­dent David Pauley, 51, was also found on the Noble County prop­erty, owned by a coal com­pany and often leased to hunters. Author­i­ties say Pauley was killed Oct. 23.

Tim­o­thy Kern, 47, of Mas­sil­lon, was found buried Fri­day near an Akron-area shop­ping mall. He had been shot in the head.

A third body also found Fri­day was that of a man who was killed by a gun­shot to the head, the coro­ner in Noble County said Tues­day. Author­i­ties haven’t said whether that body is linked to the scheme but say it’s sus­pected the body is that of a man named Ralph Geiger.

Offi­cials did not explain how they arrived at the con­clu­sion or give any other details about the man.

The com­plaint against the boy says he par­tic­i­pated in the alleged crimes with Richard Beasley, 52, of Akron, a man said to have acted as his mentor.

He was await­ing trial on pros­ti­tu­tion and drug charges when author­i­ties took him into cus­tody this month, and police have said a halfway house he ran in Akron was a front for prostitution.

Rhonda Kot­nik, an attor­ney for Beasley on the drug and pros­ti­tu­tion charges, said Tues­day that she’s still gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion, with hear­ings sched­uled later this week.

She said she isn’t rep­re­sent­ing Beasley in any­thing involv­ing the Craigslist case and points out he hasn’t been charged in that. She said she assumes the juve­nile has been coop­er­at­ing with police, which is com­mon in such cases.

Noble County Judge John Nau has issued a gag order pro­hibit­ing lawyers from dis­cussing the case, a move he defended Tues­day, say­ing he’s try­ing to ensure a fair trial in a sparsely pop­u­lated county.

“It may not even be tried here, but I’m not sure it won’t, so I pre­pare for the pos­si­bil­ity that it might,” he said.

The Asso­ci­ated Press gen­er­ally does not iden­tify juve­nile sus­pects and is not nam­ing the teenager or his mother.

Posted by AP News on Nov 29 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.