Robert Buell: A City Planner Goes off the Rails

A Shirt-and-Tie Guy Lives a Dual Existence
(‘Material Evidence,’ Forensic Files)

My favorite Forensic Files episodes tend to involve criminals no one suspected, people who seemed to live within society’s conventions.

Enter one Robert Anthony Buell, the subject of “Material Evidence.” He was a municipal employee with a college education, a manicured lawn, and colleagues and friends who respected him.

Unfortunately, he also had a secret life as a serial sex criminal and murderer.

Local newspaper on story. For this week, I did some research on the reactions that locals had upon hearing that the homicidal maniac in the van looked not like a monster but rather like one of them.

So let’s get going on the recap for “Material Evidence,” along with information from online sources, including the Akron Beacon Journal, which did great reporting on the case:

On July 17, 1982, Krista Lea Harrison and Roy Wilson were collecting cans at a softball field in Marshallville Village Park in Ohio. Krista’s older sister, Dawn, had given her permission to ride her 10-speed bike to the park instead of doing dishes at home.

On high alert. Suddenly, a man grabbed Krista, 11, and forced her into a reddish-brown van with bubble-shaped back windows.

Roy, 12, who had just stepped away for a moment when the assailant drove up, described him as a white male of medium height, 25 to 35 years old with a prominent nose, dark hair, and a mustache.

The crime unnerved the town of Marshallville, population 750 to 900. “The park became a ghost town,” recalled Mayor Robert Brooker on Forensic Files. “There was tremendous apprehension that this could happen again.” Residents started locking their doors. A column in the Akron Beacon Journal advised parents to tell their kids that “no reasonable adult drives around seeking to give rides to children.”

Awful discovery. The FBI helped local authorities as they mobilized volunteers and tracker dogs, a helicopter, and even a psychic in their efforts to find the blue-eyed tawny-haired girl who loved softball. Local groups raised a $13,500 reward for information leading to the man’s capture. The feds outfitted the Harrisons’ phone with a recording device in case a kidnapper called.

“We want to be able to hold her in our arms and tell her how much we love her,” Krista’s dad, Gerald Harrison, said in a plea to the unknown man who kidnapped the youngest of his four children.

But no ransom calls came.

Six days after Krista’s abduction, some turtle trappers found the girl’s decomposing body 30 miles outside of Marshallville in a field in Holmes County. Someone had partially wrapped her in a plastic bag and left a large bloodstained cardboard box at the scene. Not far away, police found a pair of discarded men’s jeans and a plaid shirt.

Terrifying tale. Someone had strangled and sexually assaulted Krista. Forensic experts found the same type of synthetic trilobal orange fibers in her hair that had turned up eight months earlier at the murder scene of another child, Tina Harmon, in a neighboring town, but a young migrant farm worker named Herman Ray Rucker was in prison for that homicide. (Rucker eventually won a new trial and was acquitted).

Investigators determined that the L-shaped cardboard box at Krista’s murder scene came from a new leather van seat ordered from Sears.

Police got a huge break when a 28-year-old local woman came forward with a horrifying story. While she was painting the floor of the Petroco Gas Station where she worked as a manager, a man holding a pistol appeared and told her, “You are coming with me unless you want your head blown off,” according to court papers. He took her to his house and shaved her head, battered her, raped her, and tortured her with electric wires. He tied and handcuffed her to the bed. The next morning, in what sounds like a scene from a James Bond movie, the sadistic man turned up the stereo so no one could hear her scream and left for the office. It gave her an opportunity to loosen the ropes and force her hand through a handcuff. The victim put on a robe and ran outside for help. She was purple with bruises.

Outdoorsy guy. The man she identified as the attacker was the quintessential “somebody no one expected” — Robert Anthony Buell. He worked as a loan and grant specialist for the Akron Planning Department. His house at 3319 Symphony Lane in Clinton had an automatic garage door opener and a neatly trimmed yard with freshly planted chrysanthemums. The divorced father of one had reportedly been talking marriage with his longtime girlfriend, a lawyer at an Ohio bank; she had a 13-year-old daughter and an 8-year-old son. Robert took camping trips with both the kids and attended the girl’s softball games.

His arrest shocked neighbors and colleagues who knew him as a friendly, conscientious man who enjoyed hiking, scuba diving, and skiing — and was loved by local kids, the Akron Beacon Journal reported. His inner circle didn’t believe the accusations.

“Friends tended to dismiss the [gas station manager’s rape] charge as if it were an empty slur uttered the morning after by a woman Buell brought home one night,” according to the ABJ.

String of attacks. Nonetheless, the police thoroughly searched his vehicle and his house, placing sheets over the windows to discourage prying eyes.

Inside, they found jeans of the same size and style as the ones left near Krista Harrison’s murder scene. Robert owned a reddish-brown 1978 Dodge van. It didn’t have round windows as the witness to Krista’s abduction had reported, but Robert’s helpful nephew, Ralph Ross Jr., told investigators that Robert had recently replaced them with rectangular ones. The bright orange carpet in Robert’s van and his home matched the fibers in Krista’s hair. And Robert had ordered Sears van seats that came in boxes like the one found at the murder scene.

Family strife. Authorities would eventually name Robert as a suspect in the murder of Deborah Kaye Smith, 10, of Massillon, as well as a number of sexual assaults on women and girls in Doylestown, Akron, Barberton, Lodi, and Jeromesville. There was evidence that his string of crimes started as early as 1975, when he abducted Terry DeLapa (luckily, she escaped after 20 minutes), according to an account that DeLapa, now an executive at a materials company, gave to Rubber and Plastics News in 2015.

So where did this man come from and did his early life give hints at the horror and loss he would create?

Robert Anthony Buell was born in Cincinnati on Sept. 10, 1940, the son of Jacqueline Buell, a waitress, and Carter Buell, a chef. His parents went through a horrible divorce, according to the ABJ. Jacqueline described her husband as a drunken troublemaker. Carter complained that he returned home from the army to find his wife shacked up with a bartender. They fought over custody of the children, with Carter alleging that Jacqueline whipped and beat Robert so severely that a broom handle once broke over his back.

Robert, understandably, was described as a nervous child.

Finance positions. Still, he had a normal social life, dating girls and going out with friends. He followed a stable, successful career path, which included serving in the Navy as an electronics technician and receiving an honorable discharge. He studied business at the University of Akron, and held jobs as a cashier and loan officer at a couple of banks and as a credit manager at W.T. Grant.

When Robert married and became a father, he didn’t allow his parents to see their granddaughter for many years — presumably to spare her their dysfunction. Robert and his wife, a bookkeeper from Steubenville, stayed together for 18 years before divorcing.

After Robert’s arrest and indictment on charges of Krista’s aggravated murder, kidnapping, and felonious sexual penetration in November 1983, some neighbors started telling stories suggesting that he wasn’t all that squeaky clean after all.

Exes supportive. They said that, after his wife and daughter moved out, Robert tried to rebrand himself. He grew his hair longer and wore a cowboy hat, sunglasses, and an unbuttoned shirt like Richard Gere in American Gigolo. He also started riding a motorcycle, hanging around with younger people, and blasting music, according to the ABJ.

Still, there was no evidence that Robert had mistreated his wife and daughter or his girlfriend and her children. In fact, after his arrest, his ex-wife and girlfriend raised funds for his defense.

They must have wanted their money back when Robert, 43, pleaded no contest to the savage attack on the gas station manager.

Not So Hot in Cleveland. But he denied any crimes against children.

Authorities moved Robert Buell’s trial to Cleveland because of extensive pre-trial publicity.

He declined to take the stand in his own defense, and his lawyers didn’t impress the court much.

On April 4, 1984, a jury of six women and six men convicted Robert Anthony Buell of aggravated murder and rape for the attack on Krista Harrison.

Sorry, buddy. In a separate sentencing action, the jury voted in favor of a death sentence, which in that era meant the electric chair. Additionally, he received life plus up to 185 years for other charges related to his various sex crimes and abductions over the years.

He made many attempts to escape the death chamber. In 1996, a court halted his execution just 17 minutes before its scheduled time.

But a federal judge later “called his pleas for a stay ‘a rehash of the same arguments’ only ‘dressed in a brand-new outfit,'” the Akron Beacon Journal reported.

No chair. As a new execution date in 2002 grew near, Krista’s mother, Shirley Harrison, said that Robert Buell deserved to die the way Krista did. But she also noted that “we have been advised not to read [Krista’s] autopsy report,” according to a BG Falcon Media story.

Robert insisted he had nothing to do with the murder and that the real killer was still out there.

By this time, Ohio had started using lethal injections of sodium pentothal, potassium chloride, and the muscle relaxant Pavulon for executions.

On Sept. 24, 2002, at the “death house” of the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, Robert Anthony Buell took the needle, joining the small club of Forensic Files killers (including Jason Massey and Walter Leroy Moody) whose death sentences have been carried out as of this writing.

That’s all for this week. If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe and share on social media. — RR

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