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[Music] Heat up here. [Music] Welcome to True Crime Garage. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, thanks
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for listening. I'm your host, Nick, and with me as always is a man that is credited with building the world's only
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flying garage ship. Yeah, that's a real thing. You can look that up. sitting at the controls. He is the captain. Thank
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you. Thank you. Thank you. Good to see you. And it's good to be seen. [Music] It's good to see you, Captain. Cuz this
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week we are happily drinking Lake Eerie Monster by the very fine and beautiful people at the Great Lakes Brewing
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Company. Garage grade, about 3 and 3/4 bottle caps out of five. Lake Eerie Monster is an IPA, but it's got over 9%
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alcohol in it. So, make sure that you drink it in your garage and not somebody else's. I give it a 10. Give it a 10.
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And do you know who else is very fine and beautiful people? It's the good people that filled up the fridge for us
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this week. We have Marius who is buying the booze for the after show according to her email. Uh, and I'm going to try
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this one out. Captain, she is from Stoke Markness, Norway. Oh, we like your jib in Norway. I hope that I got that at
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least somewhat close. We also have Angela in Nashville, Tennessee. David in Columbia, Maryland, who would like to
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remind everyone not to litter. Thank you, David. And Pamela, who says, "Go Dayton Flyers." We also have Cindle who
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recommends that we try Alagash Curu, saying that it's super yummy. Yeah, I don't know if that's right in there, but
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she says it's super yummy. So, thank you to all of you. And if you want to help us out next week, it's really simple.
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You just go to true crimegar.com and click on the donate button. Thanks for supporting the show. We like your jib.
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Nice deal. So for everything true crime, go to true crimegar.com and also follow
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us at Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, true crime garage. That's enough of the business, Captain.
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Everybody gather around, grab a chair. The garage door's closing. Grab a beer. Let's talk some true crime.
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[Music] This is True Crime Garage and this is the serial killer's apprentice. [Music]
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July 17th, 1982, 11-year-old Christa Harrison is abducted and 6 days later, her body is
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found. In October of 1983, a 28-year-old woman flees the home of Robert Buell. She tells police she was
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kidnapped, raped, and tortured. Police arrest 43-year-old Robert Bule for the kidnapping and raping of two
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women, but he is quickly connected to the murder of Christa Harris and two other young
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girls. Bule admits to the rapes. In fact, he pled no contest and was sentenced to 121 years in prison, but
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maintains he is innocent in the deaths of the young girls. In 2000, as his execution day
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nears, Robert Buell, a man who was never previously granted a media interview, wants to talk.
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Like a caged animal, Bule paces back and forth in handcuffs and leg irons, shaking documents from a murder trial 17
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years earlier. He points to a witness that was never called to testify who told police
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he saw a vehicle that looked like the killers at the time when Bule was at work.
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Bule claims to have found murders of girls in Ohio and western Pennsylvania that he has identified six more cases of
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strangulation and molestation similar to Christa Harrison's proving that a killer
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is still out there. Of those six, police have considered Bule as a suspect in two of
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them, but never charging him. On September 24th, 2002, 62-year-old Robert Buell was executed for the strangulation
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death of 11-year-old Christa Harrison. His final meal, a single black unpitted [Music]
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olive. His final words, Jerry and Shirley, I didn't kill your daughter. The prosecutor knows
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that. and they left the real killer out there on the street to kill again and again and
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again. So that some good may come of this, I ask that you continue to pursue this to the end. Don't let the
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prosecutor continue to spin this out of focus and force them to find out who really killed your
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daughter. That's all I have to say. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Well, we have a strange and weird case
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to talk about this week, don't we, Captain? Mhm. We have a case of a serial rapist, a suspected serial killer, uh,
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from the state of Ohio. Um, and we had to bring in one of our friends, James Rener, true crime author James Rener, to
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help us with this this story because it's not an openandsh case. And for those of you listening to the show for
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quite some time, you know that James Rener has helped us out before. We talked about the Mara Murray case. Well,
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he might be your friend, but I mean he's a journalist, so he's the enemy. He Well, he helped us out with the Mara
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Murray case, right? He's the enemy. And he wrote, and you're right, he wrote a book called True Crime Addict involving
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that case. He's the enemy and he is the captain's enemy. And uh No, he's a very nice guy. Writes very interesting books.
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And he also wrote about the Amy Mahalavic case. Um and we discussed that on our show as well. You can find that
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one in iTunes at the iTunes store. Yeah, that to me that's one of our most interesting podcast that we have ever
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done. One, cuz I'm not on it. And two, uh I didn't actually listen to the interview when we recorded it, so it was
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the first time I ever heard it. And uh that's a very fascinating case if you haven't checked that out. That's uh
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iTunes like you mentioned and in the website store. That's right. And um you know, you can pick up his either of
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those books as well. Um, you know, he has covered many cases from the Cleveland Akran area and this one is out
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of the Akran area. Uh, the one that we're talking about today. Um, so like I said, it's not a openandsh case. Um, and
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he knows intimate details of why there is suspicion on this case. So, but before we get to James Rener, a little
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background regarding this case. And this starts way back in Thursday of October 29th,
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1981. 12-year-old Tina Harmon was trying to get to the Union 76 truck stop in Loi. Mhm. Now, this is just a few miles
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away from where she is from. She's from a small town in Ohio called Cresten. And
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so, at that time, the only real entertainment, the only really cool thing to do in town was the truck stop.
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They had a game room there. And you know, they probably had a few arcade games and maybe a pool table. Well, this
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is where some of the young teenage kids would go and hang out. Tina's first stop
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is to a convenience store. She got a ride from her father's girlfriend. And at the convenience store, she hung out
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with a small group of friends. After getting another ride, she eventually makes it to Loi where she is met.
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There's several people that see her there. Okay. And they had reported seeing her there
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with an unshaven man wearing a jean jacket, a unshaven. So he has a beard. He just has long hair all over his body.
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Okay. So this is 81. So this is coming right out of the 70s. So beards were popular. Long hair was popular for guys.
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Yeah. I I'm joking. I don't know if he actually had long hair. The only description they give of the man was he
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was not a clean shaved man. He was he was didn't he was sporting some kind of beard or some kind of you know 5:00
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shadow or that's what real men do. So there you go. So he's wearing a jean jacket and he looked to be in his early
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20s. Now this is the last that Tina Harmon has seen. His nickname was Teen Wolf. Her body is found several days
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later. This is about 40 miles from her home. Mhm. It was determined that she had been sexually assaulted and that she
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had been strangled. Now, all of this they determined occurred shortly after her abduction. When she was found, she
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had been found fully clothed and her body had been neatly laid out. Her body was placed in an area that was used
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frequently and persons working in the area the day before. They didn't see the body, so we know that she was not placed
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there terribly long before her body was discovered. On her clothes, the coroner found dog hairs and several fibers. Now,
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this would come into play later in our story. Now, we have another disappearance. This is on July 27th,
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1982. So, less than a year later. This was a Saturday. 11-year-old Christa Harrison. She's at the park with her
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friend and schoolmate, 12-year-old Roy Wilson. They're picking up aluminum cans. They're collecting these cans and,
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you know, putting them in a trash bag and collecting them for later. uh around 5:00 p.m. they see a maroon van with you
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remember those old bubble windows that you would see on some of the older bigger vans that that was popular in the
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'7s. Yeah. So this was a maroon van with bubble windows. They see this van enter
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the park and the van swung around so that it would face the road. Now the door opens and a white skinny man with
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dark brown curly hair, a long mustache and a big nose. He gets out of the van and he goes over to the bleachers and he
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sits down. Now this is near where Christa Harrison has parked her bike. Now these vans were really popular and
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cool back in the 70s. It was a thing. But these types of vans then became known as the creeper van. Yeah. They
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became a very creepy van because people were using them for terrible things. I think you could kind of outfit the
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inside of the van, right? You could take chairs out or you could take the bench seat out. I think you could kind of
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customize the inside a little bit. Yeah. Some people would turn them into almost
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like a little limo type thing. So, this van enters the park around 5:00 p.m. and
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uh swings around so that it's facing the road and and we get a pretty good description of the man that gets out of
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the van. Here we we we hear he's he's white. He's a skinny man with dark brown curly hair. He's got a long mustache, a
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big nose, and he went over and he sat down next to where Christa's bike is. This is on the bleachers. Now, Roy, her
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her classmate and friend. He sees Christa eventually go over and talk to the man. And this is where it gets super
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Yeah. Which I wonder if he's u motioning to her at all. What would make her go over and talk to him? Yeah. I Roy does
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not say he he I don't know I mean Roy might not have seen that action exactly and he but he does see her talking to
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the man and exactly he notices the man reaches inside of Christa's blouse and the man actually did this like three
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or four times and each time the girl like swats his hand away. Yeah. Now Christa inappropriate very
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inappropriate. Christa starts to get on her bike, I'm presuming to leave the situation, this weird situation. Uh,
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this is when the man, he gets up and he whispers something in Christa's ear. Now, Roy could not hear what was said to
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the young girl, right? Hence the whisper. But Christa then starts to cry. And after she starts to cry, she gets
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off of her bike and she walks over and gets into the van. Now, she gets into the van via the driver's side door and
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she sits on the floor between the bucket seats. Yeah. The man gets into the van and he shouts out the window by Roy and
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then he drives off. Roy hops on Christa's bike and he rides to Christa's parents' home and he tells them what he
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had seen. He tells them about the van and about the the creepy man. Yeah. And that is when they notify the police that
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their daughter has been abducted. That's probably the fastest he ever rode, you know. Now, six days later, Christa's
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body is found in a remote area. An autopsy reveals that she had been viciously sexually assaulted and that
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she had been strangled to death. Her feet were bound with a large piece of plastic tape and her hair and her
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clothing showed the presence of orange carpet fibers, which would possibly be from the van because a lot of them would
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be lined with a carpet. Yeah. And some of them even had that longer carpet that just seemed to shed and get on
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everything. That's called shag. So, we're seeing here with the first two girls, we have two girls that have gone
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missing. They're both found about five or six days after they're last seen. And we're talking about similar situations.
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We're seeing a sexual assault with a strangulation. Both of them are last seen in the presence of a of a strange
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man. Um, and this man is actually described by Roy as somebody that would have been in his pro probably about 25
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to 35 years of age. So, not terribly far off from the multiple witnesses that had
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seen Tina Harmon with a man that looked to be in his early 20s. Right. So, we had the first case took place in late
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1981, and then we had a case mid 1982, took place in July, and then now we're at 11 months later in June of 1983.
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Again, this was a 10-year-old girl who disappeared from a street fair in Masselin, Ohio. Now, the very strange
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strange part about this case here, Captain, is that later that day, Debbie Smith, who had disappeared, she called
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home uh and she it's reported that she did sound upset, but she wouldn't say where she was. She wouldn't say what was
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going on. And this would be the last time that anybody would hear from young Debbie Smith. Uh, a canoist,
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uh, this was just several days later, August 6th, 1983. A canoist found Debbie's body on the banks of the
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Tuscarora River. Uh, she had been raped and she most likely had been stabbed, although the body also showed signs of
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blunt force trauma. Right. They did find melted wax. It was found on her body itself. And the candles which the wax
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had come from, they were found near the dump site. They were recovered as well. And there was no there's no wax found on
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the first two victims. Uh there was not any listed on the autopsy or coroner reports. Um I the thing here is we would
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have the most information regarding the disappearance and the murder of 11-year-old Christa Harrison. Mhm. that
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it being a crime that went to court and we we had somebody that was convicted of
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this of this case. So we would have well and so then that becomes closed and then
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they open it up to the public and so that's probably why we have more information about it. Yeah. You would
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have more public knowledge about that case and and in that case there is nothing that specifically says or
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references wax or candle wax in the Christa Harrison case. Now again we do have it in this most recent case taking
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place in 1983. And I wonder if there's any possibility of like that being postmortem. And that's probably a very
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difficult thing to figure out after the fact, but I mean, they found the wax right by where her body was dumped. So I
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I just wonder if that's something a possibility. And one thing that's not clear here with this third case
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is, you know, where we've seen signs in the first two cases where the police and
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the authorities are saying, well, this girl was missing for a period of days. Mhm. And she was not found until 5 or 6
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days later. And we we know of a situation where we had people in the area and we can confirm that she was
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dumped relatively soon before being found. Uh she was dumped within probably within 24 hours of of her body being
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found, which is similar to the other two. This case being lying on the bank of the Tuscarora River, we just don't
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know how long she was there. We don't know how long that body was there until she was discovered. Mhm. And it's very
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strange to me too that somebody would dump the candles, right, Captain? Like I mean, yeah. Yeah. You you use them on
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the body and maybe you're a little worried that that you use the wax on the body and you could connect it to the
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candles somehow, but I do find it a little strange that the candles were dumped nearby the body. And we're
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talking about a different situation in my opinion. We're seeing here um some act some activity that we didn't see
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with the first two situations. We're seeing a stabbing and some signs of blunt force trauma where in the other
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two cases very obviously it was strangulation, right? So possibly not a connection to the other two. I don't
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know that that police were uh starting to link these together at the time. I got to believe that they were though
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because this is not something that happens all that frequently. We're talking about girls of a similar age. Um
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they're all from roughly the same area. You know, there's there is miles of distance between the three of them, but
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we're talking about three girls. One is 10, one is 11, and one is 12. And within
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um what 2 and 1/2 year time period, a little over 2 and 1/2 years. Yeah. Well, the police are now looking for the
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boogeyman, right? We have somebody in North Ohio. No, they're looking for the unshaven man with the big nose who is
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killing young girls. He's abducting and killing young girls. And actually in the
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the case of Christa Harrison, we have a very good description. We have the actual abduction is witnessed by her
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friend where in other situations we just have a man that was seen with the girl and we can't confirm that that's
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actually who had taken her. But we we have multiple people saying that that's who had seen was seen last with the
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girl, excuse me. And we have a we have a description of the vehicle possibly, too. And then in the third case, we have
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a girl that disappeared from a street fair in Masselin, which who knows how many people were there. Um, and
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obviously there's there's no no description of a of an abductor there. And some people might be actually
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familiar with Masselin, right? Because there was that documentary about the Masslin Tigers, which is a very We Are
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the Tigers, I think, is the name of it. Yeah. So, if anybody's seen that, you'd have an idea of the the area. And it's
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not a true crime dock. It's a it's a high school football dock. Yeah, because they're they're kind of an what a high
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school football team that's somewhat on the national spotlight from time to time. They're well known, especially in
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this area, right? But if you ever seen that, you kind of know the lay of the land a little bit. And just before we
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chat with James Rener, I do want to read a little quick excerpt from his book, The Serial Killers Apprentice. Mhm.
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These murders were still on the minds of police and area residents two months later when Franklin Township police
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received a chilling call from a Doylestown resident. There was a shaved naked woman with a handcuff attached to
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one wrist standing in her kitchen. The caller said the woman had shown up at her doorstep claiming that she had been
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held captive in a house across the street, which was a little ranch house owned by Robert Buell. Before we join up
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with James Rener and learn more about Robert Buell, serial rapist and potential serial killer. And we're also
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going to talk about James' second killer theory that he titles the serial killer's apprentice. But before that,
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how about a quick beer break? All right, thanks to the sponsors. Now, here's Nick
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and James Rener. Okay, so James, who is Robert Buell? Robert Buell was uh a an employee of the
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city of Akran back in the early 80s. um uh by all all reports uh a really fun guy to hang out with, a very affable um
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joker in the office. Uh one of those guys you don't think about twice. Um and also a serial rapist and murderer. M uh
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and and when you say serial rapist and murder, he was suspected or known to have abducted adult females. So, yeah,
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let me let me tell you how he he got caught because everything kind of comes off of there, okay? Um at the time, Bule
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was working for the city of Akran. This is we're talking early ' 80s, ' 82, 83. Um he was living in a ranch house in
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Doylesstown. Um a suburb, you know, a little ways outside of Akran. Okay. Little quiet little suburb in this ranch
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house. For our international listeners, Akran is where LeBron James is from. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. Right. You
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know, Bule gets in his in his car, goes to work. About half an hour after he leaves, um a woman comes running out of
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his h out of his house. um naked uh with a handcuff dangling from her wrist and she runs to the neighbor's house and
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says, "Oh my god, I've been kept prisoner in that house. That guy is going to he he he raped me. He's going
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to try and kill me." Um so now the police descend on this house in Doylestown. found out find out that
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Robert Bule lived there and they quickly link him to a series of unsolved abductions and and rapes of um of adult
00:24:14
women and uh of which this this woman was lucky enough to to have been the last um and they all kind of fit the
00:24:22
same description. um you know, they're in their 20s, early 30s. Um into Yeah. into their 30s. And uh um you know, he
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would uh abduct them in his van. He had a a a big brown van, uh creepy looking van, and he'd pull up and sometimes find
00:24:41
them at gas stations or in shopping malls. He'd force them into the van. Um sometimes he'd have sex with them there.
00:24:48
Sometimes he'd bring them back to the house in Doylestown, keep them for a day or two. um and then drive them back and
00:24:54
drop them off and release them and release them. And when he takes these girls, these women, he he he just jumps
00:25:01
out of the van and and forcibly takes them, you know, gunpoint or sometimes Yeah. Sometimes he would use a gun and
00:25:07
point a gun at them and say, "Get in the van." Um and uh so yeah, adult women and
00:25:12
he would always let them go. Now, when when when these women are at his home, though, he you I mean, you say rape, but
00:25:18
this I mean, I've read descriptions of it's the most horrible thing this guy did. And it's it's it's rape and
00:25:26
torture. It's torture. It's he's uh the word is sadistic. Um and and it's u I mean, we're talking the worst things you
00:25:34
can imagine. We're talking electrocution. Uh we're talking, you know, he'd shave their heads. He would
00:25:40
chain them to a workbench. He would um put clamps on them and then uh electrocute them. And then when when he
00:25:47
was done getting his kicks after a couple days, he would he would then drop them off um and blindfold them, you
00:25:53
know, coming in and out of the place and his house and uh they quickly linked him
00:25:59
to all these rapes. They processed his house. During the time as they were processing the house, they they started
00:26:05
finding evidence um fibers and cat hair and um paraffin wax. Okay. That were important pieces of
00:26:16
evidence in a series of unsolved murders. What is paraffin wax? It's this uh it's like um back in the day you used
00:26:24
to get these uh pieces of wax. They almost look like bars of soap and you would use them to seal letters. you
00:26:30
would or seal things. Um there are people that get sexual gratification out of um burning the the wax so that it
00:26:38
drips hot wax on your skin. And and that's probably what he was using it for. Uh because these
00:26:46
um the the reason the wax was an important piece of evidence is um around this area they uh a bunch of girls
00:26:55
bodies had turned up. Girls were being abducted by somebody. Um, and you say girls, these are not women. These are
00:27:02
not the same age as the women that he was taking, raping, torturing, and releasing. Right. These are 10-year-old
00:27:08
girls um 10, 11, 12 year old girls uh prepubescent. Um they were abducted um sexually assaulted and murdered. And uh
00:27:16
police found wax on their bodies that matched the paraffin wax in Bule's house. They found cat hair on um some of
00:27:25
these and I'm sorry, dog hair. They found dog hair on um these girls' bodies that matched the dog hair found uh all
00:27:32
over Bule's house. Um they found paint um on one of the girls uh bodies that matched the paint in in one of the
00:27:41
rooms. Um they found fibers from a rug that uh were on these girls' bodies that they found uh definitively matched
00:27:50
fibers from a carpet that was rolled up behind Bu's couch. So they're like, "Oh my gosh, we've hit the honeypot. This is
00:27:57
the boogeyman. Not only is he responsible for rapes of of these grown women, but murders of these these
00:28:06
girls." Uh, and the girls were, let's name them, Christa Harrison, Tina Harmon, and Deborah K. Smith. Okay. And
00:28:14
they find this this mountain of physical evidence out of his home. Now take us let's talk about his
00:28:22
uh living arrangements so to speak. Um other you mean people that lived with him? Yeah. Yeah. He he he was uh not
00:28:32
living alone. No this entire living with him alone. Um and and if you don't mind,
00:28:37
let me skip forward just a little bit because eventually what happens is Bule pleads
00:28:44
guilty to the rapes of these grown women. Okay. Steadfastly denies any involvement. He's already going to jail
00:28:52
for life. Um, steadfastly denies any involvement in the girl murders in Christa Harrison, Tina Harmon, or
00:29:02
Deborah K. Smith's murder. They try him for Christa Harmon, I'm sorry, Christa Harrison's murder. He's he's put on
00:29:09
trial. He goes to trial. He's found guilty. I mean, after all, he's got all this evidence against him, right? Um
00:29:15
they find him guilty, sentence him. He is sentenced to death. He is executed in 2002.
00:29:22
His last uh meal request was a single unpitted olive uh because he had in mind that an olive tree would grow from his
00:29:31
remains and he would have eternal life. He's probably right. Um so did you did you witness that
00:29:38
execution or did you know you were a journalist at the time? I've spoken to people that were there. Okay. Um, you
00:29:44
know, one of the last things he said was, "I did not, you know, mi Mr. and Mrs. Harmon, I did not kill your
00:29:49
daughter." Okay. Um, and he left behind a box of notes, um, and evidence, uh, and police reports. Um, and he had begun
00:29:57
to s suggest that somebody else was responsible for the crime. Um, but he wouldn't really ever say who.
00:30:05
Um, and that box, uh, by the way, it's a creepy, when I say like a cardboard box,
00:30:11
you're probably picturing, you know, with the flaps, like a cigar box is what I picture. Well, okay, that's
00:30:17
interesting, too. But this was a very peculiar box. Um, it it to me it looked like almost like a kid's coffin. It was
00:30:26
it was a long very sturdy cardboard box and the lid slipped onto it like a sarcophagus lid. Not like it not like
00:30:34
flaps. It was a lid that kind of lifted off and and when placed on it almost feels like it it forms a seal once it
00:30:40
gets to its end point. Exactly. You know like like where they found the Ark of the Covenant, you know, in Raiders of
00:30:46
the Lost Arc. And this box eventually ends up at the office of Cleveland scene um where I'm a um a you know a a rookie
00:30:56
reporter and I find it and I'm like what's this? Oh well this is a story that you know nobody's been able to tell
00:31:02
that's you know guy that murdered very obviously you know killed these girls and always denied it and that somewhere
00:31:09
in this box is evidence that he didn't do it. and Cleveland scene gets this box. How? Um I believe it comes from was
00:31:16
it a religious leader or I believe comes from a um like a priest or a reverend who um was helping u Bule out in the
00:31:27
days leading up to his execution, you know, being there for him as a as a counselor or something of that nature.
00:31:32
Yeah. So Bu left this box to him and then that he eventually gives it to scene and that's where I get it and I
00:31:38
start going through it and it slowly it well not slowly it quickly dawns on me that there is another suspect here. Um
00:31:47
and uh I had my hunches already. Okay. And I but what I did next was uh I contacted the um Wayne County
00:31:58
Prosecutor's Office. They're the ones that tried Bule for Christa Harrison's murder. I said, "Hey, I'd like to take a
00:32:03
look at your old files on on the Harrison case." They're like, "Harrison, that's a closed case. What are you
00:32:08
looking at?" I'm like, "It doesn't matter." I said, "Can I look at can I see the files?" I And by the way, as a
00:32:13
reporter, I hate it when like you ask for a report and they ask you why you need it. Like, that's that's illegal, by
00:32:20
the way. Like, in the state of Ohio under sunshine laws, they're not allowed to ask you that question. They ask it
00:32:26
all the time, right? Um, so anyways, I get down there one day and I drive down and I end up in this uh creepy basement
00:32:34
microfilm room and uh I get all these old files that they've that they've put on
00:32:41
microfilm from Bule's um first case and I pull up the film and as soon as I see it I know what it is. It's the grand
00:32:50
jury report and grand jury reports are sealed. Nobody's allowed to see them. certainly not reporters. Um, it's
00:32:58
illegal for us to obtain them, but they made a mistake. They gave it to me. So, I'm go through these grand jury reports
00:33:06
and the first thing I see is that the prosecutor, their star witness is a guy named Ralph Ross Jr. and these this is
00:33:14
testimony. The prosecutor's questioning him and and the prosecutor says, "Hey," he's trying to get information about
00:33:21
Bule, linking him to these murders. Hey, um, do you think your uncle killed these
00:33:26
girls? Well, yeah. Uh, you know, let me tell you what happened. Um, I was, you know,
00:33:32
Ralph Ross Jr. said that he was living with his uncle, Buell. Self-admitted. Self-admitted. Yeah. He was living at
00:33:41
that ranch house. Um, and he said, "Yeah, my uncle, I used to get in the van with him and we'd go cruising for
00:33:48
women, man." And the prosecutor's like, "What do you mean?" And he's like, "Well, we used to drive around and Bule
00:33:53
would tell me, you know, how we go looking for women to abduct and he would tell me how he was going to get this
00:34:00
woman in the van and take her back home and we'd take turns and um he's like, "But um but I thought it was all talk."
00:34:08
Well, and and Bule was such he was such a prick that he he he even says like to to Ralph, you know, every woman has a a
00:34:18
a rape fantasy or an abduction rape fantasy. Right. Right. That's how he justified it. You know, let's let's let
00:34:24
them fulfill their fantasy. Now, um Ralph on the stand says, you know, I was, you know, it comes out that he was
00:34:32
suggesting girls and Bule's like, "Oh, come on. let's, you know, let's not cross that line. You know, I've got I've
00:34:39
got standards, man. And uh um so we've got Ralph Ross Jr. suggesting let's, you know, let's go after girls and Bu
00:34:47
doesn't want any part of it. Um if you go digging in Christa Harrison's the police reports, um you find that Bule
00:34:55
was spotted at a baseball game that she attended uh that she played at. Um she was abducted from that baseball field uh
00:35:04
about a week after her game. Um and she was abducted by a man in a van that matched the description of Bule's van.
00:35:12
Um there was an eyewitness. There was an eyewitness. Yeah. Uh a a young boy who was playing with Christa um sees this
00:35:20
van pull up and a guy force her into the van. Um, and but if you read the police
00:35:26
reports, you find out that at that baseball game that Bule attended where Christa played, there was another guy
00:35:31
with him. Um, the guy was holding a camera. Um, and uh, at the time of the abduction, you know,
00:35:39
um, they showed uh, later on after Bule was arrested, they went to the witness and they're like, "Hey, you know, we
00:35:45
found that guy with the van uh, you know, here's his picture." And the kid took a look at it. He's like, "No,
00:35:52
that's not the guy that came out of the van and took Christa." Um, looked kind of like him, but that wasn't him. Um,
00:35:59
and Ralph Frost Jr. looks uh so much like Bule in some ways, which is crazy. They're they're not actually related.
00:36:06
No, they're not. But when you see pictures of them side by side, you you would believe them to be related almost.
00:36:11
Very similar. Yeah, they have similar features. Dark hair and Yeah. And uh in fact they look so much alike that Ralph
00:36:18
Ross sometimes used Bu's license um to get uh into bars. Okay. So um you know they they swap license. So long story
00:36:27
short, Ralph Ross Jr. was was living in the apartment the the house in Doylestown. Um and I find out that he's
00:36:36
living there when Christa Harrison is abducted. M in fact he's living there until they her body was dumped several
00:36:44
days after her abduction. Um and uh after that he quits his job in Akran and moves back home to Marietta
00:36:54
uh near Marietta. Um and uh there there's a description in the reports where um he shows up to work with his
00:37:02
arm all bandaged uh the day after um Christa's body was found. Uh, and uh, he actually calls off the day that Christa
00:37:14
Christa's body was dumped. Buell has an alibi, by the way, uh, for the day that,
00:37:20
you know, cuz there's a witness that saw um, uh, the guy dumping Christa's Chris's body. Um, so we know when that
00:37:27
happened. Bule has an alibi. He was out shopping by a buying a dryer. Okay. Um, Ralph Ross called off work that day. He
00:37:36
does not have an alibi. The next day he shows up with what he says is a broken arm. He's got it in his sling. He's all
00:37:42
kind of messed up. Um and then he moves out of Bule's house. So he's there the whole time that even the prosecution is
00:37:50
saying Bu has Christa. And we know um from these adult women that were definitively raped by Bule, uh he kept
00:38:00
them at the house. So if it's Bule doing this, he's got Christa at the house, you
00:38:06
know. So, at the very least, at the very least, Ralph Ross Jr. had to have been present for that if he's not complicit,
00:38:15
if he didn't participate, if he didn't do the killing. Um, guy was living there when Christa
00:38:22
was in that house. Um, and all that evidence, the fibers, the carpet, um, you know, the plastic that they found
00:38:30
around her, all that that came from the house, Ralph Ross Jr. had access to that, too. And what about the van that
00:38:38
she was abducted from? That had to have been Bule's van. Well, guess what Bule did for his nephew? He tracked down the
00:38:44
same make and model van and got it for his nephew. They drove the same van and they had rigged these uh um these metal
00:38:55
hooks in the back of the van. They took out a seat um you know, so that they had
00:39:01
a place to to chain the girls to hold somebody. To hold somebody. Yeah. Um, so all that evidence that ties be to the
00:39:08
crime also ties Ralph uh Ralph Ross Jr. Um, and so this suddenly became very interesting to me. Yeah. And I track I
00:39:18
track Ralph Ross Jr. down and he's living living um near uh Stubenville area actually. Uh when I finally finally
00:39:25
get him, he's still he's never been convicted. He's still free. And um I find that he's living um we're like an
00:39:34
eighth of a mile like right around the corner from where Barbara Barnes was last seen. It's a cold case from
00:39:42
Stubenville area. Uh young girl about the same age as Christa Harrison was um abducted. Uh her body was found on the
00:39:51
side of a river uh months later. Um Ralph Ross Jr.'s uh when I tracked him down was working
00:39:58
for a cable company installing cable boxes in people's homes. Um after I wrote about him and linked him to these
00:40:04
these crimes um at least uh to the point where he had to have known about Christa
00:40:10
Harrison um they fired uh they fired him from the cable company. The FBI came in
00:40:16
and processed the van that he was using. I don't know that they found anything. I
00:40:19
know they were very interested in taking a look at it. And uh um last I heard uh
00:40:26
every once in a while somebody will give me an update on him because he's still free. He's still down there. Never
00:40:30
really been questioned. Um uh he's now working for UPS. You know, he loves any sort of job that gets you in near
00:40:40
people's homes. Um so it's a it's it's a messed up it's a messed up case. Very convoluted, very very interesting.
00:40:49
Um the other the other girl of course uh you know Bule was only tried and executed for Harrison and and I once
00:40:56
asked the detective I said why didn't you guys try him for Tina Harmon um we know the evidence links them why didn't
00:41:02
you try him for Deborah K Smith and the detective said you well we only need to kill him once you know we got the
00:41:10
conviction on Christo why would we go after it so I get together with Tina Harmon's family this was uh probably
00:41:17
about five or 6 years ago and uh her Tina Harmon's case had never been closed. And I said, "Well, um you know
00:41:25
what? What do you think happened?" They're like, "Well, we don't think it was Bule. Uh they won't ever close the
00:41:30
case." And I went to the prosecutor and I said, "Uh you know, why haven't you contacted the family? You know, you
00:41:36
didn't even call them to tell them that you believe it was Bule, so you're not investigating the case anymore." And so
00:41:42
it went back and forth and eventually I started working with the Harmon family as a victim's advocate um sort of thing
00:41:49
and and uh as a liaison between them and the press and we held a press conference
00:41:53
and we demanded that the prosecutor test the evidence in the Tina Harmon case to
00:41:59
to definitively link it u to Bule if they could. Um my thought was maybe it'll link to Ralph Ross Jr. I you know
00:42:08
we haven't tested the evidence. Let's see. Um, so, uh, the prosecutor came back and
00:42:16
said, "No, it, you know, where are we going to find the funds, you know, to test this evidence that's 30 years old?"
00:42:22
Said, "Well, how much is it going to cost?" He's like, "It's, well, man, it's going to be at least $300."
00:42:29
I said, "I'll give you $300. You know, let's test this thing." He's like, "No, that's not how it how it's done." So, we
00:42:34
ran another article and it said, "Prosecutor won't spend $300 to close a 30, you know, 30-year-old cold case." It
00:42:41
embarrassed them enough that they actually did the test. Um, and the test came back a couple weeks later that they
00:42:47
had Bule's DNA on Tina Harmon's pants. So, they were able to say, "Well, there you go. Uh, it was Bu after all. We're
00:42:56
going to close the case." Now, um, I still have my doubts. You know, I have my doubts about the way the evidence was
00:43:04
tested. Um, I have uh I have my doubts that it was Bule working alone. You know, I think I I'm I know I know Ralph
00:43:17
Ross Jr. at least had to have have been complic complicit in some way in Christa
00:43:24
Harrison's murder. um at least had knowledge that it happened before anybody else did. So it would it would
00:43:32
uh I would assume that that would be true also for Tina Harmon um and Deborah K.
00:43:39
Smith. So Bule he the the girl that gets the woman that gets away she flees to the neighbor's home.
00:43:48
That's how police they they get into Bule's home and they that starts the ball roll they come up with this all
00:43:54
this evidence. Does she say at any point? She doesn't give any indication that there was more than one abductor though.
00:44:02
No. No. Um and and by then Ralph Ross Jr. had had moved away. Had moved out because your suspicions might have been
00:44:11
he moved away because of the the the death of that young girl. It's too much of a coincidence that you know he calls
00:44:18
off the day that her body was dumped. That Bule has an alibi for the time that the body was dumped. that Ralph Ross Jr.
00:44:26
shows up to work the next day with his arm in a sling and then quits his job and moves back home. I think he thought
00:44:34
that the police were coming for both of them. I mean, the acts that Bule did anyway are strange in nature by far and
00:44:42
you know, heinous crimes that he committed. But, uh, regardless if he killed the girls or not, but the, you
00:44:49
know, the the things he did to these women are despicable. Yeah. But the thing that's odd to me is do we
00:44:57
I I don't know. Do we see people graduate from murder to releasing victims? I mean, no, absolutely not. In
00:45:06
fact, I spoke to a couple profilers on this. I believe I spoke to John Douglas directly again um on this case to get
00:45:13
that opinion. And you talk to criminal profilers that that do this for a living and they will tell you no. In in the
00:45:23
history in the history of serial killing, you don't have a serial killer that gruesomely murders girls who also
00:45:32
just abducts and releases grown women, right? Those are two different MOS. Those are two different monsters. you
00:45:39
know, um, you don't go from killing to backing off and and doing catch and release. So, the the schools of thought
00:45:46
here would be either Bule did do these things that he was convicted of and and ultimately sentenced to death for or
00:45:53
with the assistance of his not really his nephew, but his nephew through marriage. Yeah. Uh, you know,
00:46:01
that the two of them did these crimes together, you know, or that Ralph Ross Jr. did these by himself and and got
00:46:10
lucky because he happened to live with a serial rapist, right? Um and I don't know the answer to that question. I do
00:46:17
know this. Um it's not the only time that Ralph Ross Jr. and Robert Buell um were working together in a sexual
00:46:29
nature. um a woman came forward and spoke to me that I was able to confirm had a a
00:46:35
relationship with Robert Buell and she uh you know in in a grownup kind of ashamed way told me
00:46:45
about how um what Bu like to do is is have threesomes with women and his nephew Ralph Ross Jr. And so he'd get
00:46:54
and and these were admittedly at least started consensual. Um and she'd go over and and uh you know Bule would have her
00:47:04
have sex with Ralph Ross Jr. So they were they were in the thick of it together. Now if if you know you you're
00:47:12
living at my home and and and how do I not know if if you're killing children, right? Killing girls
00:47:19
and you live in my home with me. How do I not know that if I'm Robert Buell? Of course. Of course. How do I not know
00:47:25
that? You know that you I mean, if if he's got the girl in the house, you see it. You see it happen. You see the
00:47:31
things that he's doing. And maybe it scares you so much that you run away, you know.
00:47:38
So, there's there's answers to this case. There's a guy running around with with answers and and the prosecutor,
00:47:45
what made me so mad was you read through these grand jury transcripts, Ralph Ross
00:47:49
Jr.'s on the stand. He's very much making himself a suspect in the case. Mhm. But the prosecutor knew that he was
00:47:57
invaluable as a witness. He was the case against Bule. He was the first witness that the prosecution called and he's the
00:48:04
one that um essentially convicted his uncle Buell. Mhm. Um and what's Bule going to say? No, no, no. You know,
00:48:12
yeah, my nephew did it. You know, he did it, too. He knew he knew the evidence against him. And you obviously this this
00:48:20
case is featured in your true crime book, Serial Killer's Apprentice, but it also kind of bleeds into one of your
00:48:28
fictional works. Do you want to touch on that just real quick? Well, um, yeah, I've written a couple novels. The first
00:48:35
one is The Man from Primrose Lane. And The Man from Primrose Lane there, it was definitely inspired by my work as a true
00:48:42
crime journalist for The Cleveland Scene and Free Times. Um, and yeah, there's uh
00:48:47
some similarities between some of the um the pieces of this case, the serial killer's apprentice. Um, there's also
00:48:56
some similarities to, you know, um, you know, a a bizarre case out of East Lake where a guy committed suicide and the
00:49:05
police went to contact next of Kin and they find out that uh, oh, you know, they they're like, "We've got some bad
00:49:12
news about your brother. He committed suicide." And they reach this woman. She's like, "What? You know, my brother
00:49:17
died in 1948. What are you talking about?" And that's how they they learned that this this guy in East Lake had been
00:49:22
living under a fake name in Cleveland for 30 years. So, yeah, there's there's bits and pieces that definitely inspired
00:49:28
Primrose Lane. Primrose Lane, though, is uh you know, uh it's sci-fi. You know, there's time travel involved and um you
00:49:36
know, so it's a very different story, too. I found that story to be fascinating,
00:49:41
Captain. I tell you, I found out about this oh probably about three or four years ago. Now, I had already knew about
00:49:48
the Robert Bule case and I knew about the uh the the girl that he was convicted of killing, right? As well as
00:49:56
having been suspected of two other girls, right? And I knew that they had found the um you know, the the the one
00:50:03
woman had uh got out of his house as he left for work and got away from him. And
00:50:08
that's what started the ball rolling on all this. I knew about this, but I always just assumed, you know, that
00:50:14
Robert Buell that that he was just proclaiming his innocence because he was going to be sentenced to death. I didn't
00:50:20
know that there was anything behind there. There's kind of a story behind the story here, right? And we didn't see
00:50:27
this until we're able to talk to somebody like James Rener who had some additional access to some of this
00:50:33
information because of his job, because of where he worked and people that he interacted with. I mean, he he worked
00:50:39
very closely with a journalist that spent a lot of time with Robert Bule before his execution. It seems like uh
00:50:46
Robert Buell also he wasn't just saying, "Hey, I didn't do this." He also tried to point you in the the correct
00:50:53
direction or what he felt was the correct direction. And so, a little bit of armchair detective. Well, he it he
00:51:00
was kind of cryptic about that, though. I don't know that he ever outright said that this this so-called nephew of his
00:51:07
would have been involved in anything, but what he kept reminding everybody of was that there's still a killer out
00:51:13
there. And he actually pointed to some crimes that took place in Ohio and western Pennsylvania of girls roughly
00:51:21
the same age. Now, one of the cities of the girl of one of these girls was Stubenville, and you heard James Rener
00:51:28
talk about that. that is where his his uh nephew by marriage would eventually end up living, right? Uh so that kind of
00:51:36
points a finger at him. Uh one of the cases too that he talks about was the Amy Mahalik case which is actually quite
00:51:44
similar to to the uh Tina Harmon case that we talked about today. There are some sim similarities there. However,
00:51:51
yeah, both both were found with uh dog hairs and fibers on them. Correct. and there and there was a situation with the
00:51:57
with the stabbing and a possible um uh blunt force trauma. So, there's some interesting connections there. Um I
00:52:06
think my in my opinion, is it possible that that his nephew was involved? I definitely think so. I think that there
00:52:13
is there's something weird going on here because there's no way. And but I don't
00:52:18
believe Buell completely because Bule wants to make it sound like, yeah, I raped some women, you know, yeah, I I
00:52:24
tortured. And here's the thing. When he says, "I raped some women." Mhm. When you dive into the case, you figure out
00:52:30
he didn't just rape these women. He held them captive for days and he tortured them. I mean, he did horrible things to
00:52:36
these women. It It's as close as you can to killing somebody. So, what I'm getting at here, though, is there's no
00:52:43
way that these two men lived together and they weren't in this thing together somehow. Because I I just don't see how
00:52:51
one could not know what the other one was up to. There's no way that Bule is cap is holding women captive, raping
00:52:58
them, and unbeknownst to his his nephew, well, his roommate. Yeah. Yeah. And then
00:53:04
on the other hand, there's no way that the nephew is abducting young girls and killing them. And here's the thing, too.
00:53:10
I kept looking at this thinking because we talked about Bule had one of those big vans, right? And so did his nephew.
00:53:17
His nephew had a very similar van. Well, here's the problem with that. They're like creepy van buddies. And I kept
00:53:23
thinking, I'm like, well, maybe maybe the nephew kept the girls in his in the van, you know, but we're talking about
00:53:30
several days go by. It's certainly a possibility. However, there are things in the house that linked the house to
00:53:38
the girls. So, either those items were were in the van with the girls at the time or the girls were in the house,
00:53:45
which I think is the most likely situation, or the the items would be transferred. I mean, like as far as
00:53:51
carpet fibers and dog hairs and stuff like that, maybe a dog never goes into your van, but there is transfer. And the
00:53:57
nephew actually kind of fingers himself a little bit because he he's talking about in the grand jury when the grand
00:54:04
juryy's trying to to decide if they're going to indict Robert Buell. Uh the the nephew is then giving his account of
00:54:13
things that he knew of that might have been going on in the house or things that he saw when when he lived there.
00:54:20
and he kind of puts himself he kind of throws his hat in the ring so to speak as being potentially involved in this
00:54:27
situation. Well, yeah. I mean, he definitely throws himself underneath the creepy van. And I don't think, you know,
00:54:33
Robert Buell, I don't think he wanted to exactly point the finger at his nephew because if you do that and and you and
00:54:42
you go out and you seek out this man and you bring him to justice, it all just kind of circles back to you, doesn't it?
00:54:49
I mean, it doesn't really clear you of anything. It just points out that maybe you this was a tag team effort uh on on
00:54:56
some occasions. Yeah, definitely. That I mean, yeah, and who knows? I mean, he could just be lying about the whole
00:55:03
thing in general. And we we do have to keep in mind though that after the nephew moved out, Bule continued to
00:55:10
commit crimes and that's when he was raping these grown women and and holding them captive. So, we do need to we
00:55:16
should point that out before, you know, keep that in mind when you're considering this other person as a
00:55:22
suspect. Keep in mind the the person that we have to look at in his character and what we know he is 100% capable of
00:55:31
while we're looking at this other guy. So, it's always great to have uh James Rener aka the enemy on the show, the
00:55:39
frennemy. Yeah. and make sure that you pick up I mean he he has a lot of interesting books. You have serial
00:55:46
apprentice, the serial killers apprentice. Serial killers apprentice. You have the Amy Mahalavic story. Yep.
00:55:51
And then you have the true crime addict and which which is a is a very fascinating read and you hear him talk
00:55:58
about uh one of his fiction books there uh the man from Primrose Lane. Uh he and
00:56:04
he also has the great forgetting. So there's plenty of good uh books. Our our recommended reading is well just buy
00:56:10
something from James. Just buy something James Runner. No, the the man from Primrose Lane is actually one of my
00:56:15
favorite fiction books of all time. But we are of course recommending this week that you check out The Serial Killer's
00:56:21
Apprentice by James Rener. This obviously featuring the case that we just discussed and many many more
00:56:28
including the disappearance of Ray Greyar, the unsolved murder of Joseph Cupchek. Uh both of these cases are
00:56:36
cases that listeners have asked us to cover. They are listener request and both of them are featured in this serial
00:56:43
killer's apprentice. And another case that James covered is now the very famous case which is that of the
00:56:49
disappearance of Amanda Barry and uh Gina De Jesus which of course were later solved and thank God they found those
00:56:58
girls. That was the case where the three girls had been living captive which included Michelle Knight. All three were
00:57:06
abducted by Ariel Castro. And during their time in captivity, Castro even fathered a child or two with with one or
00:57:13
one of the girls or more than one of the girls. Uh when James wrote about this, when he wrote The Serial Killer's
00:57:19
Apprentice and it and it covered this case, that case was unsolved at the time. And in fact, no one had really
00:57:26
linked the disappearances to that of Michelle Knight. Now, I do like to go back and read about a solved case before
00:57:34
it was solved. Uh, so pick up The Serial Killers Apprentice. True stories of Cleveland's most intriguing unsolved
00:57:41
crimes. Do that at our website. Uh, recommended books are listed on the recommended page. Yeah, just go to true
00:57:49
crimegar.com. And yeah, I mean once you listen to our show and then you read this book by James Runner, you're never
00:57:54
going to want to visit Ohio ever again. But uh yeah, it's a it's a very good read. Yeah. So go to true crimegar.com,
00:58:02
click on the Amazon banner, and type in the name of the book that you are looking for or really any other item
00:58:08
that you want to pick up. Uh because if that you're in need of because every little bit helps the show. Yeah, I just
00:58:15
bought 63 yo-yos off of Amazon. got a good deal. But bulk. I buy bulk. He's a yo-yo collector. Hey, you know, you got
00:58:24
to do some things. Yo-yo ma. Cheers, my beautiful friends. Have fun this weekend. And till next time, be good, be
00:58:31
kind, and don't litter. [Music]