FREMONT — This year marked the 10th year since the brutal murder of Heather Bogle, which I was reminded of after reading a Facebook link in my feed to a WTOL Toledo News Channel 11 report from Emmy Award-winning news anchor Melissa Andrews.
For many readers interested in true crime mysteries, this story is a magnet. But the mystery isn’t who killed Heather Bogle — her homicide was solved two years after her death when a new sheriff connected all the dots — giant boulder-sized pieces of evidence, really — always there and ever-present from the very start.
The lead detective — Sean O’Connell — was either too dumb to see it, or too arrogant and corrupt to do the right thing about. That’s the mystery: Why did this detective screw up this investigation and so many others?
Andrews, in her investigative report, takes a pretty exhaustive look at the former Fremont police detective and sheriff’s deputy, a dirt ball cop in Sandusky County for more than 25 years before he was sentenced to prison in 2017 after he trying to frame three young Black people for Bogle’s murder.
Why? Why did he want to frame three innocent people. He had a history of targeting Black people, but it’s difficult to believe that could be his only motivating factor. And why did he botch a number of other cases.
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• Never solved
Lee Naus was 21 and living with his parents in Lindsey, Ohio, in 1999 when he passed out outside a Fremont bar where he’d been drinking earlier in the evening. Multiple witnesses told Detective O’Connell that a now-retired Sandusky County sheriff’s deputy tossed Naus into a dumpster that was later emptied into a trash truck with a compactor that crushed Naus to death. It was a practical joke, several witnesses inside the bar that night told O’Connell. There was no record in O’Connell’s report that he ever spoke to the suspect. He concluded the investigation by conjecturing that Naus climbed into the dumpster and passed out, but he provided no evidence of that. He also provided no explanation in it why he never spoke to the deputy who witnesses told him had tossed Naus’ limp body into the dumpster. When asked, years later, O’Connell said he did speak with the deputy, but it was off-the-record conversation, an assertion that makes no sense.
• Manufacturing truth
Jacob Limberios, of Castailia, was just 19 in 2012, when a tragic accident with a gun inside a York Township home killed him. Former Sandusky County Sheriff Kyle Overmyer botched every aspect the investigation into what happened, failing to get proper witness statements, destroying evidence from the scene, in addition to becoming incredibly rude and hostile toward the Limberios family. Six weeks after his family buried him, county coroner John Wukie ruled Jacob’s death an accidental suicide, a nonsensical finding equally incompetent to the sheriff’s failed investigation. Two years later, when the family persisted in demanding justice, O’Connell was called into re-invesigate, and he was even more incompetent and more rude that Overmyer had been toward the family. A later investigation by the state determined that Jacob did not commit suicide, didn’t intend to harm himself or anyone else. But that finding has never been accepted by the coroner’s office. His death certificate should be changed.
• Dead on the jailhouse floor
Craig Burdine, 34, of Oak Harbor, was killed inside the Sandusky County Jail just moments after being dragged inside by four officers. He was handcuffed and shackled, and then repeatedly electroshocked with Tasers and stopped breathing. Detective O’Connell assured his family he would find out and tell them how their son and brother died. But the never did, and never questioned the nearly identical hand written narratives that the officers involved provided that terrible morning in August 2007. O’Connel later acknowledged in a court deposition that he wasn’t really interested in how or why Burdine died, he wanted to just assure that the officers were cleared of wrongdoing. And they were.
Read more:
In his own words, O’Connell ‘mansplains’ to judge
At his sentencing in 2017, O’Connell apologized to the Bogle family for having misled them, but it was insincere. He was still claiming that it was all part of his investigative process, which comes off during his sentencing hearing as complete bullshit.
He never apologized to the Limberios family or the Burdines, or, as far as I know, any of the other families he hurt during his long career as a cop, a cop who trashed the badge.
Watch other news coverage
Good:
Watch NBC’s Dateline program: Heather Bogle homicide
Better
Watch CBS 48 Hours program: Heather Bogle
Best:
Watch WTOL-TV Channel 11 news anchor Melissa Andrews’ report
