Serial killer up for parole

Monday, January 25, 1999

Serial killer up for parole

In 1978, Larry Ralston received four life sentences for killing four young Tristate women. One conviction was overturned, but in 1984 he received another life sentence for murder. This week, the former Norwood man will plead for his freedom.

Dori Porter's daughter, Linda Kay Harmon, was 17 when she was killed by Larry Ralston in 1975.
(Scott Audette photo)
| ZOOM |

Somewhere between Chicago and Batavia, in the back seat of a police car, Larry Ralston freed his conscience.

"He just started crying, and he said, "I didn't mean to kill any of them,' " recalled Robert Stout, a sheriff's investigator assigned in November 1977 to transport Mr. Ralston to Clermont County, where he faced charges of raping three 15-year-old girls.

The words sent a jolt of electricity through the detective: No one had accused Mr. Ralston of any killings.

In a second, Mr. Stout's role had changed from rookie detective to lead investigator and sole interrogator in a string of serial killings. It was his biggest case.

Grueling interrogations over two weeks yielded confessions to five slayings that had stymied police for more than two years. Those admissions landed Mr. Ralston in prison with four life sentences.

This week, he will get his first chance to convince the Ohio Parole Board that he is rehabilitated and should be freed.

Larry Ralston then
| ZOOM |

More than 400 people have signed petitions or sent letters to the parole board opposing his release, including Dori Porter, mother of Mr. Ralston's first victim.

"My hope is they keep him where he belongs," Mrs. Porter said from her home near Ocala, Fla. she lives in Lady Lake but prefers we don't use the city. "He belongs in hell, but at least he's in prison."

When police caught up with him, Mr. Ralston was a 28-year-old unemployed dropout of Norwood High School. He had held jobs before at the Hamilton County morgue and a state mental hospital, but at that time, he was living at home or with a short list of friends.

Mr. Ralston's father told reporters he had warned his son that his irresponsible lifestyle - sleeping all day, staying out all night and running around with young girls - would bring only trouble.

His mother called him a "likable boy" who had a knack for talking to anybody, even if he didn't know them.

Mr. Stout, who also grew up in Norwood, remains puzzled why Mr. Ralston singled him out hear his confession. The two have not spoken since the convictions.

"He showed absolutely no remorse. It was the high point in his life. He claimed most of them were very free with sex, and that they would have nothing to do with him," said Mr. Stout, who has since retired from law enforcement and lives in Clermont County.

Ralston now

The killings began Sept. 3, 1975, with Mrs. Porter's 17-year-old daughter, Linda Kay Harmon. She disappeared while waiting for a bus at Wolfangle Road and Beechmont Avenue, about three blocks from home. It was to be Miss Harmon's first day at Withrow High School after moving from Finneytown. She never made it.

Miss Harmon's body parts were found scattered in a wooded area in Felicity 34 days later, after two dogs dragged pieces of her arms to their owner's porch.

A year later, the nude remains of other young women were discovered in shallow graves:

RALSTON
TIMELINE

• Nancy Grigsby, 23, of Withamsville, a disabled woman who frequented bars in Clifton, Madisonville and Mount Lookout, disappeared May 4, 1976, on the way to meet her boyfriend in Fairfax. Hunters discovered her body Nov. 15, 1976, on Moore-Marathon Road in Clermont County's Jackson Township.

• Elaina Marie Bear, 15, of Northside was found Feb. 28, 1977, in a creekbed off Katy's Lane near Wilmington in Clinton County.

• Diana Sue McCrobie, 16, of Springfield Township was found Oct. 22, 1977, covered with brush at East Fork Lake State Park in Clermont County. Police said she dated Mr. Ralston.

Hamilton County authorities would later convict Mr. Ralston in the death of Mary Ruth Hopkins, 21, of Cincinnati's East End. Her naked body — with a T-shirt wrapped around the neck — was discovered June 30, 1976, off Five Mile Road in Anderson Township.

Rejection, then death
In taped confessions, played in court, Mr. Ralston told Mr. Stout how he picked up his hitchhiking victims, drove them around drinking wine and smoking marijuana and that he strangled them when they rejected him sexually.

He said he disposed of the clothes and belongings of at least two of the victims in a gas station Dumpster in Norwood.

“After every murder he did, he would go to (a friend's) house and he said he would turn on the song, "Fly Like An Eagle.' It just put him in a trance, made him feel better about what he did,” Mr. Stout said.

He thinks the slayings might have satisfied the killer's eerie fixation with death.

Watching people die was a subject Mr. Ralston seemed to enjoy talking about, Mr. Stout said.

“When he worked at Longview Hospital, one of the things he really got off on was the fact that he had missed his lunch hour, for maybe three or four days, for a week, in order to watch a person die,” he recalled from the interviews with Mr. Ralston in November 1977.

“He would be taking care of these people, just people in his area. He would know they were dying. He would go watch.”

After Mr. Ralston's arrest at his sister's house in Mount Prospect, Ill., he led detectives to his victims.

“It had been several years, but he was able to go to the exact area and pinpoint the exact spot ... Larry was very good at remembering facts and certain things only the one that killed the people would have known,” Mr. Stout said.

Lawyer not convinced
To this day, the man who defended Mr. Ralston in five murder cases is not convinced of his client's guilt in four of them.

“There just wasn't very much evidence to tie him to these other than the confessions. Not one of the confessions has any evidence in it that can be confirmed,” Cincinnati defense attorney Doug Mansfield said.

Mr. Ralston was convicted of five aggravated murders. However, the conviction in Miss Grigsby's death was overturned because the prosecution failed to introduce evidence of how she died.

Mr. Ralston had pleaded guilty in the death of Miss Hopkins and to two counts of rape in the case involving the 15-year-old girls.

Although Mr. Ralston initially was sentenced to death in Miss Bear's slaying, it was commuted to life in prison when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Ohio's death penalty statute unconstitutional in 1978.

Mr. Mansfield said Mr. Ralston, a heavy substance-abuser, was distraught over a breakup with his 14-year-old girlfriend at the time of his arrest and “would confess to anything they put in front of him.” The girl never was identified.

Mr. Mansfield said he received anonymous calls during the trials saying Mr. Ralston did not kill the five women, “that it primarily was associated with drugs and that the girls distributed drugs for other people.”

Most disturbing to Mr. Mansfield during that time was his client's demeanor. Mr. Ralston never flinched during the four trials in 1978, even when the judge announced a death sentence, describing in chilling frankness how the electrocution would be carried out.

“It was as if he'd been asked what he wanted for breakfast. He showed no emotion whatsoever,” Mr. Mansfield said.

Mother's dark fantasy
Mrs. Porter — the mother of the first victim — sometimes wonders what it would be like to kill Larry Ralston.

The daughter of a police officer, she is vigilant about keeping her daughter's killer in prison, although she wishes Mr. Ralston dead.

Mrs. Porter, now 62, recently traveled from her Florida home to meet with a member of the Ohio Parole Board in Columbus. She told him to keep Linda Kay's killer in jail. Forever.

“Larry Ralston is a cool, calculating, premeditated murderer. He killed innocent young girls and left them just laying there. He destroyed our family. He took away a piece of our heart,” Mrs. Porter said.

She urges others to protest Mr. Ralston's release in letters to the parole board. Mrs. Porter said the board member told her she is the only relative of any victim to contact his office. She fears the others don't know about the parole hearing.

For more than a month, after police dismissed Linda Kay as a runaway because of her age, Mrs. Porter and her family searched for the girl on their own.

They hired a private detective, consulted a psychic, posted a reward and opened a post office box for anonymous tips. Nothing came of it.

Any suggestion that Linda Kay ran away sickened her mother. She was too close to her sister, who was only 19 months older, Mrs. Porter said.

She had never run away before and things were going too well for the family. Mrs. Porter, then known as Dori Schultz, had remarried and moved her girls into a new home on Victor Street in Mount Washington.

Linda Kay, who loved music and poetry, spent a lot of time at a recording studio where her mother worked in Lockland, and talked of becoming a sound engineer, Mrs. Porter said.

She was a “habitual” kid, and one of those habits involved calling her mother when she was running late.

“I am just so angry that he took Linda. He killed Linda. He broke my heart. It's never going to stop. There will never ever be closure until the day I die, for me, or until I hear that he's dead,” Mrs. Porter said.

Mr. Mansfield said he has not heard from Mr. Ralston since their dealings 20 years ago, although he does legal work on occasion for Mr. Ralston's siblings. Mr. Ralston's parents, Kirby and Myrtle, have died since the trials, Mr. Mansfield said.

Tearful common ground
Mrs. Porter remembered speaking to Mr. Ralston's mother briefly during the trial.

“We were outside the courtroom, sitting out there. She was sitting there crying,” Mrs. Porter recalled.

“I went over and squatted in front of her and asked if there was anything I could do. I touched her hand. She said she was sorry.”

Mr. Stout said Myrtle Ralston attended each day of every trial, but sat outside the courtroom for fear that the things being said about her son in court might embarrass him in front of his mother. And Mrs. Ralton was the only person to whom Mr. Ralston showed remorse for his crimes, Mr. Stout said.

As the murder indictments were about to be released Nov. 29, 1977, Mr. Ralston asked Mr. Stout for a special visit with his mother. He didn't care about the headlines that would follow in the media. He just wanted to prepare his mother for what was ahead, Mr. Stout said.

“When he went in and put his arms around her, it was the only time he had ever broke down,” said Mr. Stout, who was there.



Front Page
Local
Sports
	Bengals
	Reds
	Bearcats
	Xavier
Business
Weather
Traffic
Back Issues
AP Wire
	World
	Nation
	Sports
	Business
	Arts
	Health

Jobs
Autos
General
Obits
Homes

TV Listings
Movies
Dining
Calendars
Weekend

Columns
Borgman

HelpDesk
Feedback
Circulation
Subscribe
Phone #'s
Search