Murder in Monroe

Donna Wesselman walked into her mother’s cottage at Mount Pleasant Retirement Community on Oct. 30, 2012, and called her name. There was no answer. She was there at the urging of her Aunt Patty who was worried that she hadn’t heard from her older sister, 87-year-old Barbara Howe.

“I was concerned,” Wesselman said. “But not alarmed.”

Patricia Marshall, 85, was worried something had happened to Barbara. Her red Cadillac was missing from the garage and she said the very social Howe visited friends often but would never leave overnight without alerting her family.

After a quick look through the tidy two-bedroom ranch, Wesselman spotted three seemingly small things that she said stood out: A towel on the floor, a flipped over rug corner and a half glass of iced tea on a coffee table.

“There would never be a towel on the floor of her house … everything had a place,” Wesselman said, adding her mother also never would have left a glass on her wood furniture because it might have caused a water ring.

“I knew it was time to call the police,” she said.

Howe was found dead two days later in the trunk of her Cadillac, parked outside Woodridge Park Apartments in Middletown. Three years later her killer, former Mount Pleasant maintenance worker Daniel French, has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

From the start, the mystery and story surrounding what exactly happened to Barbara Howe captivated people in Butler County and beyond. For three years, the Journal-News reported on every new detail and break in the case that the county prosecutor called the most heinous crime in his 40 years of practicing law. The following is the most complete account of this tragic tale as told through interviews with both Howe’s and French’s families, police and court documents and videos as well as court testimony.

While Wesselman and her family filled out a missing person report, they had no way of knowing the bloody scene of their mother’s death lay in a crawl space beneath the utility room of the house. Neither did Monroe Police, who began a frantic search for the Hamilton native who was married to Bill Howe, the longtime owner of Howe Motor Co. in Middletown, for 51 years.

Ironically, agents from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation were in route to Monroe to help with the search, when Middletown Lt. Scott Reeve found Howe’s car on Nov. 1.

A tuft of hair sticking out from the trunk lid and vacuum cleaner debris in the inside of the vehicle didn’t point to a good outcome.

When the trunk of the 2005 Cadillac was opened under the watchful eyes of Monroe and Middletown police, it was immediately apparent Howe was no longer missing and she had been murdered.

Howe’s body was naked from the waist up and her neck was slash from ear to ear. There was a strong odor of disinfectant in the trunk, and missing from Howe’s hand was a $26,000, 3.31-carat diamond wedding ring.

After seeing the gash along Howe’s neck, Bryan White, a special agent for the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, said he knew she hadn’t died in the trunk or in the parking lot.

“I thought why is there not any blood in the trunk,” White said.

After the car with Howe’s brutalized body inside was towed to the Monroe Fire Station on Ohio 4 for forensic investigation, White joined other BCI agents and police at Howe’s Paxton Circle home.

A close inspection from BCI agents and police turned up only drips of blood in some areas of the Howe residence, but not enough to explain the massive wound she had.

Then White discovered a latch in the floor of the home’s utility room. When it was pulled up, a crawl space was revealed and there were blood smears on the lip.

Crawling into the narrow opening, White found a large pool of blood four feet below on the concrete floor.

The location of Howe’s slaying was found. Now the hunt for the killer was on.

With no signs of forced entry at Howe’s home and the amount of blood found in the hidden crawl space, police turned their attention to the staff of Mount Pleasant.

DNA samples were collected and staff members were questioned by police. Then, just weeks after Howe was found dead, Monroe police received a tip that shined a spotlight on French, a former maintenance worker at Mount Pleasant.

Kenneth French called Monroe Police Detective Gregg Myers with the biggest tip in the case — he thought his brother, Danny, was involved in the slaying.

Kenneth French met his brother in a Kroger parking lot in Walton, Ky., after receiving a phone call from him on Nov. 1, 2012.

“When I get out of the truck, he gives me a big hug and tells me he loves me,” Kenneth French said, adding that was odd behavior for his brother, who had called him the day before to ask if they could meet on his way from Monroe to their sister’s house in Berea, Ky.

“I felt like he was telling me goodbye for the last time,” Kenneth French said.

Daniel French, who wore a ball cap and a Mount Pleasant Retirement Community sweatshirt, asked to borrow some money. Kenneth French said he gave him $20 for gas and they parted ways.

But Kenneth French couldn’t shake the bad feeling he had after that meeting. That nagging turned into a “sick feeling” when he began reading news reports about Howe’s homicide and was unable to contact his brother for weeks.

“I saw the time line … I know the shirt he had on. I just knew in my gut,” Kenneth French said, adding he “struggled” with what to do for nearly one month before calling Monroe police.

During a three-week trial this year, prosecutors poked holes in French’s “accident” story.

“He took that stun gun and he hit her with it, but she didn’t go down. She didn’t go quietly into the night. He had to kill her,” Butler County Prosecutor Michael Gmoser said, adding that Howe was still alive when French placed her in the crawl space of her home and then returned to slit her throat.

Prosecutors painted a picture of a man obsessed with murder, describing his fascination with CSI books and serial killer Ted Bundy. A Mount Pleasant directory was also found in French’s car, and just hours after he killed Howe, he is seen casually looking at movie selections at a Redbox in the Middletown Walmart.

French’s sister traveled from Kentucky to share what defense attorneys hoped would spare him the death penalty.

Allen and Kenneth French, the same brother who called police naming Daniel as a suspect, shared the physical and mental abuse the nine French siblings suffered at the hands of their parents while growing up in Middletown.

“Mom and dad weren’t nice people,” Kenneth French said, noting they used a horse whip on the boys in the family.
“If it was this day and age, they would be in jail,” he said.

Kenneth French said his father and mother, who are both deceased, worked at Smurfit in Middletown until it closed. Providing their children with food, clothing and encouragement was not something they did, he said.

“We had beatings,” Allen said. “There was no such thing as a whipping at our house.”

Allen said she still loved her parents but pitied them.
“It took me years to come to the realization that they didn’t know how to cope with life either,” she said.

In addition to the beatings with a horse whip, sticks and boards, Allen said the children were not permitted to open the refrigerator or cupboards to get food. They showed up at meal times or didn’t eat, she said.

“Until I married my husband, I thought that was normal,” Allen said.

Defense attorneys also pointed to French’s depression, noting he repeatedly told police he was suicidal.

He horded medication in the Butler County Jail in an attempt to overdose and tried to drown himself in a toilet at the Rockcastle County Jail hours after he was arrested in Kentucky.

A psychologist testified French suffered from PTSD from abuse as a child and depression.

It took a jury just two hours to find French guilty of aggravated murder. He was spared the death penalty and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus 11 years for pleading guilty lesser charges.
French’s lack of a criminal past makes him an anomaly among killers facing the death penalty.

Or maybe he just never got caught, prosecutors and police say. Ted Bundy, they say, was a likeable attorney who killed for years before getting caught.

French led what seemed to be a quiet life in the Middletown area — working for years at Smurfit and then at Mount Pleasant. He was married and divorced twice and has three children.

Before the trial, French pleaded guilty to lesser charges and offered to plead guilty to all charges in exchange for a life sentence.

“What I did was awful and sitting through this trial has been awful for the Howe family,” French said at his sentencing. “I made a fateful decision that is out of character of me that has haunted me to this day … I ended up robbing and killing a lady, Mrs. Howe.”

“I stand before you … filled with great remorse and sorrow,” he said. “If I could change time, I would in a heartbeat, but I cannot change time.”

“I became a monster that I believe was never there,” French said, offering an apology to Howe’s family.

When it was Donna Wesselman’s turn to address the court to let the judge know the impact the homicide had on her family she turned to French and let him have it.

Pointing at French and raising her voice, Wesselman said, “you beat her and stripped her of her dignity. You stuffed her inside a crawl space and you almost took her head off.”

Wesselman said she was angry he will have a warm bed and medical care in prison.

“You will still get to see your family every single holiday. I will never see my mother again,” she said. “It is so hurtful, because she loved living and you robbed her and us of many years. I will never forgive you and you better rot in hell.”

Both the Butler County prosecutor and Monroe Detective Gregg Myers said the Daniel French story is not over, but declined to elaborate on their next steps.

Meyers said he continues to search for Howe’s ring.

“And I tell you it is not on (Ohio) 63,” he said.