BY SUSAN VELA
The Cincinnati Enquirer
BURLINGTON -- A decision connected with one of Northern Kentucky's most ghastly crimes could come at the end of this week.
Boone Circuit Judge Joseph Bamberger will begin hearing testimony Thursday to determine whether Clay Shrout's maternal grandparents are entitled to half of the proceeds from life insurance
on the family members he murdered four years ago.
In the early morning of May 26, 1994, Mr. Shrout, then 17, killed his parents -- W. Harvey and Rebecca Johnson Shrout -- and two younger sisters -- Kristen and Lauren Shrout -- in their home on Tiburon Drive in Union.
W. Wayne and Carolyn Johnson of Georgetown say they are entitled to at least $500,000 in life insurance proceeds.
The outcome of the bench trial hinges on whether the Johnsons can prove one of their granddaughters died last and that Clay Shrout's paternal grandparents, Roberta and J.N. Shrout Sr. of Sharpsburg, reneged on an agreement to equally divide $1 million in life insurance proceeds. The proceeds mainly stem from the policy on W. Harvey Shrout, an executive in a computer paper business.
Mrs. Shrout, now a widow, has said she never made such an agreement. And there is no way to prove who died last, said H. Lawson Walker II, who is representing Mrs. Shrout.
The key to the Johnsons' lawsuit is whether Mr. Shrout died before his two daughters. If so, the Johnsons maintain, his estate passes to the girls, and they are entitled to a share. If the girls died first -- or if a state law that says such deaths occur simultaneously applies -- then the Johnsons have no claim on the estate, which passes to Harvey Shrout's mother, Roberta Shrout.
The plaintiffs' attorney, Mark Bubenzer of Frankfort, and the Johnsons did not return calls to The Kentucky Enquirer.
About 10 witnesses, including physicians and forensic pathologists, will testify at the bench trial.
Clay Shrout, now 21, has pleaded guilty but mentally ill in the murders of his parents and sisters. He is serving a life sentence at Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville.
News reports of the murders in Union indicate that Clay Shrout shot his father last. A story detailing what Clay Shrout told a friend that May morning indicates:
He set his alarm for 5 a.m. for the sole purpose of killing his parents at their home in the Southampton Estates subdivision. He woke up, went into his parents' bedroom and shot his mother and then his father. Next, he met his 14-year-old sister Kristen at her bedroom doorway and shot her.
He never told the friend when he shot his 12-year-old sister Lauren, but he told the friend he shot his father a second time when he saw him crawling toward his bedroom door.
Court records for the civil lawsuit include responses Roberta Shrout gave in July to questions from the plaintiffs. When asked about the conversations she has had with Clay Shrout about the murders, she described visiting him at Kentucky State Reformatory near LaGrange.
Mr. Shrout was there until 1997. Prison authorities moved him to the maximum-security facility in Eddyville because he was plotting an escape.
"He made a remark about how boring it was being incarcerated," Mrs. Shrout said in the court documents. "I asked him if he had thought that he could do what he did and nothing happen. His reply was, "Granny, I was just crazy.' "
