The Akron Legal News

Murderer who used Craigslist ad to lure victim loses appeal

ANNIE YAMSON
Special to the Legal News
Published: January 14, 2016

The judgment of the Portage County Court of Common Pleas, which declined to suppress evidence in a 2013 murder case, was recently affirmed by a panel of three judges that reviewed the case of John Fox.

The opinion released by the 11th District Court of Appeals rejected Fox’s claims that an affidavit accompanying a request for a search warrant for his apartment lacked probable cause and that law enforcement entered the apartment prior to the issuance of the warrant.

Court documents state that, in early 2014, a five-count indictment charged Fox with aggravated murder, felony murder, aggravated robbery, kidnapping and tampering with evidence in connection with the murder of 21-year-old Justin Earley.

The state dismissed two death penalty specifications and Fox filed a motion to suppress evidence seized from his apartment and all statements made by him while in police custody.

At a four-day hearing on the motion to suppress, Det. Donald Wensel of the Alliance Police Department testified that, in mid-January 2014 Earley was reported missing by his roommate, Ryan Johnston.

Earley’s close friend, Shannon Marzano, also called the police and reported that Earley had been missing since the morning of Dec. 30, 2013.

According to a summary of the case, Wensel subpoenaed phone records and found that Earley’s last outgoing call was to a phone number with a 330 area code.

A subsequent Internet search of that phone number revealed that it corresponded to a Craigslist advertisement.

Subpoenaed Craigslist records then showed that the phone number was tied to 27 Craigslist ads.

An ad posted on Dec. 29 at 9 p.m., the night before Earley went missing, was in the “Casual Encounter” section of the site and requested a male prostitute.

The last ad, posted on the day of Earley’s disappearance, was a posting attempting to immediately sell a 1992 Buick Riviera which matched Earley’s car exactly.

Through more Internet searches, Wensel was able to match the phone number and email address associated with the Craigslist ads to Fox, who already had a criminal record and was a registered sex offender.

The sex offender database led the detective to Fox’s residential address and place of employment.

Fox was eventually found and interviewed at his workplace, where he gave a nonsensical account of what happened on Dec. 30.

He claimed that he and Earley knew each other and that he offered to sell Earley’s car because Earley apparently needed the money.

Fox said that Earley left his apartment, on foot, in the freezing weather around 8 p.m. on Dec. 30, though he could not offer an explanation as to why.

Earley’s car was eventually found in a parking lot about 750 feet from Fox’s apartment.

The car and Fox’s apartment were searched pursuant to a warrant and, though nothing was found in the vehicle, Fox’s apartment had a strong smell of decomposition.

Earley’s body was found in a living room closet, wrapped in a blanket and covered with a scented white powder.

Shortly after the search, Fox called the police and expressed a desire to talk. At a subsequent interview, he stated that he had “kind of singled (Earley) out.”

“I guess in a way I purposely, well, unfortunate for him, but I had a lot of anger in the last year,” Fox told detectives.

When asked if he knew what he was going to do when Earley got to the apartment, Fox answered “yep.”

He said that Earley was under the impression that he would be getting paid $200 to have sex with Fox.

Instead, Fox said, “I pretty much just used that against him to, I pretty much told him, I said pull your pants down and turn around or whatever, when he turned around it was over.”

After strangling Earley, Fox said he sat on his couch and smoked and he told detectives “I don’t even feel bad.”

After the murder, Fox took a photo of the Buick to post on Craigslist, moved the vehicle and threw the keys in the dumpster.

The trial court overruled Fox’s motion to suppress and Fox entered no contest pleas to all of the charges against him.

The court found him guilty and merged the offenses before imposing life without parole in prison for aggravated murder, 11 years for aggravated robbery and three years for tampering with evidence, to be served concurrently.

In its review of the trial record, the court of appeals found that the trial court did not err by refusing to suppress the evidence, despite Fox’s claim of a faulty search warrant.

“Appellant argues (the) affidavit was insufficient because (it) did not present any evidence of threats, violence, sexual activity or theft,” Judge Cynthia Westcott Rice wrote on behalf of the court of appeals. “However, while (the) affidavit may not have presented any direct evidence of such conduct, circumstantial evidence of each was outlined in the affidavit.

“This court has repeatedly stated that circumstantial evidence and direct evidence inherently possess the same probative value, even when used to prove essential elements of an offense.”

The appellate panel held that the affidavit recounted, in detail, the results of the Alliance police investigation and summarized Fox’s first police interview. It ruled that the facts demonstrated “a fair probability” that evidence of criminal activity would be found in Fox’s apartment.

In a second and final assignment of error, Fox argued that the evidence should have been suppressed because police entered his apartment prior to obtaining the warrant. He claimed that the affidavit’s reference to murder “suggests” a prior entry.

The court of appeals found otherwise, ruling that the reference to murder “was based on the circumstances known to (the investigating officer) at the time and had nothing to do with an entry by police into appellant’s apartment before the warrant was issued.”

“Significantly, there is not mention in the affidavit of a body, the odor of decomposition or anything else that could only have been discovered upon entering the apartment before the warrant was issued,” Rice wrote.

The court of appeals ultimately found no merit to Fox’s assignments of error and it affirmed the judgment of the Portage County court with Presiding Judge Timothy Cannon and Judge Thomas Wright concurring.

The case is cited State v. Fox, 2015-Ohio-5523.

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