Violence In The Valley - Sheree Petry Cold Case

Petry Cold Case Investivation

Episode Transcript

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Now The Violence in the Valley podcastwith retired Parkersburg Chief of Police Bob Newell
and others, brought to you byInterstate Insurance three Generations of insurance Excellence.
On May twenty fifth, nineteen ninetysix, a man was mowing grass in
the area of South seventh Street inMarrietta, Ohio, when he happened to

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peer inside a storm drain and sawsomething unusual. Upon closer inspection, it
appeared to be the body of afemale that had been stuffed headfirst into a
large pipe. City and county lawenforcement agencies were already dealing with nearly half
a dozen unsolved murders or disappearances ofyoung women, leading some to wonder if
there was a serial killer on theloose. Marietta City Police Officer Ralph Newell

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was one of the first to arrive. Newell was a photographer as well,
and assisted a new initial crime sceneinvestigation. A short time later, Detective
Rick Meeks was called out to headup the investigation. Here's retired Sergeant Rick
Meeks. I received a phone call. I was off duty. It was
on a Saturday afternoon. Her bodywas discovered. She was found inverted in

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a storm drain on the south endof South seventh Street in Marietta. A
man who was there in that areato mow yards, believe his name was
Welch, and he went there tomow grass and he had walked over top
of this storm drain and saw abody down inside there. The body of
the adult woman removed from the drainhad no identification on her. There were

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no missing persons reports filed fitting herdescription, and therefore she was labeled as
a Jane Doe for a couple ofdays. She was basically a Jane Do
for us. She had no identificationon her. This occurred on the twenty
fifth of May in the afternoon,and then we didn't know who she was
until that was Memorial Day weekend andwe put a photograph of her in a

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newspaper and discovered who she was twodays later, after news media reports fildered
into the community and across the bridgeinto Williamstown, West Virginia, a relative
recognized the possibility that the body washer cousin, who had recently come to
live with her family. She wasidentified as Sharie Petrie. While police were
trying to identify the victim, theywere also trying to determine how she died

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and why she ended up in apublic storm drain. It was clear that
someone had placed her there, butthere were no obvious signs of injuries that
would have caused her death. Therewas no immediate sign of what would have
caused her death when we found her, and yeah, her body was transported
for an autopsy to Montgomery County inOhio, where autopsies were done for law

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enforcement out of Washington County. Officerspursued other leads while waiting results of the
autopsy. Chari was originally from southernWest Virginia. She had moved to Phoenix,
Arizona, to attend college, butdecided to move closer to home and
attend Marietta College, just across theriver from her cousin. She had befriended
a man in Phoenix who was attendingcollege as well. His name was Dennis

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Ryebaum. The two were not romanticallyinvolved, so when Dennis suddenly moved from
Phoenix to Marietta and also enrolled atMarietta College, it felt a little strange
to Shari and those who knew her. Raybaum had a criminal record. He
had been convicted of arm robbery andspent some time in prison, but now
appeared to be moving forward with hislife. Petrie had no reason to think

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there was anything sinister about Dennis,and they remained friends. They were friends,
they studied together for classes. Hehad met her initially back in Phoenix,
Arizona, where they both attended acommunity college, and then she had
come to live in our community andgo to Marietta College, and he followed
the following semester. The results ofthe autopsy were help in the early stages

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of the investigation. Initially they respondedand said that it was positional and phyxiation
based upon her being inverted in thatstorm drain. The manner of death was
homicide, but there was little physicalor forensic evidence to link her death to
an individual other than a couple ofdrops of blood on her clothing. But

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in nineteen ninety six, DNA wasnot widely used and databases were non existent.
There was no evidence that Dennis RyeBaum was connected with her death,
but he clearly became a person ofinterest as he was the last known person
to see her live. As youknow, Bob, most homicide victims know
the person that killed them, andhe was a person of interest there because

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he had been with her from timeto time, and through talking with other
witnesses in the community, we learnedthat he had had dinner with her on
Friday, the night before her death. He himself told someone that he did
where he lived in Marietta. Theyhad had dinner, and then we began
to look closer and closer. Investigatorsalso found out that Shari was getting increasingly

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leary of Ryebaum's intentions. She believedhe was wanting more than her friendship.
There was another friend of hers,an older woman, that she had befriended,
and she had told her just ashort time before this occurred that Dennis
was becoming more and more insistent onchanging their relationship from a friendship to a

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romantic relationship, and she didn't knowwhat she was going to do. She
was just going to have to tellhim that that wasn't going to happen.
There's nothing more psychologically frightening for someone, especially a single woman, than having
another person fixated on them. Thereare several mental disorders associated with a person
who engages in stalking. Psychologists haveidentified various mental disorders associated with this phenomenon,

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such as narcissism, sociopathy or borderlinepersonality disorder, which is a disorder
Glenn Close portrayed in the movie FatalAttraction. More importantly, these fixations may
become a motive for murder. Addingto the suspicion was the fact that Rybaum's
apartment was only seven blocks from thestorm drain in which Petrie was found.
Interesting enough, one of the studiesthat he was taking at Marietta College involved

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environmental science. When you develop anurban area, the drainage or creeks,
streams, or whatever are replaced.One of the things they were replaced by
is storm drains. Our first contactwith him, we were trying to find
him because he was a person ofinterest and he had had dinner with her,
according to what he told another friend, And we found him in another

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college student at Ohio University's room fortymiles away, setting in that room,
and he had a book and thatbook or pamphlet for that college course had
a storm drain in it, whichwas kind of unique and bizarre happens to
have. So another piece of informationwould surface after news media coverage of the
murder reached the campus of Marietta Collegearound the time of Petrick's death. The

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college library is nearing the end ofthe semester and a library clerk was conducting
the inventory of all books. Behindone stack of books, the clerk discovered
something very ominous and immediately called police. Here again is retired Sergeant Rick Meeks.
We discovered a book in the college'slibrary where she attended college open on

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its spine talking about poisoning and chloroformthat that was normally undetectable in poisoning desks.
Now this book was very old.Then we asked the corner to do
a specific test on her four chloroformand it was found that the chloroform was
present in her and if I remembercorrectly, it was three hundred and ten

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parts per million, which would bevery high. As little as seventy parts
per million in your bloodstream could causedeath. And they said at the time
it was the highest case of chloroformpoisoning and ever been recorded. Also,
Mike mention that there was a secretaryin the college laboratory building that had loaned

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her keys to Dennis Rybam because hesaid he forgot something in a classroom.
She had a master keys on thiskeyring he left to retrieve whatever it was.
He was looking for and he wasgone a very long time, she
thought, because she was waiting toleave to go at dinner with her daughter,
I think who was there waiting?And she eventually sent her daughter to

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look for him. And when hereturned, he returned from a different part
of the building, other than whathe said he was going to. In
that building there were jugs of chloroformkeptain. That also was a circumstantial event
that nobody saw him take chloroform,but he certainly had access to it.

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A cause of death was now confirm. The chloroform wasn't the only new finding
from the request for further testing bythe Medical Examiner's office. She had a
higher than therapeutic amount of diephenhydromene hydrochloride, which is the active ingredient in many
sleep aids, in her system.And he had we found receipts in his

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trash where he had bought some saminx. The same day he had bought
the ingredients for the dinner that hesupposedly cooked her, which was lasagna,
and that receipt was for the salminx. This additional revelation elevated Dennis Rye
Bomb from person of interest to themost likely suspect in her murder. By

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this time, Rybam had left Ohioand returned to Phoenix, Arizona. He
briefly stayed with the family he knewuntil he found another apartment. Local investigators
flew to Arizona began interviewing members ofthe family with whom Dennis had resided.
One of them revealed that he hadlooked inside the Duffel bag carried by Ryebaumb
and saw several pair of women's underwear. A quick phone called to Shari's cousin

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confirmed that several pairs were missing fromthe bedroom dresser she used while living with
them. In some cases, addinga sexual fetish for women's underwear to an
already abnormal personality disorder is a recipefor a serial killer. Also, over
forty percent of serial rapists interviewed byFBI profilers admitted to having a sexual fetish.

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One of those is well known serialkiller Jerry Brutus, who began his
career with a fetish for women's shoesand eventually underwear, before going on to
kill several young women. He oftenburglarized homes to steal women's underwear. Based
on this information, regarding Ryebaum's possessions. Phoenix detectives obtained a search war for
his apartment. Not only did theyrecover underwear belonging to Petrie Dennis. Ryebaum

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was wearing a pair when police enteredthe apartment and roused him out of bed.
We also found a letter in afoot locker at the foot of his
bed in one of those searches.It was I think it was titled stalking
and it was a litany of thingsthat you do in the process of stalking
someone. In the search in Phoenix, when we searched his house in Phoenix,

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we also found the books about deathand that sort of thing. We
found photographs of tombstones with the namePatrion them, very unusual. Rybaumb was
arrested and extradited back to a Hiveto stand trial. However, A Joseh
determined that the venue should be WestVirginia as there was some indication she may

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have been killed in that state.Reminiscent of serial killer Ted Bundy. Ryebaum
petitioned to be allowed to represent himselfduring trial. His request was denied.
He was found guilty and sentenced tolife without the possibility of parole, but
this case had one last twist.The other thing that that always found strange
in this whole case was during springbreak that year prior to this death,

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he had gone to Phoenix, Arizona, and while he was there, he
stayed with an ex roommate that hehad prior to being in the community college
in Arizona. Now that X roommate, I don't remember his name, but
while he was living with that Xroommate in Phoenix before any of this happened,

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had loaned Dennis's car and Dennis hadcommitted an armed robbery. And then
the police had got a description ofthe car, went to the right apartment
complex and found the car, andthen this individual had told the police that
Dennis had the car, and heultimately was convicted and sent to prison for

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the armed robbery in Arizona. Nowfast forward to where I was just talking
about. When he went to Phoenixduring spring break of that year in ninety
six, he was apparently staying withthis guy. Nobody really knows, but
there were two individuals that entered anadult bookstore and were watching a film in
that store. One of them ranout of the store literally the other was

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found dead from an apparent heart attackinside the room where they were watching the
video. That was the person thatDennis had lived with years before it.
When the arm robbery occurred, PhoenixPD went back to retrieve any evidence that
might have been kept from an autopsyeror whatever. When this individual died,

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there was nothing there. It hadbeen disposed of. The interesting thing there
is that this individual was cremated andhis remains and his property was turned over
to Dennis Raibaum. I want tothank retired Mary at A Police Sergeant Rick

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Meeks for joining me in this podcastand join us in our next episode as
we continue bringing you more unusual crimesof the Midehio Valley. The Violence in
the Valley podcast has been brought toyou by Interstate Insurance three Generations of Insurance
Excellence. For even more details,get a copy of the book at Amazon

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dot com.