Violence in the Valley - Murder of Stephen Spade

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Now the Violence in the Valley Podcastwith retired Parkersburg Chief of Police Bob Newell
and others, brought to you byInterestate Insurance three generations of insurance Excellence.
Hello everyone, and welcome back tothe Violence in the Valley Podcast with Bob
Newell, sponsored by Interstate Insurance.Make sure to check out on Amazon for

(00:22):
a copy of Bob's books Violence inthe Valley and As I Walk through the
Valley of Meth for more cases andtrue crime from right here in the middle
Ohio Valley. Bob is back inthe studio today. Bob, what cases
are we covering today? Well,today we're just talking about one particularly unusual
night in the valley. Actually,parkersburgan out in the county involving a couple

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of fires and shooting. It's Februaryfifth, two thousand and five, about
two three in the morning when thesethings started unfolding. But basically what had
happened was we had answered our departmenthad answered a shooting call at twenty fourth
and Dudley where someone had kicked opena door of an apartment and had just

(01:04):
opened fire randomly, emptying a handgunand struck a couple of different people one
seriously, but the other ones,thankfully were minor injuries. And at the
same time, the fire department wasextinguishing a fire just within walking distance of
this shooting that involved a couple ofpeople being inside a burning apartment that were

(01:25):
presumed dead as well. So itstarted out fairly busy for those shifts,
actually, and that's the two thingsthat were keeping everybody busy, when in
the meantime we were informed that theshares department was working on an unusual case
of their own simultaneously, which involveda body that was burning in a field

(01:47):
out of mineral wells. A bodyburning out in the middle of mineral wells.
That doesn't usually happen around this areafor the most part, never.
But let's start with the Nineteenth Streetfire, because you said it was on
Night Street. Let's start with thatcase and go on with that one.
Sure, the Nineteenth Street fire,it's still unsolved and still unresolved, I

(02:08):
should say. You know that itwas a fast burning fire. It was
an intense fire, and you know, a young man and woman both perished
in the fire, of course,and it was first investigated as a homicide.
But again at the end of theinvestigation, it was very difficult to

(02:28):
determine what to cause of death was, which is paramount in any kind of
a murder investigation, or really whatto cause the fire was. I mean,
we knew it was again fast burning, probably set. However there was
no evidence to take the court toshow how it was set if that was
the case. So it has languishedever since the shooting case that had occurred.

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It it went away pretty quickly becausethere was no fatality. When they
went away, I mean it wasit lost its place in importance that particular
morning because again there's no fatalities,a couple of minor injuries crux of that
case. The focus became these twofires in which there are fatalities. Gotcha,
now you said that there was itwas never founded that what caused the

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fire or what started it initially inyour time as police eief and everything,
what is the typical starting point ofa fire like What typically would start a
fire like that from your previous experience, Well, typically a fire like that
involves the use of gasoline or someother accelerant When it's fast burning. The
I mean fires burned quick enough ontheir own, but if you have some

(03:35):
kind of liquid accelerant. It burnsfirst of all hotter and then faster,
and according to the fire inspectors onthe scene, that's what they felt had
happened in this case. But generallywhen that happens, you also find evidence
of gasoline. You find patterns onthe floor of gasoline was poured, and
oftentimes you'll find in the woodwork andso forth. If you take it to

(03:59):
the laboratory, they'll find traces ofgasoling. And that wasn't the case.
And there's a couple of reasons forthat. One is because of the intensity
of the fire, because it canburn hot enough and bad enough to where
the gasoling is completely used up inthe fire. So that's you know,
that's one thought. Now kind ofgo into detail. After they got the

(04:20):
fire put out and they realized thatthere were two bodies in that building,
where did the investigation go from there? Later on the day, as the
detectives were investigating the case, theywere doing neighborhood canvases to see what people
had seen or heard during the nightor during the time of the fire.
They were approached by a young manwho ended up claiming that his roommate.

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He felt that his roommate had actuallystarted the fire, that he had intentionally
started it because he had been inan argument with the two occupants. The
roommate had I mean, he gaveus, of course, the person's name
and that, and the story wasthat his roommate had gone to the apartment
of these two victims, had engagedin some kind of disagreement with them,

(05:08):
and came back and said, youknow, told this person given information that
he had in fact engaged in anargument and that he was going back,
And supposedly he went back, andthe next thing this roommate knew their house
was on fire. Now the suspectin this his name was Drew Spencer.

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He admitted going to the apartment andengaging in conversation with the two victims and
leaving, but denies every going back. So he did actually put himself at
the scene of the fire before thefire started, which is significant in a
case when you're you know, beingat the scene. Putting yourself at the
scene is a very strong piece ofevidence. Of course, the problem was

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still is that we couldn't prove thatit was an arson for sure, couldn't
prove the cause of death. Thebodies were burnt beyond recognition, and you
know, during autopsy they really couldn'tdetermine anything. In fires of that magnitude.
You know, bones will crack,they'll they'll look like maybe if somebody

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fractured a skull, but in factit's due from heat, intense heat.
So and then of course there wasno evidence of knife wounds, which there
wouldn't be if most of the skinand tissue was burnt up. And then
also there were no presence of bulletsanywhere in the scene, So that was

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you know, part of the dilemma. So you got basically at this point
a gentleman that is on scene andyou can validy that he was there because
he said he was, yes,And then from there it just kind of
seemed it kind of seems like therewas nothing substantial enough to prove that he
started the fire. Then from whatI'm gathering, well, you know,

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he never of course never admitted tothat in order to admit to engage you
in an actual physical confrontation or certainlymurder in them, so and they couldn't
be proven otherwise. Actually, therewas no evidence of support that he had
murdered anybody, and other than theword of this roommate and he was.

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He was the only linked to thiscase or you know that to a crime
at this time. And as Isaid before, there was there's no evidence
that the fire was arson. Youcould speculate just because again the intensity and
how rapid the fire spread, butat the end of the day, you
couldn't prove it. So there's noarson, really, and you know,

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after autopsy there was no cause ofdeath. So without those things, all
you have is a word of thisroommate, and which would have been fine
except for the fact that when theroommate testified before grand jury later on,
he actually changed his story and thentried to change it back, and you
can't obviously can't do that in frontof grand jury. And once that happens,

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you know, once somebody has inconsistentstatements like that, you can't rehabilitate
them as a witness, and thereforethe case is basically over. Yeah,
they basically lose all credibility that theyhad initially when they say one thing,
redact that statement, and then tryand use the same statement that they did
in the first place. They becomevery untrustworthy at that point. Yes,

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and again, you know, noprosecuting attorney is going to put them on
the stand and further the case withthat kind of testimony, and they shouldn't.
Gotcha. Now, you obviously saidthat the case was unsolved, undetermined
of what started the fire. Sothis case is still unsolved. There's never

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anybody that's been charged, arrested,convicted of anything doing with this fire,
correct, right, I mean,nless somebody would actually come in and confess
to it will never be resolved becauseagain, there is no specific cause of
death that was listed by the medicalexaminer, and there's still no absolute cause

(09:13):
of the fire. So unless somebodywould just walk in and say I did
it and this is how I didit, and it matches the evidence.
Unless that happens, in this caseis over with for all practical purposes.
But you know, at the sametime, again you know this, I
mean, there's a lot of investigationwent into this because no one knew if
any of these cases were connected atthe time. I mean, it's unusual

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in an area this small to have, you know, shooting and two other
significant incidents involving fatalities going on atthe same time. So you know,
at first it was it was somewhatassumed that maybe there was some connection.
You know, maybe there was.You know, that was back in the

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day when methampheta beine was even biggerit is now as far as people making
meth and anyhow, So we didn'tknow, if you know, there was
some retaliation going on, which iscommon in a drug world, if you
know, if the shooting was relatedto the two fires or not. Like
I say, the shooting, theyknew who that was. I mean,

(10:20):
the person was you know, knownby the victims. And eventually there was
no obviously no connection to the shootingto the two fires, so just left
those too. Problem with the firethe body in Mental Wells was that no
one knew who the person was andit would be months and months before that

(10:41):
person was identified. And what happenedin that case, and you know,
again, while the fire on NineteenthStreet was still burning, a man was
driving out which had been road inMental Wells and he saw a fire in
a pasture field on his father's propertyand certainly no rhyme or reason for that

(11:03):
fire, you know, for somethingto be burning early in the morning,
So he stopped investigate and noticed somethingon top of the heap of brush,
and it turned out to be abody. So he of course immediately called
the fire department in Mineral Wells Well. So just so some guy just ended
up half tough happening just to driveacross a burning body in the middle of

(11:26):
a field out in Mineral Wells justout of pure chance. Yeah, just
out of just purely out of quincence. He was again driving by his father's
property and saw it, so heagain called the the fire department to put
out the fire, and of coursethey discovered the body and called the sheriff's
office, and again that was unfoldingat the same time they were looking for

(11:48):
the shooter in the shooting case,and at the same time they were still
extinguishing the fire on Nineteenth Street.So yeah, on those cases like that,
you know, as police chief,I would get called out on those
cases, and the fire chief,Steve Gainor would get called out on those
cases that major cases the fire departmentwas involved in. So he and I

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actually decided to drive out the mentalweals, you know, while they're still
putting out the fire in Nineteenth Street, to see what was transpiring out there
and actually met with we were metby the prosecuting attorney. So now going
on to continue along with this,the parting body of Mineral Wells case.
Where did the investigations start and wheredid it go from there? Upon the

(12:33):
discovery of that body, that investigationshort lived on a local level because they
did not know who the person was. There was no form of identification.
The body was laying on this pileof rubble that had been set on fire,
and the body had been The headhad been severed from the body and

(12:54):
was laying at the feet of thebody along with the hacks All blade.
The only thing they could do sincethere was no identification. There was no
reports of anybody missing, and theysearched that that avenue for a long long
time afterwards for missing persons. Butsince there was no way of identifying,
the case laid dormant. The onething they did do is they had a

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composite drawing done of what they thoughtthe person would look like had it not
been in a fire, just thestructure of the faith and so forth,
and it was. It was widelydistributed, but again no one seemed to
know who this person was, whetherit was a white male, probably his
twenty to thirty year old range.Gotcha, now where did they? Obviously

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they would have to take the bodyand obviously with everything in the crime scene
process, the crime scene do everythingthere. Then they would send that body
to I would assume the corner tohave an autopsy done then, correct,
right, what came out of thatautopsy? And what did you guys learn
anything from that autopsy at all otherthan obviously the plately obvious of what was
going on in front of you.Was there anything underlying that came out of

(14:05):
that? Yeah, I mean theautopsy did show, besides the head being
severed, that the person had beenshot in the back of the head.
And according to the medical examiner,his best assumption was that the person that
was dead before they severed the headfrom the body. But the again,
yeah, the body had sustained atleast on the outside skin tissue side you

(14:31):
significant damage. So that's the onlything they did find. Gotcha. Now,
how long did it take for youguys to actually get like an ID
like an ID on this guy ordid somebody come forward with the idea of
this guy or did you guys justfigure out who he was by running DNA
possibly or something like that. Well, it wasn't It wasn't a city's case.

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It was the case was being investigatedby the wood kind of share us
office, gotcha, and and therewere really no nowhere to go with that,
and the and what ended up happeningwas just by chance, one of
the participants who had participated in themurder of this person, the person turned

(15:15):
out to be a gentleman by thename of Stephen Spade from Akron. She
had come forward to the police inAkron and confessed to being involved in this
somewhat of a pretty heinous and somewhatrigualistic, it seemed like murder that had
occurred in Akron, Ohio. Sothere was really no connection whatsoever to this

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this body being. You know,there's no connection in Parkersburg or Wood County
for this person that was found inMineral Wells. So then here here's the
ultimate question. How does a bodythat has been decapitated set on fire just
happened to magically pop up here inMineral Wells, right down the highway from

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where we are right now. Howdid the body get down here in the
state that it was in. Well, simply just a case of they committed
a murder and didn't know what todo. They panicked somewhat and put the
body in a trunk of a carand just started driving south on Interstate seventy
seven until they got into West Virginiaand found an interchange that didn't look like

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it was inside of a city,which happened to be minor Weales and just
out of happenstance. Really, theychose that location. Again, they had
no connection to it. They didn'teven really know where they were going other
than they were going out in arural area somewhat, and they thought the
body would be less likely to discover. Gotcha, So the female that came

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forward to the police officer that shetold the story to, what did she
recount in her statement that initially kickedoff this investigation to figure out who this
gentleman was and obviously I would assumelead to arrests, indictments and such like
that. What was her stemen thatshe gave to the cops to that police
officer excuse me, that said,okay, we need to look into this

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young lady in question. Her namewas Lisa Pennix, And again, her
cousin was a police officer in alittle town outside of Akron, and she
had approached him and started explaining aboutthis murder that she had witnessed and been
involved in disposing of the body ofyet another cousin, Stephen Spade. The

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victim in this case was her cousinas well, and she had invited him
to a house party in Akron atthe behest of a person named Sean Rafferty.
Sean Rafferty lived in this house,kind of a run down place.
It was a place where they gettogether, drink some beer, do some

(18:00):
meth, those type of things.They were all pretty marginal people, and
Sean Rafferty apparently had thought that StevenSpade was trying to move in on his
girlfriend, so he had Lisa lurehis her cousin to the house. And
although I don't think anybody realized thatit would end up in murder, probably

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Shane Rafferty didn't even realize that's whatthe hell was going to end that evening.
But anyhow, Steven Spade did showup, and there was three or
four other people there at the time, and Rafferty, just playing a game
of you know, see how faryou trust me, talked Steven Spade into

(18:44):
letting him duct tape him to achair. Well, once that happened,
then Rafferty began beating on Steven Spadeand no one interviewed. Actually, Steven
Spade was actually brought to the houseby yet another friend who didn't even know
Sean Raham, but he didn't interveneas well. As a matter of fact,
he took a couple opportunities to strikeSpade as well while he was duct

(19:07):
taped to the chair. And thisbeating just escalated and again with different people
taking turns, and with exception ofLisa as she I mean she washed the
whole thing Inspire, but anyhow,it just seemed to be under the influence.
Everything seemed to be under the influenceof this one person, Sean Rafferty,

(19:30):
and they continued beating the guy,drug him into a bathroom, tipped
the chair in the commode and triedto drown him, and then they did
render him unconscious, and then whilehe was face down in the toilet,
Rafferty barred again from somebody and shotSpade in the back of the head.

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Even before that though he had beatenSpade's head against the side of the commode,
I mean, a lot of physicaldamage done just from the beating itself
prior to the gunshot in the backof the head. And they left him
there for a few minutes with hishead in the commode and trying to decide

(20:14):
what to do next, and somebodyhad the idea to cut his throat so
he would bleed out into the commodeand it wouldn't be so much blood in
the basement. So at that pointin time it's what they did. They
left him, left his head,his body in the commode, with his
head in the water, cut histhroat, let him bleed out as much
as they could, as if itwas a deer, almost, and then

(20:38):
decided they were going to cut hishead off and wrap everything in plastic bags
and then dump the body somewhere.And while again while this was going on,
no one seemed to object, includingLisa, who was her cousin.
At one point in time that theSean Rafferty picked the head up after it

(20:59):
was or picked the head up andstarted manipulating the lips of the head as
if it was talking and said toLisa, said listen, Lisa said,
your cousin has something to say toyou. I mean, it was just
a very gruesome, again somewhat ritualisticincident that really reminds you something out of
the held her skelter. That themansion Manson family would do. And more

(21:26):
importantly, everybody seemed to be underthe influence of this guy who was very
slightly built, just like those inthe Manson family were under the influence of
Charlie Manson. Wow, it's anotherword that would be very good for this
type of thing. Is disgusting,that is, Oh yeah it was.

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And you know when they made itback to the house from Mineral Wells,
Lisa Pennix, the cousin that reallyhelped set this whole thing up, she
actually took one of the other participantsto the side, kissed him and said
welcome to the family. And again, it's just reminiscent of that kind of
influence that Manson had over his followersback in gut back in nineteen sixty nine.

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Just a very odd, strange case. You know, we had had
a decapitation murder here a few decadesbefore that it was drug related, and
of course that's what we thought thisone was initially. But you know,
Charlie marsh was murdered and his headwas severed in a drug related case where

(22:33):
a drug deal had gone bad,and the person that killed him was eventually
convicted of another murder and he wasput to death in Ohio. But this
was much different. I mean,this was again just started out as a
bunch of people probably drinking too muchand just led to this again heinous type

(22:56):
of homicide like we've ever seen herein this county before. Absolutely. Now,
you mentioned that they were all kindof like drug users or they used
some form of a substance or whatever. Were they under the influence of any
sort of substances when the act happenedby chance, No, they actually weren't.
They had started out drinking beer andthey had moved into you know,

(23:19):
that's when they decided all to goto the basement of the house where they
end up duct taping Steven Spade ofthe chair. But they had gone to
the basement for the purpose, thestated purpose of doing math. But they
never did, you know, assoon as they got downstairs, uh,
you know, he asked him abouthow much he trusted him, and you

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know, Steven Spade went along withit stupidly, and and it just you
know, just over very quickly,really, and nobody, nobody had actually
had a chance to even do mathat the time. So it's just beer.
Wow, and it's and it's kindof incredible to to hear, like
and then with them going on Iseventy seven now knowing that it's very heavily

(24:04):
patrolled now and like there's there's statepatrol all across that road. It's it's
crazy to think that they didn't getpicked up with the amount of alcohol they
had in their system, they didn'tget picked up on the way down here
before they dumped the body, litit on fire and took off. Well,
it is, as a matter offact, one of the participants who
started driving was concern concerned about that, and you know a few minutes into

(24:29):
the drive, he decides time forhim to pull over and let somebody who
was less intoxicated drive. So theyhad that on her mind. But yeah,
I mean it is. I mean, particularly at that time, you
know, two three, four inthe morning, whenever they started down this
way, you know, it's prettydesolate and if there are any police out

(24:51):
along the interstate, they would stickout a little bit. But you know,
they can't stop cars unlesser, youknow, some kind of violence,
traffic violation, or some other suspiciousactivity right probable cause in a sense,
Now, how did the corpor cedingsgo for this, because obviously I mean,
I'm assume all four of them werecharged and dieted or whatever the proper

(25:12):
word may be. How did thecorpor cedings go when they were arrested after
that, Well, they were onindicted. Of course, a couple of
them who hadn't less participation than theothers end up cooperating and pleading guilty.
They got lesser sentences. Sean Raffty, of course received the largest sense or

(25:34):
longest sentence, I should say.The guy that gave him a gun,
he tried to say that he wasafraid of Rafferty, but the guy that
actually handed the gun to him,he was, you know, two fifty
three hundred pounds from Raffty was likeone hundred and forty. I mean,
you know, there's the jury didn'tbuy it. Of course, any others

(25:56):
said the same thing, that theywere afraid of Rafferty and that's why they
didn't and that's why they participated.But again the jury jury didn't buy it.
They all received prison time except forone. You know, one person
did show up and witnessed the murder, but then left and had not participated

(26:18):
it, and he cooperated, sohe received a suspended sentence for probation but
again he cooperated. Yeah, sonow they're all still in prison now today
as of today, correct, Yeah, and Rafferty, he's appealing. He
keeps appealing, the cases keeps beingturned down. His contention is that he

(26:42):
was upstairs sleep when all this happened. But there again, there's not only
the witnesses that that participated, buthe did tell one other person after that
about the murder, so it wasan independent person or independent witness. So
that's pretty much what sealed his fate. I just can't understand why somebody would

(27:03):
try to appeal a case like that, well, knowing that they have multiple
eyewitnesses saying that they were there andactually participating, just to turn around and
say, no, I was upstairsasleep, like I just it doesn't make
sense to me how somebody could dothat. Well, when you go to
prison, that's all you have istime to do those things. You have
time to write different kind of writsfor appeals, and you know, just

(27:26):
take a chance that some were downthe road, some judge will grant it
and have a retrial. But evenif he did, you know, find
some constitutional reason and that's the onlyway the Supreme courts can overturn something.
If it's a constitutional question, it'snot. They can't overturn it just because
they don't agree with the jury.There has to be an issue that's grounded

(27:49):
in law, is probably the bestway of saying it. But you know,
every once in a while they'll geta judge it's sympathetic and they'll have
a hearing to see if it shouldgo back to trib But in this case
or just what the evidence I thinkis too overwhelming? Yeah, absolutely,
absolutely overwhelming. But Bob, Iwant to greatly appreciate you coming out and

(28:11):
talking about these two cases with metoday. And that particular night was a
wild night. I will say soagain. I appreciate you coming out to
talk about that night with us.Again, everybody, that was The Violence
in the Valley Podcast with Bob Newallsponsored by Interstate Insurance. Make sure to
check out on Amazon the two booksthat Bob has out, Violence in the

(28:32):
Valley and As I Walk through theValley of Meth for more cases and true
crime from this area right here inParkersburg, West Virginia, in the entire
Middlehio Valley. We greatly appreciate youlistening and we'll see you next time.
The Violence in the Valley podcast hasbeen brought to you by Interstate Insurance.
Three Generations of insurance Excellence. Foreven more details, get a copy of

(28:52):
the book at Amazon dot com.