The Dayton Daily News has covered the murder of Lisa Spinks and the legal process of her alleged killers since Sept. 25, 2011, the day investigators worked the crime scene on the railroad tracks in Miamisburg. The coverage continues with Monday’s trial of Jamie Shaffer, one of two men accused in her killing.
One of two men accused of killing a 20-year-old woman and dumping her body on railroad tracks is scheduled to go on trial today in a rare, one-day, three-judge panel death penalty case in Montgomery County Common Pleas Court.
Jamie Shaffer, 23, faces the possibility of the death penalty if convicted of killing Lisa Spinks on Sept. 24, 2011, unless prosecutors agree on stipulations that would eliminate that possibility. Miamisburg police said Shaffer and 28-year-old Joshua Sellers killed Spinks by stabbing her in the neck. Police said the pair then put Spinks' body on the railroad tracks, where it was covered with brush and severed by passing trains.
Shaffer and Sellers were indicted Oct. 5, 2011 and have been in Montgomery County Jail on $1 million bonds. Both were charged with aggravated murder, kidnapping, tampering with evidence, gross abuse of a corpse and possession of criminal tools.
Shaffer’s capital murder trial has been continued several times as attorney Dennis Lieberman has asked Judge Timothy N. O’Connell for a specialist to prepare for a possible mitigation phase, which would only follow a guilty verdict in a jury trial.
Death penalty jury cases have a second portion in which a jury hears evidence about whether or not they should vote for use of the death penalty. Sellers’ trial also has been continued several times and is currently scheduled to begin in August. The prosecutor’s office has not addressed the question of whether or not any stipulations are in place to take the death penalty off the table.
Montgomery County Prosecutor Mat Heck Jr. said Sellers and Shaffer lured Spinks to a secluded area in Miamisburg, where she was stabbed several times in the neck. The defendants then dragged her body to the railroad tracks, laid her across the tracks and covered her with brush, Heck said.
The defendants took Spinks’ cellular phone and disposed of it along with the knife used to kill her and the latex gloves they wore, Heck said.
According to Miamisburg police, Shaffer told them that he, Sellers and Spinks walked from his apartment on South Second Street to a trestle where Bear Creek crosses the tracks. Shaffer, Spinks’ ex-boyfriend, told police he watched as Sellers beat Spinks with a rock, an assertion Sellers’ attorney has denied.
According to the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office, Spinks died of multiple stab wounds to the neck.
Spinks' grandmother, Linda Nicholas, has said her granddaughter was borderline mentally challenged but earned her high school diploma from Miamisburg in 2010: "I wondered how she would survive in this world. I did worry about her, especially when she went out at night."
Shaffer and Sellers are two of four current defendants facing capital murder cases in Montgomery County Common Pleas. Dameon Wesley, a convicted murderer accused of killing a 13-year-old girl earlier this year, was the fifth until he was found dead in his jail cell May 2.
Twelve defendants have been indicted in death penalty cases in Montgomery County since Duane Short was sentenced in 2006 to be executed for killing his estranged wife and her friend in Huber Heights.
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