March 20, 2024 • 27 mins
In the life of drugs and prostitution, the risks are enormous. The players in this world are lawless and destructive. Angela Hanaway had fallen into the darkness of the underworld never to get out. She was a good person who was pulled under the waters of the addiction pool. Angela saw many things in this world, but one thing was enough to get her killed. A monster who lurked in the shadows of Springfield's underbelly had committed a crime in front of her eyes and he had to remove her before she unmasked him. This wasn't new for this creature of destruction who couldn't outrun his actions. This monster could not help himself. Like others in his path, Angela had to go. She had run into the evil eyes of an Addictive Killer.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
You said you had not back, but instead you attacked.
(00:05):
You got me out of my head.
Won't go and solve this time.
Won't catch you and your crimes will be shining alive.
Welcome to Cold Case MHS, where real education meets real life.
I'm your host, Randy Hubbard.
And I'm your co-host, Lydia Lisco.
(00:26):
And we thank you for listening.
As we start to look at our cases at the beginning of the year,
we never know where the path will lead us.
We have worked on murders ranging from a neighbor brutally murdered in his garage
to the awful attack of an elderly veteran.
We have searched for clues of the disappearance of a medical student with a bright future
while looking into the kidnapping and murder of two young girls
(00:47):
who never had a chance to plan their futures.
We have seen what has happened to a young man that looks up to the wrong mentor
and the death of a man who found the straight and narrow while trying to mentor others.
In this episode, we see a group of young women fall into a lifestyle that introduces them to a monster.
A man who silences those who hold his secrets.
(01:08):
A man who seems to be an addictive killer.
We began our investigation with the case of Angela Lee Hannaway.
As we progressed in her case, we realized that the extent of the investigation did not end with Angela
and reached far beyond our original scope of the case.
This led our investigation of many Springfield, Ohio cold cases with similarities.
(01:30):
We aim to speak out for the victims like cannot and provide peace and closure to the victims' families.
We understand that for the families of the victims, these cases never go cold.
As Podcaster Shane Waters stated in the Minds Manus podcast, Episode 129,
the victims will speak for others at society unfortunately labels as, quote, the Roy people.
These women were part of the 40-42 million prostitutes and 50% of people illicitly using drugs worldwide.
(01:56):
And many overlooked their deaths because of the risky lifestyle that they led.
They were all found around the same area as Springfield, Ohio.
Thus leading us to believe that their deaths could be an act of potential serial killer.
While the murder rate among prostitutes is 40 times higher than the murder rate of women in the general population,
we aim to highlight the fact that the lifestyle that these women fell into does not define how they should be remembered.
(02:21):
I'm Aidan Chambers.
I'm Alan Timmitts.
I'm Jesse Klibert and we decided to research the Springfield, Ohio cold cases.
So in the description at the beginning of their podcast, they talk about the lifestyle of these individuals as being at high risk.
And oftentimes they're actually deemed as what they call throwaway people.
And that term really kind of bothers me.
Yeah, it bothers me too because I don't believe any human life should be considered throwaway.
(02:47):
These poor women, they just happen to end up in a bad situation with bad people.
But they inside are good people just because they're in this unfortunate situation doesn't mean they deserve to be considered a throwaway case.
Robin Yelene Hartman, Mary Frances Harris, Angela Hall, Thelma Gerber, Julie Freeman, Mary Van Koolen, and Shakira Walker were all found between the time frame of 1981 to 2006 in Springfield, Ohio,
(03:17):
outside of the inner circle that contained the majority of the criminal activity.
Despite these victims' sharing similarities, most of them were found on the date of or soon after the year that our main suspect was born.
As a result of this, we decided to not go into further detail about these victims in this podcast.
However, we would like to note that these women's deaths are not of any less significance and could be connected to the victims that we talk about in more detail.
(03:42):
So they mentioned a lot of these names that they didn't further investigate and I think that's extremely important because as you mentioned earlier, these are still people.
These are still unsolved cases.
And even though our students didn't fully investigate those people, I think it's so important that they mention their names.
Right, because I think we spend a lot of time, especially in true crime, talking about the killer and not spending as much time as we should on the victims.
(04:08):
And I think saying their names is really important so people will never forget them.
Exactly, because those families are still out there, they're still burdened with their lots of their loved one and they just hope that one day it could potentially get solved.
The victims that we decided to research more thoroughly were Angela Lee Hanoi, Buffy Joe Freeman, and Angela Maria Kilgore, as they are most closely connected due to their very similar characteristics.
(04:36):
While their height and weight varied, they were all Caucasian females that had blonde hair and light eye color.
So they mentioned Buffy Joe Freeman. What's unique about that name is that we actually did that case two years ago and we still had the information on that case.
Unfortunately, Buffy's case was really very difficult to find information and because of that, we didn't see that connection between these other cases.
(05:02):
Now, possibly we can tie it to somebody that we know could have committed this crime.
Buffy Freeman was last seen July 11, 2007 at approximately 11.30pm near the intersection of Shafer and Main Street.
She was later found partially closed on July 12, 2007 at 3.26am in Snyder Park near the clubhouse.
(05:25):
Angela Kilgore was reported missing on November 11, 2007 and last seen on October 22, 2007 at the Fairfax Motel in East Main Street.
Her body was later found on April 24, 2008 in a district behind an abandoned building near 506 Grand Street.
Springfield Police Department officers said that they did not suspect foul play, but it was not likely to go a while without contacting their family.
(05:51):
During research into the case of Angela Hannaway, we interviewed her daughter, Jessica Hannaway, an ex-partner, Jason Pace, to ask them more about Angela's personality and who she was as a person.
They emphasized that she was way more than just a prostitute and a drug user.
She was very fun, very outgoing, and a very bubbly personality. She was just always...she was very talkative and very loud.
(06:16):
She was a homemaker though, but she cooked a lot from scratch, and she was a clean freak, so that really kept her busy.
She was pretty much a stay-at-home mom. She never really had a very strong work history, but don't get me wrong.
The kids were always well taken care of, supper was cooked, house was always clean. She was a very caring and loving mother. She loved her kids.
(06:44):
Angela Hannaway was missing for a couple of months before she was found. It was reported that she last stayed with her family approximately 18 months before she went missing in April, and she was last seen in late January of 2008.
She was found partially clothed, without eyes, and badly decomposed, floating in Mad River, on June 10, 2008, near the 2300 block of Dayton Road.
(07:10):
This clip references Lieutenant Christopher Schultz talking about the location where Angela Hannaway was dumped in the river.
You'll see Forest Lake is there, at Mad River, right underneath. That is one of the spots that's a primary spot where we believe that she was killed and dumped in the river, although we have no evidence from that location.
(07:31):
That is solely eyewitness testimony.
Dental and medical records were used to determine Angela Hannaway's identity. According to newspaper articles, Angela died of very violent death and she had been in the water for some time.
As a result of her death being deemed undetermined, we began to research the water current of Mad River to determine the distance she could have floated from a given location.
Using data from the United States Geological Survey, we found that in early June of 2008, Mad River had a flood stage approximately 11 on a scale of 0 to 12.
(08:02):
According to Lieutenant Christopher Schultz, in early June of 2008, the area of Springfield, Ohio, was flooded with massive amounts of rain, causing the river to become a torrent.
In addition to this, Lieutenant Christopher Schultz also said that the 20-26 mile per hour wind speeds caused a stronger water current, allowing Angela Hannaway to float as far as 3 miles from where she was first dumped.
(08:25):
Christopher Schultz also shared with us that some of Angela's belongings were found in the woody area by Buck Creek, near Old Reed Park in 2021.
Those belongings included her purse, with identification card, and other generic and common personal belongings inside.
We believe that this location could be a secondary location where Angela Hannaway's body could have been disposed of.
(08:48):
So the fact that she was found in the river, we had to do a lot of research on the weather at that time period, how fast the river moves, and to figure out how far she would travel down the river.
Now, the reason I knew that is because in my case that I've been working on for a while, the Laney-Gwinnert case, I had to do the same thing.
I had to go back to 1997, check the weather information, see how fast the Ohio River and the Great Miami River were moving to see if she could have made it from where she disappeared and where she was found.
(09:19):
So it's important to look at all the factors when you're trying to figure out where she could have been put in the river and how she got to where she was.
The first person of interest that we researched was Thomas Jason Roberts. In July 2004, he was convicted of assaulting and strangulating Angela Lee Hannaway.
However, as a result of not being able to find any additional charges linking him to the case of Angela Lee Hannaway or other victims, we decided to look into additional potential suspects.
(09:50):
This led to the name, Prentice Rashawn-Harran. We first came upon him because of articles from Springfield Sun linking him to the cases of Angela Hannaway, Buffy Freeman, and Angela Kilgore.
I do think it's important to recognize that they did mention their first person of interest, and even though they didn't pursue him too much further because of the lack of information,
they still included him because, like I said, there was a lack of information, but that caused them to pursue other potential persons of interest, such as Prentice Harran, who, as you guys will hear later in the podcast, they had a lot of information on, and they could really investigate deeply.
(10:25):
He's a black male who is about 6'4", and 260 pounds. Prentice immediately went to Rutger College, where he was a defensive end, after graduating from Ashbury Park High School in New Jersey.
He studied Italian business management, psychology, and massage therapy at four different universities in New Jersey.
(10:48):
So this part about Prentice is something that I think is really important. He's very intelligent. He was able to get into Rutger University. He studied some very difficult courses along the way,
and I think many people think somebody like him is going to be kind of an unintelligent, mean person, but I don't think that's how he is. I think he's extremely intelligent and he's able to manipulate people to do things that he wanted them to do.
(11:14):
Exactly. Like, as they said, his build is massive. He played football, he's this really big guy, and there are some unfortunate stereotypes that big, athletic people aren't always the brightest.
But like you said, he used his intelligence to his advantage. He took what people thought of him, they're, oh, he's just this big guy, he may not be very smart, but he was actually incredibly intelligent,
(11:41):
and he used that to, like you said, manipulate people and get that to do what he wanted.
And unfortunately, the unfortunate part about that is the things he wanted them to do were not good.
He was reported to have been in Springfield, Ohio from 2006 to 2008, and it is a good possibility that he was a pimp to prostitutes and or a drug dealer.
(12:03):
Prentiss Haer's friend, Donald Lee Walton Jr., currently 63 years old, commonly known as Duck, was a resident of Springfield, Ohio from a time frame of 1971 to 2017,
where we are unsure of the exact date that Donald met Prentiss. In an interview, he claimed that he met Prentiss in 2005 or 2006.
Prentiss Haer and Donald Walton constantly had multiple prostitutes at their respective houses.
(12:27):
Due to Donald's age, his friendship with Prentiss Haer and his lengthy criminal record, we believe that he could be a person of interest in the killing of the earliest victims and potentially groomed Prentiss Haer.
It is a good possibility that Donald Walton was a pimp and or a drug user to prostitutes.
So in cold case, we deal with unsolved open cases, which can be extremely difficult to get information on because police stations are still investigating and they don't want to potentially leak any information that could help them solve it or help the person who did it get away.
(13:01):
So what do you think they have so information about this Donald guy?
Well, part of it is because Donald and Prentiss Haer were involved in a case that has already been closed. They've both been convicted of a crime. Prentiss is actually in jail for life for his particular one.
So when a case is closed, it becomes public record and public record, you can do a FOIA request or just go to the police department and ask them, can I have all the information on that?
(13:27):
And in this particular case, Springfield did give us all of the files they had on the case that involved these two guys. So that's how they know so much about it.
Prentiss Haer was believed to have killed three people and was reported to have strangled and or raped six additional women, the youngest being 15 years old.
Prentiss Haer was believed to have fairly strangled and wrapped Michael Frasier's body in a rug in Jackson, Florida on July 11th, 2015 because he choked at me chambers.
(13:57):
In addition to this, Prentiss Haer was convicted of strangulating DeSean Lymphord in Springfield, Ohio on December 4th, 2015 because of a dispute over drugs at 12 South Light Street, which was also the house of Donald Walton.
Prentiss and Donald then dragged the body next door, behind Main St. Food Mart, where he was later found.
Prentiss Haer was also convicted of killing Tiffany Chambers in 2015. She was a resident of Jackson, Florida with similar physical characteristics to Angela Hannaway, Angela Kokor, and Buffy Freeman.
(14:28):
Tiffany Chambers was brought up to Springfield, Ohio and fatally strangled by Prentiss Haer on July 16th, 2015, behind 144 West Pleasant Street, while Carmela Rivera, Prentiss's friend, and Hannah Whitman, Prentiss's girlfriend, kept watch.
Tessany was killed because she was a witness to the murder of Michael Frasier.
(14:49):
Prentiss then made Hannah Whitman poke at Tiffany's eyes. They then moved the body to Green County, Ohio and placed it in the woods. On May 1st, 2016, almost a year after the date she was last seen, her skeletal remains were covered scattered along Elan Road, near Senior, Ohio.
As a result of Prentiss Haer's violent tendencies, we decided to look into disorders from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or the DSM-5, that corresponded with his personality and actions.
(15:22):
Through our research, we believe that Prentiss could have had antisocial personality disorder. This disorder is almost exclusively diagnosed in men serving time for violent crimes. They are manipulative, charming, and of high intelligence.
They show little to no remorse, sympathy, or empathy, to those they hurt or to law enforcement.
(15:43):
As a result of these qualities, we believe that Prentiss Haer is also a psychotic killer. As said by Christopher Shulks, he is not a serial killer, the same as a mafia hitman, is an serial killer.
Prentiss didn't plan out his killings like a serial killer would. Rather, he spontaneously killed out of rage.
So in this particular case, they talked about he's not really a serial killer. Serial killers are known to be very ritualistic about what they do. They find their victims, they hunt them down.
(16:15):
They have a specific motive of operandi to commit that crime, and they do it over a period of time and they can't stop, supposedly. But he's a little bit different. So how is he different?
So it's easy to label people who kill a lot of people as a serial killer, because that's what media portrays. That's like, oh, serial killers, you see in many TV shows, but especially with Prentiss, he was out to protect himself.
(16:41):
Like as you said, he doesn't have any of these things that most typical serial killers have. He didn't have a hankering to kill people. He didn't have a specific type of people he wanted to kill.
He was out to protect himself. All of his victims had something against him, and he was worried that they were going to use it to harm him or his business. And so he killed them because it was the right time.
(17:02):
It's what we call an opportunist killer, because it wasn't planned out. It was, oh, this person has something on me, and I need to protect myself.
Exactly. You know, the thing about him is that when you listen to him in his interviews, he is very arrogant, very manipulative, and he tries to actually intimidate the police officers during the interview.
(17:23):
So for him, it's all about the respect of being, you know, I'm in charge, and if you don't like it, I'm going to kill you.
Prentiss made it known that he could do whatever he wanted to to anyone, whether they gave him a reason to or not. Regarding his personality and psychopathic acts, we questioned why Prentiss chose Springfield, Ohio.
(17:48):
This clip is of Prentiss explaining himself in addition to Carmela Rivera referring to a path that Prentiss disposed of bodies near, plus an abatement house.
You were talking about killing anybody?
Yeah, he said, you know, he killed a girl or something, and he said, how did he do that?
(18:12):
Okay, did he talk about that? What did he say about that?
Um, it was a prostitute.
He said how he killed her?
I don't know. I think it was in a house, in that house.
I lived in Springfield. It was one of the most comfortable places I've ever lived in.
And when he came tired to go someplace else, I didn't want to be anywhere else except Springfield.
(18:35):
So in this next clip, you're going to hear Carmela talk about Buck Creek Trail. It's the area that him and Prentiss possibly went to get rid of a body or where Prentiss says he got rid of one.
It's the river.
Okay, so you're looking at...
The river, our burn address, the trail park, I mean, like trails.
What did he say he did there?
(18:57):
That he took me to the girl that would help us spot if there's nothing around.
According to Buffy Freeman's case file, her hyoid bone was broken.
According to Tiffany Chambers' case file, she was found without her hyoid bone.
The hyoid bone is a very fragile bone that is located near the jaw.
It is easily broken when the neck has endured some form of trauma.
(19:20):
As a result of the common similarities between how these victims died, we believe that Angela Hanoi's hyoid bone could have also been broken.
When working on cold cases, we typically want to stay away from assumptions because once you think of an assumption, you may deem it as fact, even if though you may not have all of the information.
So they do make an assumption with Angela Hanoi and assuming her hyoid bone was broken, but because of the other cases that they have and how similar they are,
(19:48):
this is a safer assumption to make because Prentice, like they said earlier, liked to use his hands, and if they believe Prentice killed Angela Hanoi,
it is safe to assume that her hyoid was broken.
So they didn't completely go in blind just saying, oh, we think that her hyoid broken is because of whatever.
They actually have an understandable reason as to why they think that.
(20:10):
In addition to similarities to the way these women were killed and the tendency of Prentice to kill was bare hands,
I would also like to point out the fact that Angela Kilgore and Angela Hanoi possibly knew each other because of them both working in the medical field in the Springfield area.
The involvement in nursing could have possibly started their drug use.
While we did not go into much detail about this within the podcast, Prentice here tended to hang out with older people like Donald Walton.
(20:36):
Such people could have groomed his violent tendencies and possibly helped him familiarize himself with the area of Springfield, Ohio.
Prentice showed up to Buffy Joe Freeman's house after she was murdered and he ate dinner with her family.
Hannah Whitman, Prentice's girlfriend, has very similar characteristics to Angela Hanoi, Angela Kilgore, and Buffy Freeman,
as she too is white with light hair and light eye color.
(20:59):
A female witness, Dusty McAllister, reports being with Angela Lee Hanoi, Prentice's hair in an unknown male, the night of Angela's death, at Forest Lake and Fishing.
Dusty went to the police in 2017, stating she saw Prentice's hair strangle and possibly stab Angela.
The unknown male witness denies being there.
(21:20):
Since we became so invested in these cases, we decided to visit important locations in Springfield, Ohio.
This allowed us to get a better understanding of the area our victims were around.
We also realized that important locations in these cases were closer than we originally thought.
West Main Street, where Prentice and Donald lived, also included Closetman's Bakery, where Prentice worked,
(21:42):
Main Stop Food Mart, a little grocery store, Night Owl Tovvern, a bar, and a soup kitchen, where they all ate.
This road, West Main Street, had everything these men needed.
Some of our victims even went missing and or were found on this road or close by.
So this group was extremely dedicated. As a matter of fact, they planned to go up to Springfield and go look at all these places.
(22:06):
And of course, me being the responsible adult, I felt like that was a little risky.
So I made sure that one of their fathers went with them, but I also met them there.
So we went on the field trip, we looked at all these different places that they had pointed out as important places to the case.
(22:27):
We even went to a reservoir and found Buck Creek and found a bike path, which we think Carmelo was talking about in the interviews.
So we think maybe we found the location he was talking about.
The really neat thing about that is shortly after that, they actually found evidence of Angela Hannaway being close to that reservoir that we had seen.
(22:52):
Now, unfortunately, I can't give out that information about the evidence.
But it also doesn't necessarily mean Prentice is the one that put it there.
But it was just kind of unique and kind of, I don't know, it's just weird to know that we thought we found the place that he was talking about and there was evidence found there later.
(23:13):
Yeah, and I think that dedication that they have to go to that area shows what we want out of this cold case program.
Because I remember they would stay after school every single day.
They constantly worked. They took over Mr. Hubbard's entire room with their information, their whiteboards.
They won because they had to, because they had so much, because of the three cases they were juggling.
(23:34):
But also because it shows how much they truly cared about their victims and the people that were murdered.
They weren't just investigating it because it was a school project.
They were doing it because it became people who they truly cared about.
And I think the field trip, everything they did just shows that how good of people they are and how much we really appreciate what they've done for our program.
(23:58):
Exactly.
While we do not want to accuse Prentice's hair of Killeney's woman, we believe that these similarities linking him to Bobby Joe Freeman, Angela Marie Kilgore, and Angela Lee Hannaway are suspicious.
We would like to reiterate that these women were not just prostitutes and drug users.
The lifestyle that they fell into does not define how they should be remembered.
These women were good people who got wrapped up with the wrong group.
(24:21):
Springfield has one of the highest overall crime rates of any United States city.
The city's overall crime rate is 136% higher than the overall crime rate in Ohio.
We began our research understanding that we do not have the ability to solve these cases.
Our goal was to spread awareness and create an understanding between society and the victims.
(24:43):
We are hoping that through the publicity of these cases, they will finally get the recognition they deserve.
If anyone has information pertaining to these cases, whether you believe the information would be beneficial or not, please do not hesitate to contact the Springfield City and Clark County Police Departments.
Or, if you are uncomfortable with that, you are more than welcome to contact us through our various social media pages.
(25:09):
Cold Case MHS, Monsters and Demons is written by the Mason High School Cold Case students.
The editing is done by current student Lydia Lisko and produced by me.
The music in this podcast was written and performed by current MHS student Alexa Dahl.
Thank you for listening to Episode 7. Please tune into Episode 8, the final episode of this season, when we discuss the disappearance and murder of the beautiful 5-year-old Devon Donover in the case of Innocence Law.
(25:56):
Thank you for watching.
(26:26):
You said you had my back, but instead you attacked, you got me out of my head.
It won't go unsolved this time, who catch you and your crimes will be shinin' the light on you.
On you, you, you, you, on you, you, you, you, you, you.
(27:01):
And don't even try to win it back, cause you lost it way before that.
You said you had my back, but instead you attacked, you got me out of my head.
(27:22):
It won't go unsolved this time, who catch you and your crimes will be shinin' the light on you.
On you, on you, on you, on you, on you, on you.
You said you had not back, but instead you attacked.
(00:05):
You got me out of my head.
Won't go and solve this time.
Won't catch you and your crimes will be shining alive.
Welcome to Cold Case MHS, where real education meets real life.
I'm your host, Randy Hubbard.
And I'm your co-host, Lydia Lisco.
(00:26):
And we thank you for listening.
As we start to look at our cases at the beginning of the year,
we never know where the path will lead us.
We have worked on murders ranging from a neighbor brutally murdered in his garage
to the awful attack of an elderly veteran.
We have searched for clues of the disappearance of a medical student with a bright future
while looking into the kidnapping and murder of two young girls
(00:47):
who never had a chance to plan their futures.
We have seen what has happened to a young man that looks up to the wrong mentor
and the death of a man who found the straight and narrow while trying to mentor others.
In this episode, we see a group of young women fall into a lifestyle that introduces them to a monster.
A man who silences those who hold his secrets.
(01:08):
A man who seems to be an addictive killer.
We began our investigation with the case of Angela Lee Hannaway.
As we progressed in her case, we realized that the extent of the investigation did not end with Angela
and reached far beyond our original scope of the case.
This led our investigation of many Springfield, Ohio cold cases with similarities.
(01:30):
We aim to speak out for the victims like cannot and provide peace and closure to the victims' families.
We understand that for the families of the victims, these cases never go cold.
As Podcaster Shane Waters stated in the Minds Manus podcast, Episode 129,
the victims will speak for others at society unfortunately labels as, quote, the Roy people.
These women were part of the 40-42 million prostitutes and 50% of people illicitly using drugs worldwide.
(01:56):
And many overlooked their deaths because of the risky lifestyle that they led.
They were all found around the same area as Springfield, Ohio.
Thus leading us to believe that their deaths could be an act of potential serial killer.
While the murder rate among prostitutes is 40 times higher than the murder rate of women in the general population,
we aim to highlight the fact that the lifestyle that these women fell into does not define how they should be remembered.
(02:21):
I'm Aidan Chambers.
I'm Alan Timmitts.
I'm Jesse Klibert and we decided to research the Springfield, Ohio cold cases.
So in the description at the beginning of their podcast, they talk about the lifestyle of these individuals as being at high risk.
And oftentimes they're actually deemed as what they call throwaway people.
And that term really kind of bothers me.
Yeah, it bothers me too because I don't believe any human life should be considered throwaway.
(02:47):
These poor women, they just happen to end up in a bad situation with bad people.
But they inside are good people just because they're in this unfortunate situation doesn't mean they deserve to be considered a throwaway case.
Robin Yelene Hartman, Mary Frances Harris, Angela Hall, Thelma Gerber, Julie Freeman, Mary Van Koolen, and Shakira Walker were all found between the time frame of 1981 to 2006 in Springfield, Ohio,
(03:17):
outside of the inner circle that contained the majority of the criminal activity.
Despite these victims' sharing similarities, most of them were found on the date of or soon after the year that our main suspect was born.
As a result of this, we decided to not go into further detail about these victims in this podcast.
However, we would like to note that these women's deaths are not of any less significance and could be connected to the victims that we talk about in more detail.
(03:42):
So they mentioned a lot of these names that they didn't further investigate and I think that's extremely important because as you mentioned earlier, these are still people.
These are still unsolved cases.
And even though our students didn't fully investigate those people, I think it's so important that they mention their names.
Right, because I think we spend a lot of time, especially in true crime, talking about the killer and not spending as much time as we should on the victims.
(04:08):
And I think saying their names is really important so people will never forget them.
Exactly, because those families are still out there, they're still burdened with their lots of their loved one and they just hope that one day it could potentially get solved.
The victims that we decided to research more thoroughly were Angela Lee Hanoi, Buffy Joe Freeman, and Angela Maria Kilgore, as they are most closely connected due to their very similar characteristics.
(04:36):
While their height and weight varied, they were all Caucasian females that had blonde hair and light eye color.
So they mentioned Buffy Joe Freeman. What's unique about that name is that we actually did that case two years ago and we still had the information on that case.
Unfortunately, Buffy's case was really very difficult to find information and because of that, we didn't see that connection between these other cases.
(05:02):
Now, possibly we can tie it to somebody that we know could have committed this crime.
Buffy Freeman was last seen July 11, 2007 at approximately 11.30pm near the intersection of Shafer and Main Street.
She was later found partially closed on July 12, 2007 at 3.26am in Snyder Park near the clubhouse.
(05:25):
Angela Kilgore was reported missing on November 11, 2007 and last seen on October 22, 2007 at the Fairfax Motel in East Main Street.
Her body was later found on April 24, 2008 in a district behind an abandoned building near 506 Grand Street.
Springfield Police Department officers said that they did not suspect foul play, but it was not likely to go a while without contacting their family.
(05:51):
During research into the case of Angela Hannaway, we interviewed her daughter, Jessica Hannaway, an ex-partner, Jason Pace, to ask them more about Angela's personality and who she was as a person.
They emphasized that she was way more than just a prostitute and a drug user.
She was very fun, very outgoing, and a very bubbly personality. She was just always...she was very talkative and very loud.
(06:16):
She was a homemaker though, but she cooked a lot from scratch, and she was a clean freak, so that really kept her busy.
She was pretty much a stay-at-home mom. She never really had a very strong work history, but don't get me wrong.
The kids were always well taken care of, supper was cooked, house was always clean. She was a very caring and loving mother. She loved her kids.
(06:44):
Angela Hannaway was missing for a couple of months before she was found. It was reported that she last stayed with her family approximately 18 months before she went missing in April, and she was last seen in late January of 2008.
She was found partially clothed, without eyes, and badly decomposed, floating in Mad River, on June 10, 2008, near the 2300 block of Dayton Road.
(07:10):
This clip references Lieutenant Christopher Schultz talking about the location where Angela Hannaway was dumped in the river.
You'll see Forest Lake is there, at Mad River, right underneath. That is one of the spots that's a primary spot where we believe that she was killed and dumped in the river, although we have no evidence from that location.
(07:31):
That is solely eyewitness testimony.
Dental and medical records were used to determine Angela Hannaway's identity. According to newspaper articles, Angela died of very violent death and she had been in the water for some time.
As a result of her death being deemed undetermined, we began to research the water current of Mad River to determine the distance she could have floated from a given location.
Using data from the United States Geological Survey, we found that in early June of 2008, Mad River had a flood stage approximately 11 on a scale of 0 to 12.
(08:02):
According to Lieutenant Christopher Schultz, in early June of 2008, the area of Springfield, Ohio, was flooded with massive amounts of rain, causing the river to become a torrent.
In addition to this, Lieutenant Christopher Schultz also said that the 20-26 mile per hour wind speeds caused a stronger water current, allowing Angela Hannaway to float as far as 3 miles from where she was first dumped.
(08:25):
Christopher Schultz also shared with us that some of Angela's belongings were found in the woody area by Buck Creek, near Old Reed Park in 2021.
Those belongings included her purse, with identification card, and other generic and common personal belongings inside.
We believe that this location could be a secondary location where Angela Hannaway's body could have been disposed of.
(08:48):
So the fact that she was found in the river, we had to do a lot of research on the weather at that time period, how fast the river moves, and to figure out how far she would travel down the river.
Now, the reason I knew that is because in my case that I've been working on for a while, the Laney-Gwinnert case, I had to do the same thing.
I had to go back to 1997, check the weather information, see how fast the Ohio River and the Great Miami River were moving to see if she could have made it from where she disappeared and where she was found.
(09:19):
So it's important to look at all the factors when you're trying to figure out where she could have been put in the river and how she got to where she was.
The first person of interest that we researched was Thomas Jason Roberts. In July 2004, he was convicted of assaulting and strangulating Angela Lee Hannaway.
However, as a result of not being able to find any additional charges linking him to the case of Angela Lee Hannaway or other victims, we decided to look into additional potential suspects.
(09:50):
This led to the name, Prentice Rashawn-Harran. We first came upon him because of articles from Springfield Sun linking him to the cases of Angela Hannaway, Buffy Freeman, and Angela Kilgore.
I do think it's important to recognize that they did mention their first person of interest, and even though they didn't pursue him too much further because of the lack of information,
they still included him because, like I said, there was a lack of information, but that caused them to pursue other potential persons of interest, such as Prentice Harran, who, as you guys will hear later in the podcast, they had a lot of information on, and they could really investigate deeply.
(10:25):
He's a black male who is about 6'4", and 260 pounds. Prentice immediately went to Rutger College, where he was a defensive end, after graduating from Ashbury Park High School in New Jersey.
He studied Italian business management, psychology, and massage therapy at four different universities in New Jersey.
(10:48):
So this part about Prentice is something that I think is really important. He's very intelligent. He was able to get into Rutger University. He studied some very difficult courses along the way,
and I think many people think somebody like him is going to be kind of an unintelligent, mean person, but I don't think that's how he is. I think he's extremely intelligent and he's able to manipulate people to do things that he wanted them to do.
(11:14):
Exactly. Like, as they said, his build is massive. He played football, he's this really big guy, and there are some unfortunate stereotypes that big, athletic people aren't always the brightest.
But like you said, he used his intelligence to his advantage. He took what people thought of him, they're, oh, he's just this big guy, he may not be very smart, but he was actually incredibly intelligent,
(11:41):
and he used that to, like you said, manipulate people and get that to do what he wanted.
And unfortunately, the unfortunate part about that is the things he wanted them to do were not good.
He was reported to have been in Springfield, Ohio from 2006 to 2008, and it is a good possibility that he was a pimp to prostitutes and or a drug dealer.
(12:03):
Prentiss Haer's friend, Donald Lee Walton Jr., currently 63 years old, commonly known as Duck, was a resident of Springfield, Ohio from a time frame of 1971 to 2017,
where we are unsure of the exact date that Donald met Prentiss. In an interview, he claimed that he met Prentiss in 2005 or 2006.
Prentiss Haer and Donald Walton constantly had multiple prostitutes at their respective houses.
(12:27):
Due to Donald's age, his friendship with Prentiss Haer and his lengthy criminal record, we believe that he could be a person of interest in the killing of the earliest victims and potentially groomed Prentiss Haer.
It is a good possibility that Donald Walton was a pimp and or a drug user to prostitutes.
So in cold case, we deal with unsolved open cases, which can be extremely difficult to get information on because police stations are still investigating and they don't want to potentially leak any information that could help them solve it or help the person who did it get away.
(13:01):
So what do you think they have so information about this Donald guy?
Well, part of it is because Donald and Prentiss Haer were involved in a case that has already been closed. They've both been convicted of a crime. Prentiss is actually in jail for life for his particular one.
So when a case is closed, it becomes public record and public record, you can do a FOIA request or just go to the police department and ask them, can I have all the information on that?
(13:27):
And in this particular case, Springfield did give us all of the files they had on the case that involved these two guys. So that's how they know so much about it.
Prentiss Haer was believed to have killed three people and was reported to have strangled and or raped six additional women, the youngest being 15 years old.
Prentiss Haer was believed to have fairly strangled and wrapped Michael Frasier's body in a rug in Jackson, Florida on July 11th, 2015 because he choked at me chambers.
(13:57):
In addition to this, Prentiss Haer was convicted of strangulating DeSean Lymphord in Springfield, Ohio on December 4th, 2015 because of a dispute over drugs at 12 South Light Street, which was also the house of Donald Walton.
Prentiss and Donald then dragged the body next door, behind Main St. Food Mart, where he was later found.
Prentiss Haer was also convicted of killing Tiffany Chambers in 2015. She was a resident of Jackson, Florida with similar physical characteristics to Angela Hannaway, Angela Kokor, and Buffy Freeman.
(14:28):
Tiffany Chambers was brought up to Springfield, Ohio and fatally strangled by Prentiss Haer on July 16th, 2015, behind 144 West Pleasant Street, while Carmela Rivera, Prentiss's friend, and Hannah Whitman, Prentiss's girlfriend, kept watch.
Tessany was killed because she was a witness to the murder of Michael Frasier.
(14:49):
Prentiss then made Hannah Whitman poke at Tiffany's eyes. They then moved the body to Green County, Ohio and placed it in the woods. On May 1st, 2016, almost a year after the date she was last seen, her skeletal remains were covered scattered along Elan Road, near Senior, Ohio.
As a result of Prentiss Haer's violent tendencies, we decided to look into disorders from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or the DSM-5, that corresponded with his personality and actions.
(15:22):
Through our research, we believe that Prentiss could have had antisocial personality disorder. This disorder is almost exclusively diagnosed in men serving time for violent crimes. They are manipulative, charming, and of high intelligence.
They show little to no remorse, sympathy, or empathy, to those they hurt or to law enforcement.
(15:43):
As a result of these qualities, we believe that Prentiss Haer is also a psychotic killer. As said by Christopher Shulks, he is not a serial killer, the same as a mafia hitman, is an serial killer.
Prentiss didn't plan out his killings like a serial killer would. Rather, he spontaneously killed out of rage.
So in this particular case, they talked about he's not really a serial killer. Serial killers are known to be very ritualistic about what they do. They find their victims, they hunt them down.
(16:15):
They have a specific motive of operandi to commit that crime, and they do it over a period of time and they can't stop, supposedly. But he's a little bit different. So how is he different?
So it's easy to label people who kill a lot of people as a serial killer, because that's what media portrays. That's like, oh, serial killers, you see in many TV shows, but especially with Prentiss, he was out to protect himself.
(16:41):
Like as you said, he doesn't have any of these things that most typical serial killers have. He didn't have a hankering to kill people. He didn't have a specific type of people he wanted to kill.
He was out to protect himself. All of his victims had something against him, and he was worried that they were going to use it to harm him or his business. And so he killed them because it was the right time.
(17:02):
It's what we call an opportunist killer, because it wasn't planned out. It was, oh, this person has something on me, and I need to protect myself.
Exactly. You know, the thing about him is that when you listen to him in his interviews, he is very arrogant, very manipulative, and he tries to actually intimidate the police officers during the interview.
(17:23):
So for him, it's all about the respect of being, you know, I'm in charge, and if you don't like it, I'm going to kill you.
Prentiss made it known that he could do whatever he wanted to to anyone, whether they gave him a reason to or not. Regarding his personality and psychopathic acts, we questioned why Prentiss chose Springfield, Ohio.
(17:48):
This clip is of Prentiss explaining himself in addition to Carmela Rivera referring to a path that Prentiss disposed of bodies near, plus an abatement house.
You were talking about killing anybody?
Yeah, he said, you know, he killed a girl or something, and he said, how did he do that?
(18:12):
Okay, did he talk about that? What did he say about that?
Um, it was a prostitute.
He said how he killed her?
I don't know. I think it was in a house, in that house.
I lived in Springfield. It was one of the most comfortable places I've ever lived in.
And when he came tired to go someplace else, I didn't want to be anywhere else except Springfield.
(18:35):
So in this next clip, you're going to hear Carmela talk about Buck Creek Trail. It's the area that him and Prentiss possibly went to get rid of a body or where Prentiss says he got rid of one.
It's the river.
Okay, so you're looking at...
The river, our burn address, the trail park, I mean, like trails.
What did he say he did there?
(18:57):
That he took me to the girl that would help us spot if there's nothing around.
According to Buffy Freeman's case file, her hyoid bone was broken.
According to Tiffany Chambers' case file, she was found without her hyoid bone.
The hyoid bone is a very fragile bone that is located near the jaw.
It is easily broken when the neck has endured some form of trauma.
(19:20):
As a result of the common similarities between how these victims died, we believe that Angela Hanoi's hyoid bone could have also been broken.
When working on cold cases, we typically want to stay away from assumptions because once you think of an assumption, you may deem it as fact, even if though you may not have all of the information.
So they do make an assumption with Angela Hanoi and assuming her hyoid bone was broken, but because of the other cases that they have and how similar they are,
(19:48):
this is a safer assumption to make because Prentice, like they said earlier, liked to use his hands, and if they believe Prentice killed Angela Hanoi,
it is safe to assume that her hyoid was broken.
So they didn't completely go in blind just saying, oh, we think that her hyoid broken is because of whatever.
They actually have an understandable reason as to why they think that.
(20:10):
In addition to similarities to the way these women were killed and the tendency of Prentice to kill was bare hands,
I would also like to point out the fact that Angela Kilgore and Angela Hanoi possibly knew each other because of them both working in the medical field in the Springfield area.
The involvement in nursing could have possibly started their drug use.
While we did not go into much detail about this within the podcast, Prentice here tended to hang out with older people like Donald Walton.
(20:36):
Such people could have groomed his violent tendencies and possibly helped him familiarize himself with the area of Springfield, Ohio.
Prentice showed up to Buffy Joe Freeman's house after she was murdered and he ate dinner with her family.
Hannah Whitman, Prentice's girlfriend, has very similar characteristics to Angela Hanoi, Angela Kilgore, and Buffy Freeman,
as she too is white with light hair and light eye color.
(20:59):
A female witness, Dusty McAllister, reports being with Angela Lee Hanoi, Prentice's hair in an unknown male, the night of Angela's death, at Forest Lake and Fishing.
Dusty went to the police in 2017, stating she saw Prentice's hair strangle and possibly stab Angela.
The unknown male witness denies being there.
(21:20):
Since we became so invested in these cases, we decided to visit important locations in Springfield, Ohio.
This allowed us to get a better understanding of the area our victims were around.
We also realized that important locations in these cases were closer than we originally thought.
West Main Street, where Prentice and Donald lived, also included Closetman's Bakery, where Prentice worked,
(21:42):
Main Stop Food Mart, a little grocery store, Night Owl Tovvern, a bar, and a soup kitchen, where they all ate.
This road, West Main Street, had everything these men needed.
Some of our victims even went missing and or were found on this road or close by.
So this group was extremely dedicated. As a matter of fact, they planned to go up to Springfield and go look at all these places.
(22:06):
And of course, me being the responsible adult, I felt like that was a little risky.
So I made sure that one of their fathers went with them, but I also met them there.
So we went on the field trip, we looked at all these different places that they had pointed out as important places to the case.
(22:27):
We even went to a reservoir and found Buck Creek and found a bike path, which we think Carmelo was talking about in the interviews.
So we think maybe we found the location he was talking about.
The really neat thing about that is shortly after that, they actually found evidence of Angela Hannaway being close to that reservoir that we had seen.
(22:52):
Now, unfortunately, I can't give out that information about the evidence.
But it also doesn't necessarily mean Prentice is the one that put it there.
But it was just kind of unique and kind of, I don't know, it's just weird to know that we thought we found the place that he was talking about and there was evidence found there later.
(23:13):
Yeah, and I think that dedication that they have to go to that area shows what we want out of this cold case program.
Because I remember they would stay after school every single day.
They constantly worked. They took over Mr. Hubbard's entire room with their information, their whiteboards.
They won because they had to, because they had so much, because of the three cases they were juggling.
(23:34):
But also because it shows how much they truly cared about their victims and the people that were murdered.
They weren't just investigating it because it was a school project.
They were doing it because it became people who they truly cared about.
And I think the field trip, everything they did just shows that how good of people they are and how much we really appreciate what they've done for our program.
(23:58):
Exactly.
While we do not want to accuse Prentice's hair of Killeney's woman, we believe that these similarities linking him to Bobby Joe Freeman, Angela Marie Kilgore, and Angela Lee Hannaway are suspicious.
We would like to reiterate that these women were not just prostitutes and drug users.
The lifestyle that they fell into does not define how they should be remembered.
These women were good people who got wrapped up with the wrong group.
(24:21):
Springfield has one of the highest overall crime rates of any United States city.
The city's overall crime rate is 136% higher than the overall crime rate in Ohio.
We began our research understanding that we do not have the ability to solve these cases.
Our goal was to spread awareness and create an understanding between society and the victims.
(24:43):
We are hoping that through the publicity of these cases, they will finally get the recognition they deserve.
If anyone has information pertaining to these cases, whether you believe the information would be beneficial or not, please do not hesitate to contact the Springfield City and Clark County Police Departments.
Or, if you are uncomfortable with that, you are more than welcome to contact us through our various social media pages.
(25:09):
Cold Case MHS, Monsters and Demons is written by the Mason High School Cold Case students.
The editing is done by current student Lydia Lisko and produced by me.
The music in this podcast was written and performed by current MHS student Alexa Dahl.
Thank you for listening to Episode 7. Please tune into Episode 8, the final episode of this season, when we discuss the disappearance and murder of the beautiful 5-year-old Devon Donover in the case of Innocence Law.
(25:56):
Thank you for watching.
(26:26):
You said you had my back, but instead you attacked, you got me out of my head.
It won't go unsolved this time, who catch you and your crimes will be shinin' the light on you.
On you, you, you, you, on you, you, you, you, you, you.
(27:01):
And don't even try to win it back, cause you lost it way before that.
You said you had my back, but instead you attacked, you got me out of my head.
(27:22):
It won't go unsolved this time, who catch you and your crimes will be shinin' the light on you.
On you, on you, on you, on you, on you, on you.
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