The Serial Killer's Apprentice

by James Renner

  “We know this much. We know that there is a young man who remains under a cloud because at an earlier press conference police indicated he was the prime suspect and leaked his name to the media. We know that police interrogated the young man for 18 hours without an attorney present, searched his room, gave him a lie test, and sent samples of his nails and skin to the FBI and came up with nothing. Not, as one lawyer put it, ‘insufficient evidence,’ no evidence.

  “Yet, tonight, because of that press conference today, everybody who cares will be convinced that the young man is a murderer. No, I’ve never seen anything quite like it. It’s easier than an arrest, it’s cheaper than a trial. An interesting technique, but flawed because the murderer is still at large.”

  * * *

  Deputy Chief Brosius followed up with Dr. Murray Miron on July 2. By then, Miron had had time to review some evidence related to Dan Dreifort and had some concerns regarding his behavior the night of the murder.

  Miron: “[He] calls 911 on his own . . . and here are all these police vehicles, the crime scene being established . . . Dan goes to bed.”

  Brosius: “Right.”

  Miron: “I found that unusual . . . uh . . . somewhat disconcerting. But that’s academic, because it’s not Dan that we’re going to be interrogating, it’s Kevin, and whether or not he is the guy or not, we want to give the full shot . . . to use the best psychological coercion we can.”

  Miron went on to describe to police how to use psychological coercion to trick Kevin into confessing: “You take a mouse, a rat, and you want him to, let’s say, twirl around three times clockwise in a sort of ballet-like pirouette. So what you do to control, is, you’re in control over their reinforcements. You don’t need to punish, but you can withhold the reinforcements, so what you do is you wait for the animal to turn its head and look to the right and then you give it a little bit of food.”

  Miron (later): “Now here’s . . . forgive all the anecdotal sort of thing . . . we need to operant condition Kevin. Clockwork Orange on Kevin, if you’ve seen that film.”

  * * *

  It would be another year and a half before Kevin was finally indicted.

  Shaker Heights police got their indictment on November 24, 1992, after two patients from Laurelwood came forward, claiming Kevin had confessed to murder while inside the hospital’s mental ward.

  The first witness claimed Kevin had come to her in the hospital, one night, to show her newspaper clippings about Lisa’s murder. “I asked him, ‘Did you do it?’ ” she told police. “He said yes he did. I asked him why. His answer was, ‘because.’ ” At the time of this “confession,” Heinz was on a litany of psych meds, including lithium, Klonopin, and Depakote.

  A second patient, also a client of lithium, said that Kevin told her, “You know that girl who was murdered? They’ll never find out who killed that girl. There were only two people there; one of them is dead and the other will never talk.”

  Still, the prosecutor decided it was enough to charge Kevin with a single count of aggravated murder and face a maximum sentence of life in prison. Kevin’s father hired Mark DeVan, one of the best defense attorneys in Cleveland, to represent his son. He immediately earned his retainer; when assistant county prosecutor Carmen Marino asked the judge to deny bail at Kevin’s arraignment, DeVan successfully argued for a reduced bond of $50,000. Kevin’s parents put up their home as collateral.

  Prosecutors were dealt another blow when Judge James J. Sweeney refused to allow them to enter notes taken by Kevin’s personal psychiatrist as evidence. Marino suggested to reporters that the notes could implicate Kevin in Lisa’s murder.

  In reality, there is nothing in the doctor’s detailed and voluminous file that mentions a confession. When Kevin visited his doctor a day after Lisa’s murder, Kevin wanted to talk about the possibility of being drafted into the Army, if there was a war in the Middle East. Lisa’s murder was only mentioned in passing, because it was on the news.

  The Youngs hired an expert from Texas named Robert Hirschhorn, whose sole job was to pick a perfect jury. He assisted DeVan in the voir dire process, where a pool of jurors is vetted by the defense and prosecution until twelve remain. This rubbed many blue-collar Clevelanders the wrong way, of course, and the media played it up grandly.

  Kevin’s trial began on June 28, 1993. It was broadcast nationally on Court TV. Edythe Heinz and Susan Lape were the prosecution’s star witnesses.

  It quickly became evident that the defense hoped to pin the murder on Dan Dreifort. And so DeVan had an attentive audience when he got the opportunity to question the boyfriend on the stand. The attorney asked him about the threatening letters he had sent to Lisa.

  Dan said they were “harmlessly funny.”

  “That was your humor back then,” asked DeVan.

  “Yes it was. Lisa thought it was funny, too,” said Dan.

  When asked to explain why he went to sleep when police were outside, searching for his girlfriend, Dan said that sleep was his way of escape.

  DeVan pounced. “Escape from something you knew about?”

  “No,” said Dan. “Escape from what I feared had happened.”

  “Did you in fact kill Lisa Pruett?” asked DeVan.

  “No,” said Dan.

  Then, on July 6, DeVan unveiled a surprise: a statement by Edward Curtin, the police officer who was first to arrive on scene the night of the murder. Curtin said Dan had told him then that he had never heard the screams.

  On July 17, Kevin’s father, J. Talbot Young took the stand. He testified that at the time of the murder, he and Kevin were home, playing video games. According to Kevin’s father, he had challenged Kevin to a Nintendo game after he had finished up work and found his son downstairs at the TV. They went to bed at 1:15 a.m.

  On July 21, after 10 hours of deliberations, the jury found Kevin not guilty.

  But that wasn’t good enough for the press, who had been spoon-fed information by Shaker Heights officials and prosecutors for years.

  A week later, Plain Dealer reporter James F. McCarty wrote a feature article suggesting that jurors would have voted differently if they had gotten a chance to see evidence withheld by the judge. Kevin was devastated by the attack. That day, he climbed onto a bridge over Interstate 271 and threatened to jump. A Mayfield Heights police sergeant talked him down.

  * * *

  Kevin Young and his family are still fearful of the media, 15 years later. Who can blame them? I attempted to contact Kevin for this story. I spoke with Mark DeVan and his father, briefly, but, through them, Kevin decline an interview. He still haunts coffee shops in Shaker Heights and Coventry and works as a house painter.

  “With Kevin Young, there was no smoking gun,” admits Brosius, who left Shaker to become the police chief of Chagrin Falls. But, he’s not interested in discussing other suspects.

  Lisa’s parents moved away from Shaker shortly after her murder but quietly returned to the area, recently. I spoke to her father at length, off the record. All official comments are still handled by the family’s lawyer, Joseph Swartz. “It’s been 19 years, but it’s still very emotional for them,” he says.

  Dan Dreifort was harder to reach. His last listed number is the office of Athens News, an alternative weekly that serves the Ohio University campus, where Dan once worked as a graphics designer. He is rumored to be living in New York City and playing in a new band. He called me one afternoon, after a friend passed along an interview request.

  “I’ll talk to you if Lisa’s parents say it’s okay,” he told me. But after I got permission from Lisa’s father, Dan decided to back out.

  * * *

  The Lisa Pruett murder remains an open and active case. Anyone with information can contact Shaker Heights detectives at 216-491-1261.

  Classmates dedicated the 1990–1991 yearbook to Lisa. (Shaker High School yearbook)

  This coroner’s photograph shows where the knife punctured her sweater. Her death was very violent. (Cuyahoga C
ounty Coroner’s Office)

  The coroner’s office tested many knives to determine if they were used to kill Lisa. The murder weapon has not been found. (Cuyahoga County Coroner’s Office)

  Chapter 9

  A Killer Comes to Pancaketown

  The Unsolved Murder of Dan Ott

  The center of Burton, a bucolic village off Route 87 in Geauga County, is a patch of land with a log cabin that sells pure maple syrup year-round—hence the nickname “Pancaketown.” But the heart of Burton is a firearms store. The Gunrunner is where everything happens. Everything of importance, anyway. Just ask the owner, Scott Weber.

  “This is the epicenter, man. All the politics happen here. Deals are cut here. The mayor’s been in here a bunch of times. We’ve done fundraising for [Congressman Steve] LaTourette. I know the sheriff real well. He comes in here to buy some shells. So I have an ‘in’. So maybe he told me some things he wouldn’t tell the regular newspaper guys.”

  In this case, the sheriff has been talking to Weber about a murder that happened down the road a stretch, in 2006. A vicious killing, not the sort of thing residents of Burton are used to. It’s big news. Especially because the killer is still out there.

  Weber is a singular soul with enough charisma to drown in. He has reddish-brown hair curled up in tufts around his noggin. He speaks in staccato flashes that are more like information downloads than actual conversation. And he has this habit of fidgeting with his thin copper-frame glasses while he prattles on. It’s hard to get a word in edgewise, but it’s amusing to try.

  Sometimes, Weber’s audacity gets him into trouble. In 2005, he posted his new Girls of the Gunrunner calendars on the storefront window for all to enjoy (the calendar ships with every gun you purchase and features buxom gals from the Cleveland area in skimpy clothing, posing with sidearms). After several complaints, the zoning board tried to shut him down, said there was simply too much material covering the windows—local law states that 50 percent of the window must be clutter-free. So Weber removed community flyers and advertisements, everything except the semi-nude women. The calendars covered only 45 percent of the window, so they had to let him keep them up.

  Then, he launched BurtonBlog.com, a Web site on which he rants daily about life in Burton. When the town council proposed painting the water tower to resemble a stack of giant pancakes, Weber led the charge to nix the idea, opining on BurtonBlog that it would quickly become an eyesore. Council followed.

  Weber knows how to craft an argument. He has a journalism degree from the University of Wyoming and taught the subject in high school for 25 years. Today his site gets 16,000 hits a month. When Weber blogs, people around here listen. And he has a lot to say about the murder that happened out on Claridon-Troy Road. Things some people don’t want to hear.

  He sits down on a green leather recliner near the back of the Gunrunner, beside a coffee table covered with old issues of Stuff magazine and GQ. Behind him is a row of shotguns tagged for auction. He gently removes his glasses from the bridge of his nose and fiddles with them like a bored kid.

  “Here’s the thing that strikes me as odd about this case . . .”

  * * *

  Dan Ott lived life on his own terms.

  At Vermilion High School, Dan dated the superintendent’s daughter. Daring, to be sure. But not as daring as the well-known crushes he had for older, married women.

  Ken Kishman, a friend of Dan’s since the seventh grade, laughs, recalling Dan’s unique confidence. “I remember him trying to pick up my girlfriend’s mom,” says Kishman. “He always kept in touch with his girlfriends’ mothers.”

  Not that Dan was cocky, even if he had reason to be. In school, he excelled in art class; his friends still speak about his drawings and sketches with reverence 13 years later. There was a certain maturity in his brushstrokes. And in his life, too. He partied with his peers, but he didn’t drink, didn’t do drugs. Dan was fiercely intelligent and possessed this odd, intuitive sense for nature and how it operated.

  Once, Kishman and Dan built a campfire on a cement patio behind the Ott residence. In the morning, they discovered the fire had singed part of the lawn. Dan took his knife over to the neighbor’s yard, clipped a few inches where it wouldn’t be missed, and transplanted the grass to where the damage had occurred. The new blades blended in perfectly.

  “He could have been a brain surgeon,” says Kishman. “He could have been anything.” But Dan couldn’t decide what he wanted to do.

  After graduation, Dan announced that he was setting out for an extended hike. He told his friends he was walking across the country. He told his mother he just wanted to find the Appalachian Trail. He got about 30 miles from Vermilion before his bad knee, injured in high school track, got the better of him. Later, he hopped a bus to Chicago and explored the city for a couple of weeks before returning.

  Back in Ohio, Dan took a job at Green Circle Growers in Kipton. He did grunt work at first, but over time, he was promoted to “grower.” That’s where Dan discovered he had a gift for cultivating seeds, nurturing them into healthy starter plants for customers. His name became known among Ohio’s green-thumb community. He was respected in his field, scouted by Northeast Ohio greenhouses like some hotshot minor-league baseball player with a trick curve. No one could grow plugs like Dan Ott.

  In 2003, Dan was hired by Urban Growers, a greenhouse on Claridon-Troy Road (State Route 700) in Burton Township. Part of the deal was that Dan could live in the small house next to the farm, rent-free. He was so good, competing greenhouses purchased Dan’s plants from Urban Growers to sell in their shops.

  “It’s something not everyone can do,” says Sue Herring, who worked with Dan at Urban Growers. “You have to understand pH balance, every little ingredient the plant needs and when it needs it. Me, I plant the seed. I’m a planter. But he was a grower.” And he was just a nice guy. He liked to take Sue’s mother out for ice cream now and then.

  In 2006, a greenhouse in Michigan discovered Dan and offered him $30,000 more than what he was pulling in at Urban Growers. There was room for advancement, too; if he stayed on track, he could run his own greenhouse within two to three years, earning a six-figure salary. Dan accepted the offer but didn’t leave in a hurry. He lingered in Burton, teaching his replacements how to grow seeds from old plants while slowly moving his things to Michigan. His first day at the new greenhouse would have been May 29, 2006.

  Dan’s live-in girlfriend, Maryann Ricker, was supposed to go with him.

  Former co-workers say Dan met the 31-year-old hairdresser at a wedding and that they had been dating for more than a year. They liked to drive into town to see movies together. Although Dan wasn’t a social drinker, the couple was often seen at Twisters, a local tavern that also serves food. She was the fair-looking blonde with dimpled cheeks and a constant smile. Dan was the easygoing guy with the bushy black goatee.

  According to Maryann’s statement to police, she and Dan slept on an air mattress on the living room floor the night of May 25. Almost everything had been moved to Michigan by then. All that remained, besides the makeshift bed, were some boxes and clothes. At about 6:30 the next morning, a Friday, Maryann says a man dressed in camouflage and a dark mask entered their home. He carried a shotgun.

  The intruder ordered Maryann and Dan onto their stomachs. He bound Dan’s wrists with duct tape, which Maryann says the intruder must have brought with him because she didn’t remember having any in the house. Once the man moved to her, Dan managed to free himself from the tape and started to attack the armed stranger.

  The masked man shot Dan in the chest and fled the scene. From the kitchen, she watched the man escape in a maroon Ford sedan.

  At 6:35 a.m., Maryann called 911. Exactly what was said between the dispatcher and Maryann is unknown. The machine that tapes 911 calls at the Geauga County Sheriff’s Office had a loose wire and did not record.

  Dan died on his way to the hospital.

  * * *

  In Burton
, it’s still the talk of the town. And as always, Scott Weber’s is the loudest voice.

  “Here’s the thing that strikes me as odd about this case,” Weber says. “If you’ve just shot-gunned somebody through the chest, one of two things are gonna happen. You’re gonna get the death penalty if they catch you or you’re gonna be in prison for the rest of your life. So, you better do the witness, too. What’s the difference? The penalty’s the same. If you see the guy’s on the floor with a gaping wound in his chest from a 12-gauge, why wouldn’t you at least beat her head in with the shotgun butt?”

  The Burton papers—the MapleLeaf, the Geauga Times Courier—covered the incident and moved on, but the BurtonBlog posted updates on the investigation almost daily. From the beginning, Weber has challenged Ricker’s story.

  In a post from June 1, titled: Murder! The Murderer! Get him . . . , Weber wrote: “Deceased gets tied up by a guy with a long shotgun in his hands? Pretty hard to do, try it sometime. . . . The logistics of this murder as given by the girl just don’t stick to the wall.”

  Adding to the air of doubt and mystery is the fact that Maryann has not spoken publicly, to defend herself or to demand justice for Dan.

  “If my girlfriend just got killed by a home invader, I’d be out there addressing civic groups, law enforcement groups, hiring a private investigator, talking to the media, etc,” Weber wrote in a June 15 update. The only response to Weber’s comments from the Ricker family was this e-mail from Maryann’s 12-year-old niece, which Weber posted on June 24: “Ok, 1st of all, my Aunt Mary didn’t kill ANYONE! So stop blaming her for it?! They are both honest and loving people.”