🔎 Trustee censured: A Beavercreek Twp. trustee has been asked to resign following an investigation into alleged intimidation and bullying of township employees, including allegations of manipulating the selection of a new fire chief.
🧝 New business: A Xenia couple who, for years, have entertained guests of the Ohio Renaissance Festival with music and goods have opened a permanent store on Xenia’s main thoroughfare.
Also today, we tell you about a local man recently released after spending 32 years in prison for his role in a triple homicide.
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Beavercreek Twp. triple homicide: Man released after 32 years in prison
Michael Berry Buhrman, who spent more than three decades in prison for his role in a gruesome triple homicide in Greene County, has been released on parole.
• Background: Buhrman graduated in 1974 from Kettering’s Fairmont East High School, where he described himself as a “C” student and said that he worked 30 hours a week all through high school with jobs at various times at a former Gold Circle and a gas station.
• History of the case: The bodies of the victims were discovered Feb. 24, 1983, at a farmhouse. They were within 10 feet of each other in a living room at the front of the house. All were shot with at least two guns and died of gunshot wounds and lacerations.
• The victims: Patti L. Stanley, 22, of New Carlisle; Jon C. Stroop, 32, of Kettering; and Daniel E. Wilson, 30, who lived at the rented farmhouse at 2431 Indian Ripple Road in Beavercreek Twp.
• Accomplices: Steve Mountjoy and James E. Stelts. Mountjoy told authorities that Buhrman was owed money by Wilson and that he accompanied him and Stelts to Wilson’s farmhouse in what he thought was a plan to steal money and drugs.
• The shooter: Stelts was identified as the triggerman. He pleaded no contest in 1991 to murder and was sentenced to 15 years to life. He is incarcerated at the London Correctional Institution.
• Posing as police: Mountjoy said they drew guns and acted like it was a drug bust. But as Wilson opened the door, Mountjoy said Stelts “started blasting.”
• The getaway: After the murders, the crew spent the next five minutes ransacking the house, finding $35,000 to $40,000 in cash and a little more than a kilogram of cocaine.
• Gangster heritage: Buhrman is the nephew of reputed Dayton gangster William “Bill” Elias Stepp.
• Bill Stepp: He was one of the most famous gangsters the Miami Valley has ever known. Stepp and his associates were tabbed “the notorious Stepp gang” in 1966 by then Ohio Attorney General (later U.S. Senator) William B. Saxbe.
• Uncle Bill: During a 1990 jailhouse interview, Buhrman said his first solid memory of Stepp was around 9 or 10 years old when Stepp killed a puppy for raiding a chicken coop during a family reunion.
• How he described Stepp: “He was like a god in the family. Everybody worshiped him and looked up to him,” Buhrman said.
• Setting stage for murder: A former Fairmont East classmate involved in cocaine trafficking reached out to Buhrman to see if he could get his uncle’s assistance, which he did.
• Stepp’s plan: Buhrman said he did not know whether Stepp authorized the slayings, whether the men acted on their own nor whether his uncle intended him to be involved. However, one thing he knew for certain is that Stepp called the shots.