BY ANDREA TORTORA
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Jean Williamson
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CRESTVIEW HILLS -- Jean Williamson went shopping Thursday morning, leaving plenty of time to get back to meet her cleaning lady.
She pulled into her driveway about 1 p.m., retrieved her mail, unloaded her groceries and went into the house through the back door.
Minutes later, she was dead.
Her housekeeper found her bloodied body in the bathtub.
Authorities think Mrs. Williamson, 66, was killed by an intruder. Police were dispatched to the Calumet Court address for a possible suicide, according to scanner traffic. A body had been found in the bathtub with blood all over.
Authorities quickly determined that someone else had killed the widow, a retired desktop publisher for The Cincinnati Enquirer. The back door showed signs of forced entry; rooms in the house had been ransacked.
Investigators were tight-lipped about specifics Friday, but it didn't take long for authorities and neighbors to start drawing comparisons between Mrs. Williamson's death and the 1997 slaying of a Covington woman.
"When I first heard about it, that was what I thought of -- Doris," Covington Police Detective Brett Tate said. He has been dogging that case for seven months and spent part of Friday with investigators working on Ms. Williamson's death.
Doris Bertsch, a 70-year-old Cincinnati Opera seamstress was found dead in her Panorama Drive house last Nov. 25. She was discovered after a friend asked police to check on her in her home in Covington's Kenton Hills neighborhood. Officers found a rear glass door open and Mrs. Bertsch dead upstairs. Investigators have said they think she was killed by someone who sneaked into her house to rob her.
"What we're going to do is see if anything does coincide," Detective Tate said. "It just depends on if anything matches up. If it does, we'll all be on it with all fours."
Here's what police think could have happened in Mrs. Williamson's death:
The intruder likely parked a car on Shinkle Drive, a road that sits behind and below the Williamson home, reaching the house by walking through woods that separates the two. The intruder entered from the back of the house, jimmying open a door. When Mrs. Williamson got home, she probably surprised the intruder, who had already gone through several rooms in the house.
After a struggle in the bathroom, police think, the intruder fled the same way he entered.
Richard Noah, 78, who lives across the street from Mrs. Williamson, said he didn't hear anything until an ambulance pulled up about 1:20 p.m. He said canine units searched the area surrounding Calumet Court and police interviewed neighbors about any suspicious cars or people in the area.
"To think I was sitting here and all that was going on. That's what I find hardest to take," Mr. Noah said from an easy chair in his living room. He had to pause to gain composure. The picture window next to his chair faces Mrs. Williamson's house. "I was in this house so close, yet so far."
Mr. Noah said he and Mrs. Williamson, whose full name was Ramona Jean, have been friends for 15 years. He often took walks with Mrs. Williamson and her husband, Andrew, before he died of cancer in 1993.
After Mr. Williamson's death, Mr. Noah and Mrs. Williamson continued the close friendship, often chatting in their yards about the antics of their cats. She had a calico and he has a Siamese.
When Mr. Noah had heart surgery three weeks ago, Mrs. Williamson was the first to pay a visit, even though her hip was giving her trouble. She brought "health muffins," as he called them.
"I couldn't imagine her swatting a fly. She was the perfect neighbor," Mr. Noah said. "If you could mold the perfect neighbor, she was the mold."
Other friends, former colleagues and family said Mrs. Williamson was a quiet woman known for her kind gestures and good sense of humor.
Don Shepherd hired Mrs. Williamson to work in the Enquirer's ad-service department 10 years ago. He said she was a graceful, professional person.
"She's one of those people you like to be around because she injects you with her good gestures," Mr. Shepherd said. "But when we switched to our fourth new software program, she said that was enough."
Mrs. Williamson retired in 1995. Her brother, Wayne Crookshanks of Concord, Ohio, said she spent time gardening, knitting and Scottish Highland dancing with the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society. Mrs. Williamson is survived by three daughters, Lynne Fuller of Abingdon, Va.; Karen Shiffler of Chardon, Ohio; and Gayle Williamson, who lived with her mother in Crestview Hills.
Other survivors include her close friend Ed Strohmeier; her mother, Eva Crookshanks of Mentor, Ohio; three brothers, Wayne Crookshanks of Chardon, Ohio; Neil Crookshanks of Strongsville, Ohio; Vern Crookshanks of Thompson Township, Ohio; two sisters, Norine Ensign of Chardon Township, Ohio; Vivien Tinner of Unionville, Ohio, and five grandchildren.
Jane Prendergast contributed to this report.
