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Home > Blogs > Dayton Courts: Legal and crime news > Archives > 2010 > June
June 2010
Cundiff trial: Man convicted of attacks on 3 women sentenced to 38 years in prison
DAYTON — Mary Beth Bozarth’s voice quivered as she said that her stabbing had altered her life, but the Miami Valley Hospital emergency room nurse promised that she would continue to care for others.
“As anyone can guess, this has forever changed my life,” Bozarth told Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Michael T. Hall. “But it will never change who I am.”
Minutes later, Hall sentenced Bozarth’s attacker, James Cundiff, to 38 years in prison.
“You are a dangerous man,” Hall told Cundiff, who is 42 and will not be eligible for release until he is 80.
Cundiff was convicted of three attacks on women last year. One was Bozarth, who was stabbed in the neck after she left work Oct. 1. Another was Shannon George, who was homeless when she was robbed and slashed on Aug. 28. A jury convicted Cundiff on May 28 of four counts of aggravated robbery and four counts of felonious assault in those cases.
The jury did not hear any evidence concerning the third attack, the Sept. 29 assault of Lillian Klosterman, and that incident was never referenced in front of the jurors. Cundiff waived his right to a jury trial in those charges, so that evidence was presented only to Hall, who convicted Cundiff of those charges — a felony abduction count and two misdemeanors — just before sentencing.
Hall also found that Cundiff was a Repeat Violent Offender, and used that sentence to add nine years to the sentence.
Neither George nor Klosterman were able to attend, but assistant county prosecutor Kim Melnick told Hall that both asked for the maximum sentence.
Bozarth said that she harbored no anger toward Cundiff, but said she feared he would stab again if he were free. She noted that he did not demand her belongings until after he stabbed her in the neck.
“I would have given him everything,” she said. “He didn’t ask.”
Bozarth told Hall that she intended to continue her work as a nurse, and that she would help Cundiff if he showed up injured at the hospital.
“It doesn’t define who I am,” she said. “And God will take care of him, just like he took care of me.”
Cundiff, who maintained his innocence at trial, did not say anything during the hearing.
During the trial, Bozarth testified about her assault, which occurred in a parking lot near the corner of Main and Apple streets. Bozarth was stabbed in the neck, a blow that knocked her off her feet, and the attacker grabbed her purse and lunch bag.
George, who was homeless at the time, testified that she was behind a building on Main Street, across from the Montgomery County Fairgrounds, when her attacker pulled a knife on her and demanded money. She gave him the $40 she had in her front pockets, but the robber demanded to see if she had any in her back pockets. When he made her turn, she decided to run, and the attacker slashed her across her breast and her arm, she said.
During his closing argument at trial, assistant county prosecutor Steve Knippen noted similarities in both attacks, which happened within a few blocks of each other. Both were also near “Tent City,” the homeless encampment where Cundiff was living at the time, Knippen said.
In both cases, the attacker wore dark clothing, approached women walking in parking lots at night, and was wearing hospital apparel. George’s attacker wore a surgical mask which covered his nose and mouth. Bozarth’s attacker wore green surgical gloves, Knippen said.
Both Bozarth and George identified Cundiff as their attacker during the trial.
Lillian Klosterman, who lives on Belmonte Park, said Cundiff was the man who startled her on her front porch, then placed her in a choke hold, then fled after she was able to open her door and let out her dog.
Cundiff was 17 when he was tried as an adult and convicted in Mahoning County in 1984 of rape, felonious assault and aggravated robbery charges, according to Dayton police. He was released in 2002 after serving 18 years and has to register every 90 days as a Tier III sex offender, reserved for the state’s most violent sexual predators.
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Gang member sent to prison for shootings
DAYTON — A reputed gang member convicted of shooting two men outside a Harrison Twp. nightclub on Christmas Day was sentenced Wednesday, June 16 to three years in prison.
Shamar D. Davis, 22, appeared before Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Mary Katherine Huffman. Davis previously pleaded no contest to four counts of felonious assault, and those charges merged into two for the purposes of sentencing.
“Davis, a reputed member of the ‘Money Go Getters’ street gang, has had numerous contacts with law enforcement where he has been in possession of a weapon,” authorities said after Davis’ Jan. 5 arrest at a Vandalia apartment by U.S. marshals.
Davis was one of a group of men who got into a fight inside Club Juicy, 120 Shoup Mill Road. When the fight moved outside, Davis pulled a pistol and shot two other men, then fled in a vehicle. The victims’ injuries were not life-threatening, investigators said.
According to county records, Davis had a concealed carry permit.
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Suspect in teen’s death appears in court
DAYTON - Montgomery County Juvenile Judge Anthony Capizzi remanded the boy accused of shooting Ronika Owens-Clemons into court custody during a brief hearing Thursday, June 17.
“The allegations are as serious as you can get,” Capizzi told the boy, who is 16. His attorney, Anthony VanNoy, stood beside him as Capizzi read the charges: delinquency counts of murder, inducing panic, improperly shooting a firearm near a school, carrying a concealed weapon and illegal possession of a deadly weapon on school property.
Owens-Clemons died at Miami Valley Hospital after she was shot in the side on the playground of Westwood PreK-8 Elementary School sometime around 6 p.m. on Wednesday, June 16.
The boy’s mother was in the courtroom. The boy, who appeared short and of slight build, was wearing an orange jail jump suit. He said nothing and showed no emotion during the hearing.
Capizzi said he was keeping the boy in custody for three reasons: for the boy’s safety, because the boy could be a flight risk and because the judge assumed there was no parent or guardian who could provide appropriate supervision.
Capizzi set a preliminary conference for counsel on June 28. It was not clear whether the boy’s case will be transferred to adult court, but Capizzi asked that prosecutors file any motions to transfer before the June 28 conference.
The charges were filed by Dayton police, but Capizzi noted that the Montgomery County Prosecutor’s Office usually has a three-prosecutor panel to review evidence and decide on what charges to file, which he expected would be done within the next five to seven days. He said he hoped that the attorneys would be ready to exchange discovery by the June 28 conference.
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Sinclair student’s shooting death leads to guilty plea for Trotwood man
DAYTON — A man charged in the January 2009 shooting death of a Sinclair Community College student will serve nine years in prison, under a plea agreement reached Wednesday, June 16.
Deon L. Pinson, 33, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and aggravated robbery. Assistant Montgomery County prosecutor Sandra Hobson read the plea agreement reached with defense attorneys into the record, and common pleas Judge Frances E. McGee set sentencing for July 6.
Pinson was indicted in December on four counts of murder counts, two counts of felonious assault and two counts of aggravated robbery. All charges were in connection with the Jan. 23, 2009 shooting death of Demetrius Frazier.
Pinson was to go on trial on those charges Wednesday before the plea agreement was reached.
Frazier, 24, was shot multiple times near the intersection of Otterbein Avenue and Layton Drive. He knocked on doors asking for help, but collapsed and died on the front lawn of a home near the shooting, police said.
Pinson and Frazier were friends, police said, and the robbery might have been set up by Pinson. Frazier was an engineering student at Sinclair Community College who was planning to transfer to the University of Dayton, his father Murphy Frazier told the Dayton Daily News in January.
Pinson turned himself in to police on Dec. 16 after learning that police had obtained an arrest warrant for him.
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Cocaine trafficker sentenced to prison
DAYTON — A Riverside, Calif. man who oversaw the transportation of cocaine from Mexico to Xenia was sentenced Monday, June 14, to 17 years in federal prison.
Jose Jesus Villalba, 41, appeared before U.S. District Senior Judge Walter H. Rice.
Villalba pleaded guilty July 30 to one count of conspiracy to possess and possession with intent to distribute 5 kilograms or more of cocaine.
Villalba directed a relative to travel from Los Angeles in 2006 to rent a house in Xenia. The house was to serve as an operations base and a place to store the cocaine until it could be distributed, according to a statement of facts filed in court.
In August 2008, Villalba directed another relative and a semi-truck driver to travel from Los Angeles to Fairborn so they could pick up his profits so that he could pay his suppliers. Drug Enforcement Administration agents stopped the truck in Ohio while a co-conspirator was trying to collect a briefcase containing $205,000, according to court records.
Villalba was later arrested by DEA agents in Los Angeles on August 13, 2008 and has been in custody since his arrest. Under his sentence, Villalba will serve 10 years on supervised release after his prison release.
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Man convicted of murder in Tom-Tom slaying
DAYTON — The man accused of gunning down Thomas “Tom-Tom” Watson on a basketball court last year was convicted of his murder Thursday, June 10.
Chamare Mays, 21, will not be eligible for parole until after he has served 40 years in prison.
This was the second time Mays was tried on the four murder counts. On March 1, a jury convicted him of felonious assault, which involved the shooting of Fabian Q. Gentry, not Watson, tampering with evidence and one count of inducing panic, plus firearms specifications on all three counts. However, the jury deadlocked on the murder counts, causing Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Gregory F. Singer to declare a mistrial.
After the first trial, Singer gave Mays a 22-year sentence. After the second, Singer sentenced him to 18 to life, to be served consecutive to the prior sentence.
Watson, 25, was a high-ranking member of the DVH gang when he was gunned down April 16 on a College Hill Park basketball court.
Mays surrendered to police on April 21 and has been in custody since.
Dayton police said last year that Mays was one of three gunmen, some wearing masks, who fired at a group of men who were playing on the Shaftesbury Road basketball court. Mays isn’t the gunman who killed Watson, detectives said, but they believe he shot one man in the leg.
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Sidney man with child porn receives prison sentence
DAYTON — A Sidney man who kept more than 12,000 child pornography images on his computer was sentenced Friday, June 11, to 84 months in federal prison.
Carson Trader, 62, who appeared before U.S. District Senior Judge Walter H. Rice, had pleaded guilty Sept. 18, 2008 to one count of possession of child pornography.
Agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) went to Trader’s home March 6, 2007 while following up to a child pornography investigation that started in Michigan, according to a statement facts filed with the plea agreement.
Agents found images on the computer, then took it to the Miami Valley Regional Computer Forensic Laboratory, where analysts found more than 12,000 pornographic images of children, some depicting sadistic and masochistic conduct or violence. Trader downloaded some images over the Internet and acquired other images by trading with individuals online, according to Carter M. Stewart, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio.
After his release from prison, Trader will be placed under lifetime court supervision. He will also be required to register as a sexual offender in any jurisdiction where he lives, works or is a student and to register with his new jurisdiction within three days if he moves.
Trader was ordered by the Court to obtain sex offender treatment while incarcerated and during his supervised release from prison. He must also perform 100 hours of community service and was ordered to have no to contact with minor children.
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Public defender’s contract will not be renewed
DAYTON — Montgomery County Public Defender’s Commission voted Wednesday, June 9, not to renew the contract of Glen Dewar, who has been on paid suspension since March 19.
Dewar has been the county’s public defender since 2000. The five-member commission voted unanimously after spending more than an hour in executive session, then immediately voted to adjourn.
Dewar’s contract expires at the end of July. The commission took no other action concerning Dewar, who will remain on paid suspension. Deputy director Rudy Wehner will continue as acting director. The board’s next meeting will be July 7.
Dewar has been at the center of several controversies this year, including a number of computer purchases that were the subject of an audit. The county auditor found that the office deliberately evaded county procedures for those purchases and entered an invalid contract for internet service.
The public defender’s commission turned that audit over to the county prosecutor’s office for review last month. The commission did not discuss the audit at the meeting.
Dewar said May 3, that all of the purchases were done for legitimate and ethical reasons. He also said that his office did not have to go through the county’s automatic data processing board because his office was excluded from the state’s data processing statute, just as the common pleas court and court of appeals are. He also said that he gave the office’s IT director Ryan Sevey the authority to sign the contract.
Sevey’s position was eliminated May 7. During the commission meeting, Wehner said that the money for Sevey’s position was used to hire an attorney. He also said that the county’s IT people arrived May 7 to move the office back to the county’s system, a transition he said was “almost seamless.”
Another controversy centered on the public defender’s office’s relationship with Dayton Municipal Court, where judges have discussed not renewing the city’s contract with the office.
In December, Administrative Judge Carl S. Henderson signed an order that said the docket of newly appointed Judge Deirdre E. Logan was too congested. That order suspended the appointment of assistant public defenders to cases on Logan’s docket.
Henderson wrote then: “Due to the number of cases assigned to the Public Defender’s office, it is unlikely that the public defenders can adequately and efficiently prepare a proper defense, which may result in prejudice to the defendants.”
Wehner told the commissioners that the public defender’s office returned to Logan’s docket on May 17.
Steve Dankof, one of the commissioners, thanked Wehner in open session for bringing the office back to Logan’s docket and clearing up problems at the municipal court, calling it “a big deal.”
The Public Defender’s Office, which provides legal services to indigent criminal defendants, employed 75 people in 2007, according to payroll records.
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Home invasions suspect gets prison sentence
DAYTON — Demar Maxwell, convicted of charges in two home invasions, including one which left a man dead, was sentenced Tuesday, June 8, to 37 years to life in prison.
Maxwell, 21, appeared before Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Frances E. McGee.
A jury convicted Maxwell, 21, on May 20 of two counts of complicity to commit aggravated murder, three counts off aggravated robbery, two counts of aggravated burglary and single counts of tampering with evidence and being a felon in possession of a firearm. All of those charges are connected to the Aug. 16 slaying of David Green, 52, at his residence at 1529 Weaver St.
On May 21, Maxwell pleaded no contest to a single count of aggravated robbery in connection with a similar home invasion Aug. 15 at 1538 Almore St. One count of being a felon in possession of a firearm was dismissed, according to court records.
Maxwell’s alleged accomplice in the two home invasions, Waymond Smith, has two trials scheduled in August.
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Jolynn Ritchie denied parole; next hearing in ten years
Therressa Jolynn Ritchie, who falsely reported her 4-year-old daughter Samantha missing after killing the girl and hiding her body, will not be eligible for parole for another 10 years.
Ritchie, now 39, has been in prison since 1996 and is serving a 22-year-to-life sentence. This was her first chance at parole.
“We’re just so happy,” said Jeannie Kauffman, the sister of Samantha’s father Denton. “These last two weeks have been so hard on him.”
A member of the parole board interviewed Ritchie on Wednesday at the Ohio Reformatory for Women, in Marysville, where Ritchie is incarcerated. Following that interview, which was closed to the public, the board member issued a recommendation that her parole be “continued,” meaning that the process is over until Ritchie’s next parole date in 2020.
Had the board member recommended parole, then the matter would have gone to a full hearing before the 8-member parole board. That’s where the prosecutor and victim representatives show up in person.
The parole board received 1,594 signatures in opposition to Ritchie’s parole, as well 26 letters of protest, according to Jessica Dennis, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
“It’s the community that helped us do it,” said Dianna Williams, Kauffman’s daughter. “They were there when she came up missing.”
“Justice continues to be served,” said Montgomery County Prosecutor Mathias H. Heck, Jr., who was the lead prosecutor on the Ritchie case. “This case deeply affected our entire community. The decision to deny parole at this time, and not consider it for another 10 years for this defendant, is a relief to the family of Samantha and the community.”
For the most part, Ritchie has behaved in prison, Dennis said. She had no infractions for the first 10 years, then was in segregation for 15 days in 2007 after a fight. The following year, Ritchie had a minor rule infraction for disobeying a direct order, Dennis said.
Ritchie created one of the region’s largest media frenzies on July 18, 1995 when she reported Samantha missing. For four days in the summer of 1995, police and volunteers searched for the little girl while Ritchie made anguished pleas for her return.
The Dayton Daily News ranked Samantha’s disappearance the top news story of that year. Viewers and readers were fascinated by the story, especially the squalor in which the Ritchie family lived at 809 Herman Ave. in Dayton’s McCook Field neighborhood.
Search dogs found Samantha’s body submerged in a water-filled pit at the abandoned GHR Foundry, which was at 400 Detrick St., just blocks from Ritchie’s home.
Following what was said to be Montgomery County’s first trial covered live on television, a jury convicted her of murder, gross abuse of a corpse, two counts of tampering with evidence and two misdemeanors: making a false alarm and inducing panic.
During the trial in early 1996, Ritchie’s boyfriend, Ernest Vernell Brooks, testified that they were having sex in the basement of Ritchie’s home when the girl interrupted them. Ritchie, who had a broken arm, struck the girl in the head with the cast, then used a wrench to cave in the back of the girl’s skull, according to trial testimony.
Brooks, who testified that he helped Ritchie hide Samantha’s body, pleaded guilty to three charges: obstructing justice, tampering with evidence and gross abuse of a corpse. He was released from prison in January 1998.
At the time, his attorney Dennis J. Adkins said he did not know where Brooks, 45, was and that he probably moved away from the Dayton area because he was “fearful for his own safety.”
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