Buell was summarily arrested and eventually linked to a spree of abductions and rapes. He stood trial for only one murder, Krista’s, was found guilty and was executed in 2002. Though he admitted to the rapes, he continued to deny to the end that he had killed anyone.

In 2007, a minister Buell spoke with frequently while in prison gave me a box of his possessions and handwritten notes. Inside was evidence that implicates Ralph Ross Jr., Buell’s nephew, in Krista’s homicide (”The Serial Killer’s Disciple,” Cleveland Free Times, September 2007, freetimes.com/stories/15/21/the-serial-killers-disciple).

Ross, not Buell, was living in Buell’s home at the time of Krista’s abduction. The day Krista’s body was dumped, Ross took off work and appeared later that night with a bandaged arm. At the time, he was driving a van that was nearly identical to Buell’s. Ross had helped his uncle install the new van seats, and it had been Ross’s job to put the plastic in the garbage. A week after Krista’s body was found, Ross abruptly quit his job in Akron and moved back in with his parents in Mingo Junction. When a detective questioned him about his uncle in 1983, Ross refused a request for his fingerprints.

When Buell went to trial for Krista’s murder, Ross was the first witness called by the Wayne County prosecutor and he gave the most damaging testimony; his uncle, he said, had often talked about abducting girls. But assistant prosecutor Martin Frantz never told the jury about what had come up during Ross’ earlier testimony in front of the grand jury.

[…]

Records kept on microfilm in the basement of the county’s record room reference a single fingerprint found on the plastic that had been used to wrap Krista’s body. That fingerprint did not match Bob Buell’s.

[…]

The detectives who worked the case are no longer certain they got the right man.

[…]

While combing through the few reports still housed in Stark County, I discovered an unsettling connection to another murder. Herb Sefert, the man who found Tina’s body on that oil-well drive, worked at a butcher shop in Canton, next to a man named Don Maurer. Maurer confessed to police to the 1982 abduction and murder of seven-year-old Dawn Hendershot, whose body he had dumped on an oil-well drive. Tina’s body was found near property owned by the Seferts.

Apparently no one made that connection during the investigation of Tina’s murder. Whether it’s a weird coincidence or circumstantial evidence, the only thing it really proves is that there’s more work to be done in Tina’s case. It’s up to the Wayne County prosecutor to ensure that justice has been served.

This effort, headed by the Rev. C. Jay Matthews of Mt. Sinai Baptist Church, would force a vote aimed at repealing Cleveland City Council’s creation of a registry for same-sex and opposite-sex couples.

The registry — the third in Ohio and the 77th nationwide — merely provides these couples with the documentation they sometimes need to steer through public and private bureaucracies. It harms or offends no one of reason. It doesn’t conflict with Ohio’s same-sex marriage ban approved by voters in 2004. Upholding the legality of a similar registry in Cleveland Heights, former Judge Robert Glickman wrote that the registry “is tantamount to the city declaring a city bird or flower.”

Cleveland’s future rests on its ability to retain what’s left of its declining population and attract new residents. By campaigning to eliminate the opportunity for gay, lesbian or unmarried couples to register their partnership status with the city of Cleveland, Rev. Matthews is not helping his community or Cleveland slow its economic free fall into a perilous abyss. He’s keeping Cleveland hopelessly positioned in the past by sending the wrong message about our city to the rest of the world - a world where gays have been quietly improving the quality of life of their neighborhoods and bolstering the local government tax rolls.

[…]

But perhaps Rev. Matthews and I can have a moral conversation about the economic realities facing his community and Cleveland. Perhaps we can agree that Cleveland remains one of America’s poorest cities with dwindling resources, high crime, poor education and few tools to rebuild. Perhaps he’ll keep an open mind about how same-sex (and unmarried) couples can improve our city, whether he, or his God, agrees with “that lifestyle.”

[…]

For Clevelanders weary of following trendy coastal cities, they can look to Detroit, which is working to become a “mecca for gay living,” hosting tours of five of its neighborhoods for gay couples. Columbus’ successful Short North neighborhood is another example of how the gay community can help a city’s economic expansion. I commend Mayor Frank Jackson for supporting Cleveland’s bid to host the Gay Games, potentially bringing millions of dollars to the city, and ultimately benefiting Rev. Matthews’ community.

Today marks a year since Lima police Sgt. Joe Chavalia shot and killed [Tarika] Wilson, 26, in her home as police conducted a drug raid against her boyfriend, Anthony Terry.

[…]

To its credit, the city put together community stakeholder meetings and a committee to oversee changes the Police Department should make.

[…]

But, outside of looking at chemicals to neutralize dogs, which would reduce the factor that led to Wilson’s death, none of the changes address the problems that happened Jan. 4, 2008.

[…]

What is the Lima Police Department doing to ensure it better knows the occupants of the homes it is raiding? How does the department intend to better protect the innocent when it is conducting a raid?

Such questions won’t be answered until [Lima Police Chief Greg Garlock] is willing to address publicly what changes, if any, his department has made in its SWAT team policy.

As President-Elect, Barack Obama, and his economic team begin a line-by-line review of the federal budget in their search for spending cuts, they can start with the $176 million spent annually on sexual abstinence-only programs aimed at teenagers.

[…]

The [Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health] study confirms that teens who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to engage in premarital sex as those who don’t take the pledge. The difference between the two groups is that the pledgers are 10 percent less likely to use condoms or other forms of birth control during sex. Because of this, pledgers also are less likely to protect themselves or their partners from sexually transmitted diseases.

Sean Levert’s death in the Cuyahoga County Jail is heartbreaking and the factors that caused him to pass away while incarcerated are outrageous. The county should absolutely be taken to task for not having better policies and procedures implemented to prevent this type of tragedy. However, for anyone who has been in a Cuyahoga County prison or jail or knows someone who has, the revelation that people do not receive adequate health care and live in deplorable, overcrowded conditions is not earth shattering. The simple fact is that many people are leaving these facilities more ill than when they arrived.

[…]

The death of Sean Levert is a wake up call to local leaders that something must be done about the conditions in our detention centers. Officials in jails and prisons must immediately implement thorough reforms to their policies and procedures on how to treat people with mental or physical illness. They must also recommit to ensuring that all those they are entrusted to care for receive proper medical attention in a timely manner.

Finally, our state and local leaders must take increased action to alleviate prison overcrowding. While the passage of House Bill 130 is a tremendous step in the right direction, the problem requires extensive, aggressive reform to change course from the failed policies of the past. It is up to all of us to continue to press our state legislators to initiate reform to lessen the burden on our overextended prison system. Without progress on reducing the prison population, other solutions will only serve as short-term bandages for the true problem. And we have all seen that tragedy awaits when we do not treat the root problem immediately.

Helen Jones-Kelley, director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, resigned last night near the end of a monthlong, unpaid suspension for mining state computers for confidential information on “Joe the Plumber.”

[…]

The administration fired Doug Thompson, deputy director of child support. Fred Williams, assistant agency director, resigned effective Jan. 31.

The action came soon after the Republican-controlled General Assembly approved a measure cracking down on state workers who improperly conduct checks involving Ohioans’ personal information.

[…]

Inspector General Thomas P. Charles found that the database checks that Jones-Kelley approved on Toledo-area resident Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher were for no legitimate government purpose.

[…]

Charles found that Williams and Thompson participated in Jones-Kelley’s authorization of the checks and that Thompson directed an employee to lie about the checks. That staff member reported the incident to Charles.

In response to Charles’ report, Strickland suspended Jones-Kelley for a month without pay from her $141,980-a-year- job. Thompson also was suspended without pay for a month. Williams was suspended for a week without pay.

Jones-Kelley and Thompson had been scheduled to return to their jobs Monday. Williams recently returned to work after his suspension.

Individually, Judge DeWeese, as every citizen, should and does have full First Amendment rights. As such he is entitled to express and practice his political and religious viewpoints at home, his church and in the public square, subject of course to constraints placed on him by the Code of Judicial Conduct.

What he has failed to recognize is that he is an elected official of one of the branches of government. The courtroom he temporarily occupies is in a government building owned by the people. He is not the owner.

[…]

I have no problem with Judge DeWeese believing and espousing individually whatever he likes. What is inappropriate and wrong is that he uses the people’s courtroom and his government position to promote his own personal religious agenda.

Even if al-Marri is, as the administration alleges, an al-Qaida-trained operaative sent to the U.S. to disrupt the financial system, the president’s approach should be deeply troubling to Americans concerned about unchecked government power. The question at the heart of the case: Does the president have the power to imprison legal American residents indefinitely without filing any charges against them?

The Bush administration tells us we are at war, and only a handful of residents have been subjected to such treatment. But anyone concerned about liberty can see the problem. The only standard for detention is the government’s belief that one is an enemy of the nation. A person can be imprisoned, denied contact with family members and even tortured. There’s no due process, no chance to have a day in court to state one’s case. This is chilling. A government with such powers could round up its critics with impunity. Which is why it is crucial that the Supreme Court deny the government the power to do such things and to demand al-Marri be charged with whatever crimes he is suspected of committing and tried in a court of law, or released.

In a unanimous ruling, justices ordered commissioners in Seneca County to scour their computer hard drives for e-mail messages requested by a Toledo newspaper last year that had been deleted.

The decision was a rare legal victory for public-records advocates in Ohio.

[…]

In its ruling yesterday, the Supreme Court said e-mail messages dealing with government business are public records regardless of whether they come from a public or private account.

The court also said deleting messages doesn’t automatically take them out of the public realm, as long as they can be retrieved. The Seneca County board of commissioners didn’t say that the messages couldn’t be recovered.

[…]

“A government cannot evade accountability and scrutiny by deleting e-mails and then claiming that they cannot be recovered and produced for inspection,” [Fritz Byers, attorney for the newspaper] said.

Cleveland City Council voted Monday to create a domestic partner registry for same- and opposite-sex couples, ending weeks of emotional, behind-the-scenes lobbying on both sides of the controversial issue.

The registry, though nonbinding, could prompt employers, hospitals and other organizations to grant privileges typically reserved for married couples, advocates say. The registry also is a revenue booster and a symbolic gesture that Cleveland is gay-friendly.

[…]

The legislation next heads to Mayor Frank Jackson, who plans to sign the registry into law, a spokeswoman said late Monday. The registry will take effect 120 days after the mayor signs.

[…]

Councilman Joe Cimperman, who sponsored the legislation, said couples likely will have to pay $55 to register and declare that they are in a committed relationship and “share responsibility for each other’s common welfare.”

The couples would not have to live in Cleveland.

The contraceptive became more expensive after a bill Congress passed three years ago affecting college women across the country. And since then, many women have struggled to pay the steeper prices in order to have birth control pills,” [Krista Corwin, president of BGSU Organization for Women’s Issues] said.

“Birth control pills used to cost around $18 a month, but now they are more around the $50 - $60 price range here at the University and over time that equals the cost of textbooks,” she said.

[…]

“I have heard so many stories from women who are having a hard time affording birth control,” she said. “I even spoke to a woman who said she was paying around $130 a month for birth control.”

[…]

“Most insurance companies see birth control as a luxury item, but for most women it is a necessity-not a luxury,” she said.

By approving a registry that will give both same-sex and opposite-sex couples documentation they can use to navigate public and private bureaucracies, Cleveland can declare that tolerance and openness are qualities that define this community. Given the importance of creativity in the modern knowledge economy, such a welcoming message has never been more important for a city and a region.

A registry is not — no matter what some critics may say — a circuitous way to enact civil unions; it is certainly not a de facto form of same-sex marriage. It is a recognition that couples — heterosexual and homosexual alike — have complex relationships that on a human level deserve acknowledgement and on a legal one may require some type of proof in order to receive benefits or even hospital visitation privileges.

[Vanessa Niekamp’s, a whistle-blower at the Department of Job and Family Services]  experience was plenty persuasive, especially recounting how the department’s deputy director, Doug Thompson, stood over her shoulder and dictated a phony e-mail for her to write in a clumsy effort to explain the search.

The bill did receive strong and direct backing from others, among them Rachel Hutzel, the Warren County prosecutor, and Carrie Davis of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio. Both supported the idea of setting careful standards for searches of government databases, and tough punishment for violators. Many bills moving in the lame-duck session are lame. This one isn’t one of them.

[…]

The legislation deserves passage with protections for whistleblowers such as Vanessa Niekamp.

Mayor Frank Jackson is expected to sign both the registry and the measure to add gender identity to the city’s equal rights ordinances, said his spokesperson Maureen Harper. The equality ordinances have included “sexual orientation” since 1994.

Sixty-five people squeezed into council’s 44-seat hearing room for the committee session on both measures. Most wore rainbow stickers supporting them.

[…]

The proposal would allow unmarried couples over the age of 18, same-sex or opposite sex, to register their partnership with the city. It would be open to both residents and non-residents of Cleveland.

The registry confers no rights or benefits. However, registration will allow couples to access benefits offered by insurance companies, employers and health care providers.

There were 29 witnesses speaking for the registry, including clergy, attorneys, activists and Cleveland Heights officials.

Voters approved the Cleveland Heights registry in 2003. The Cleveland proposal, like the Toledo registry created in 2007, are modeled after it.

[…]

[ The Very Rev. Tracey Lind, Trinity Cathedral’s dean] presented members with a letter of support for the registry from the interfaith clergy organization We Believe Ohio. The message also called for adding “gender identity” to the equal rights ordinances and backed the Equal Housing and Employment Act currently in the Ohio legislature. The letter was signed by ten religious leaders, including Lind, Rev. Allen Harris of Franklin Circle Church and Rabbi Stephen Weiss of B’nai Jeshurun Congregation, who also testified.

[…]

“Small institutions might not want to open the can of worms of trying to figure out who qualifies as a family member,” said [David Caldwell]. “So the city putting its stamp on a family relationship is an easy way for a smaller institution not to have to bother who qualifies as a domestic partner.”

[…]

Tami Brown of Positively Cleveland, the convention and visitors bureau, told the committee the registry would help generate tourism to the city and new jobs.
[…]

Case Western Reserve history professor Lisa Hazirjan talked about how creating the registry could help relieve poverty by creating a “one-stop shop” and a single document for people who don’t have the ability to take off work or spend lots of money to draw up legal documents to benefit their families.

Attorney Tim Downing, a partner at Ulmer and Berne, said domestic partner benefits help his firm attract new talent, and said the registry can do the same for the city.

[…]

ACLU staff attorney Carrie Davis assured the committee that the registry would not conflict with the state constitution’s marriage ban amendment.

[…]

After a recess, the committee considered the second measure, to add gender identity as a protected class to every city ordinance where race, religion, sex and sexual orientation are now included. Offered by Ward 14 councilor Joe Santiago, the city’s first openly gay council member, it has five other sponsors.

[…]

“Law is slow to catch up with society,” said ACLU’s Davis. “Cleveland was one of earliest cities to embrace sexual orientation in its non-discrimination ordinance, and now it’s time that we add gender identity and expression to that as well.”

Davis told the story of retired Army Col. Diane Schroer, formerly David, who was hired in 2004 at the Library of Congress, then turned down once they learned she would be transitioning on the job.

Schroer is an insurgency and counterterrorism expert, and was hired by the library to work in the congressional research service.

With the help of the ACLU, Schroer successfully sued the library in federal court.

Davis read from the court’s September decision: “Imagine that an employee is fired because she converts from Christianity to Judaism. Imagine too, that his employer testified that he harbors no bias against either Christians or Jews, but only converts.”

Davis continued, “That would be a clear case of discrimination because of religion. No court would take seriously that converts are not covered by the statute.”