BY TANYA ALBERT
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Earl Ingels was looking for an alibi, a woman testified Tuesday. Leah Bickers told a Hamilton County Common Pleas Court jury that the Colerain Township businessman asked her to say she spent part of a day with him. It was the same day another woman says Mr. Ingels drugged her and sexually molested her at his home.
" "If push comes to shove, this is what I need you to say,' " Ms. Bickers testified he said.
Mr. Ingels, 52, is accused of drugging eight women and then sexually molesting some of them. He is charged with kidnapping, gross sexual imposition, sexual battery and attempted kidnapping.
Ms. Bickers was the last witness to testify in the trial, which is entering its second week.
The woman testified that Mr. Ingels called her and asked her to meet him at a Frisch's Big Boy Restaurant. When they met, he gave her an envelope with a story written on it, she testified. He later gave her a typed version of the story.
She read both of them in court.
He asked her to say that the woman, who had started working in his home office that day, stole one of his mother's rings, Ms. Bickers testified. And Mr. Ingels asked her to tell the police that he said the woman was strange, she said.
Mr. Ingels also asked her to say that the two of them drove to Indiana to look at a vehicle he wanted to buy and that they got lost.
Ms. Bickers testified Tuesday that none of that ever happened. But the defense tried to discredit her testimony by asking her whether the story was really to hide from her husband an affair she was having with Mr. Ingels. The woman testified that it wasn't. Closing arguments are scheduled to begin at 10:30 a.m. today.
