Bob Buell did it!

29 Years After Her Murder, Tina Harmon’s Killer is Finally Revealed. 

For about a year, I have been the spokesman for the family of a young girl who was savagely murdered in 1981. Girl’s name is Tina Harmon, a twelve-year-old tomboy of a girl from Creston who smoked cigarettes and one day went to the corner store for a popsicle and never came back. Her body was found by turtle trappers several days later, resting in the short grass beside a rural oil well. I worked with the Harmon family to bring media attention to this cold case. We forced Wayne County authorities to re-open the investigation and to test for DNA on her clothes, still boxed up in their evidence room.

            Two weeks ago, we got an answer. It wasn’t the answer I suspected.

            A little background: Tina’s case has been solved once before. In 1982, two mud farmers stood trial for the girl’s murder. A jury convicted them, based on shaky eyewitness testimony. Tina’s family believed they had closure. The community of Creston moved on.

            And then came Bob Buell.

            Buell, an employee of the Akron Engineer’s office, was a secret sadist, a demon living in a simple ranch home in suburban Doyelstown. Early one morning in 1983, a naked woman, in shackles and shaved nearly bald, escaped from that ranch home to the elderly couple’s house across the street. She told a story of unimaginable horror—abduction, rape, and torture at the hands of the mild-mannered numbercruncher.

            Detectives arrested Buell and descended on his house. Inside, they found newspaper clippings of stories about local little girl murders. In the bedroom they discovered a roll of carpet, nutmeg in color. Fibers from this carpet, they soon realized, matched fibers found on the body of Tina Harmon as well as fibers found on the body of 11-year-old Krista Harrison, who had been abducted from Marshallville and murdered a year before.

            The two mud farmers were released and Buell stood trial for the murder of Krista Harrison. He was convicted and ultimately executed for that crime in 2002. His personal notes were boxed up the day of his death and given to his pastor. Through a series of odd events, that box ended up with me.

            Inside the box I found detailed notes by Buell that laid out a different scenario for the murders, one that suggested the real serial killer was free.

            The summer Krista Harrison was abducted, Buell was not living in his ranch home in Doyelstown—his nephew, Ralph Ross Jr. was. At the time, Buell lived with his girlfriend, a local attorney, at her place. Within Buell’s box was evidence that provided a timeline of Ross’s activities that summer. There is no doubt Ross was living in the house the week Krista was abducted—in fact, he was sleeping in the very room in which Buell kept that roll of carpet. The day Krista’s body was discovered, Ross abruptly quit his job and moved back home to his parent’s house in Steubenville. He was seen wearing an arm brace that afternoon. He said it was work-related, but his employer had no record of an injury.

            And then, quite by accident, I uncovered Grand Jury testimony used to indict Buell for Krista’s murder. A young assistant prosecutor named Martin Frantz questioned Ross on the stand. During the questioning—which was never made public—Ross suggested it was his own idea as much as Buell’s that they abduct and rape women. He revealed to prosecutors that he and his uncle sometimes “shared” women.

            One detective back in 1983 thought Ross was acting suspicious. He asked Ross to provide fingerprints—police found a fingerprint on the plastic used to wrap Krista’s body and knew by then that it did not match Buell. But Ross refused.

            I tracked Ross down in 2006. He still lived near Stuebenville, around the corner from where 13-year-old Barbara Barnes disappeared in 1995, years after Buell was in prison. Ross was working as a cable installer. He refused to answer questions about Krista’s murder.

            I brought this theory to Martin Frantz, now the prosecutor of Wayne County. He shrugged. He still believed Buell was the murderer and suggested the most Ross might have been was a serial killer’s apprentice.

            It would have been convenient to have had evidence from Krista Harrison’s case to test for DNA, the only way to rule out Ross for sure. But the evidence from that case had been destroyed after Buell’s execution. However, evidence from Tina’s case still existed—including underwear taken from her lifeless body in 1981, which had never been tested for the presence of DNA. I wondered—if Ross was involved in some way, might we find his DNA there?

            At first, Frantz balked. He said the test was too expensive. He told Tina’s family he was sure Buell was responsible for the crime. It was not easy for them to believe him, though, since his predecessor had told once them it was a couple of mud farmers. After 29 years, they wanted to be sure. So they asked me to intervene.

            In December, 2008, we held a press conference inside the mobile home of Tina’s brother, Randy. Three area newspapers ran stories the next day. A short time later, Wayne County Sheriff Thomas Maurer announced that his office would submit evidence to the Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation for DNA testing.

            On February 26, BCI & I informed Wayne County that they had, indeed, found DNA on Tina’s clothing. It was Buell’s. On March 11, Frantz and the Ohio Attorney General issued a press release.

            “It is no surprise that Robert Buell is now positively linked to the rape and murder of 12-year-old Tina,” said Frantz. “All the evidence in the recently re-opened investigation, including DNA testing, demonstrates that Buell almost certainly acted alone, as he did in similar crimes of which he was convicted. This office considers the case closed. I hope that the Creston community and the family of Tina Harmon find some comfort in knowing for certain the identity of Tina’s murderer.”

            Resolution for Tina’s case? Yes. A final answer on Ross’s involvement? Not quite.

            If Ross was living in Buell’s den of torture when Krista was abducted, how did he not know what was going on? Why did he skip town the day her body was found? Why did he refuse to provide fingerprints?

            The fingerprint conundrum can easily be laid to rest. Ross was arrested and printed in 2005 on a minor drug charge. But no one has bothered to compare his prints to the prints still on file at the FBI that was collected from the plastic wrapping Krista’s body.

            Ross continues to act strangely, according to documents recently unsealed due to the closing of Tina’s homicide investigation.

            In 2007, an FBI agent from Wheeling, West Virginia, investigated Ross as a potential suspect in a series of abductions that occurred in the Steubenville area. He wanted to ask Ross some questions, but Ross refused to cooperate. The agent took several cigarette butts believed to have been discarded by Ross for possible future DNA comparison.

            Whatever Ross knows about the murder of Krista Harrison, he is staying mum. And Wayne County, once again, is content to let the easy answer stand.

 -James Renner James@clevelandindependent.com