The Akron Legal News

Murderer wins appeal for lesser charge

ANNIE YAMSON
Special to the Legal News
Published: May 19, 2014

In the 8th District, a three-judge appellate panel recently ruled that the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas improperly convicted a man of aggravated murder.

The higher court ruled that there was no evidence of premeditation and it modified the conviction to the lesser included offense of murder then remanded the case for resentencing.

The defendant, Nathaniel Woods, was charged in December 2011 with aggravated murder, gross abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence for the death of 23-year-old Kimberly Bolten.

Bolten’s body was found on the morning of Dec. 14, 2011. It was reported by a pedestrian who was taking a shortcut and found the body, badly burned, behind a garage.

At trial, the deputy medical examiner for Cuyahoga County, Dr. Joseph Felo, testified that the victim had been dead for less than two days when she was found, the fire that burned her was set post-mortem and the most likely cause of death was suffocation.

Cleveland fire and arson investigators determined that the fire had been set intentionally.

Bolten was a known prostitute and was last seen by Natasha Frazier a few nights before her body was discovered.

Frazier testified that she was driving when she saw Bolten walking down the street with a man.

Frazier honked her horn and Bolten waved but the man she was with put his head down. Frazier identified Woods in court as the man she saw with Bolten that evening.

Thomas Renfroe, Woods’ neighbor, testified that he lived in a 10-room boarding house and that Woods lived in the room next to his.

The boarding house’s property abutted the property where Bolten’s body was discovered.

Renfroe told the court that, on Dec. 12, Woods came upstairs and told Renfroe that he had met a woman.

Bolten them came up the stairs, went into Woods’ room and sat on his bed.

Renfroe stated that, around 2 a.m., he was awoken by sounds from Woods’ room of banging on the wall and beer bottles hitting the floor.

Later, he said he heard the woman gasping and breathing hard but he just assumed that the pair was having sex.

When Renfroe got home from work the next day, he found Woods sitting on the front porch of the house. He told Renfroe, “You know that girl I was with the other day? She dead.”

Woods said that the girl was upstairs in his room and he showed Renfroe the body. According to Woods, Bolten had tried to take his money and then had a seizure during the tussle that ensued.

Renfroe moved out of the boarding house a few days later and subsequently went to the police.

He gave them a recorded statement of everything he knew of the murder.

Investigators had not made the connection to Woods prior to Renfroe’s information.

Woods was arrested at his workplace on Dec. 19 and police subsequently executed a search warrant in his room where they found a mop, bottle of bleach, a partially empty bottle of paint thinner and stacks of newspapers.

The Cleveland police fire-arson investigator who inspected the scene where Bolten’s body was burned testified that whoever set the fire used two accelerants — newspaper and a medium petroleum distillate, such as paint thinner.

Woods’ DNA was also found under Bolten’s finger nails.

A jury found Woods guilty on all counts but, on appeal, the 8th District upheld his challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence supporting the aggravated murder.

The three-judge appellate panel ruled that there was no evidence of prior calculation and design and that the totality of the circumstances indicated the Woods committed the murder spontaneously.

“They did not know each other before the day of the murder and did not have a strained relationship that would cause Woods to plan (Bolten’s) murder,” wrote Presiding Judge Kathleen Keough in her opinion for the court.

Judge Keough added that there was no indication that Woods gave any thought or preparation to choosing the murder site.

“Common sense dictates that if Woods had actually given thought to choosing the murder site, he would not have taken Bolten to his room in a boarding house that he shared with at least eight other people and where there would likely be witnesses,” wrote Judge Keough.

The state argued that Woods planned the murder because he dropped his head when Frazier honked her horn and waived, but the appellate panel ruled that Woods’ actions were more consistent with those of someone trying to hide the fact that he plans to have sex with a prostitute.

“In short, the evidence in this case was insufficient to support a finding of prior calculation and design and, accordingly, there was insufficient evidence to support Woods’ conviction for aggravated murder,” wrote Judge Keough.

There was, however, sufficient evidence that Woods committed the lesser included offense of murder, the appellate panel held.

The aggravated murder conviction was modified and the case was remanded for resentencing after the court of appeals affirmed Woods’ other convictions.

Judges Mary Kilbane and Eileen T. Gallagher joined Judge Keough to form the majority.

The case is cited State v. Woods, 2014-Ohio-1722.

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