Wednesday, February 09, 2000
11 siblings fight parole for dad's killer
BY LEW MOORES
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Some of Daniel Von Hoene's 11 children: (front) Dianne, Anne and Bob; (back) Mike, Dan and Jim.
(Craig Ruttle photo)
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They made popcorn for their father that Saturday night and then waited and waited for him to come home from work.
Every once in a while, Diane Von Hoene peeked out the window and once thought she saw her father closing the garage door.
“I thought, "OK, he's here,'” she recalled. “And then he wasn't.”
So most of them went on to bed that night, March 21, 1981, and some were finally awakened by voices. A priest and a police officer were at the front door.
Anne Von Hoene was awakened by the voices and then her brother, Jim, came to her bedroom door, just a silhouette in the light from the hallway.
He told her their father was leaving work and got held up in the parking lot. He was shot. “Dad's dead,” Jim Von Hoene said.
“I didn't say anything, and Jim just quietly backed out of the room and closed the door,” recalled Anne, just 14 on that night. “I was just sitting there in the dark by myself.”
The night Daniel Von Hoene was robbed, shot and killed in the parking lot of the Walgreens pharmacy on Linn Street in the West End, where he worked as a pharmacist, he left behind a wife and 11 children, ages 5 to 23. He was 48.
Samuel Ellis McCree, 28, was arrested within two days of the shooting and charged with aggravated murder and aggravated robbery. By mid-June he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
And now, 19 years later, Mr. McCree, serving his sentence at Chillicothe Correctional Institution, will be having his first eligibility hearing for parole in July.
Just the prospect of Mr. McCree's being free — the thought of his even being considered for parole — has angered, depressed and mobilized members of the Von Hoene family, many of whom still live in the area.
“This has been a very stressful time,” said Anne Von Hoene, who is now 33 and lives in Mount Washington. “But the times when we do best are the times when we're acting like a team.”
Some have written letters to the Ohio Parole Board; others are struggling with getting the wording just right. Brenda Jones, a daughter who was 12 at the time, wrote a letter, then abandoned it because it wasn't right. Mike Von Hoene, 18 at the time, is still composing his.
“I got into it for two sentences, and I just can't finish it. I'm going to have to,” Mike said.
Kathleen Burgener was 19 when her father was killed, a college sophomore. Today, she is an assistant attorney general for the state of Florida. She has taken the personal and legal reasons for opposing Mr. McCree's release and synthesized them in a list of reasons for opposing parole.
Among a dozen reasons, she wrote: “He made a woman a widow. He made eleven children fatherless.”
Hamilton County Prosecutor Mike Allen already has weighed in with a letter to the parole board that strongly opposes his release, pointing out Mr. McCree, who has a long criminal record, was out on parole at the time he killed Mr. Von Hoene.
“Too bad the state of Ohio could not seek the death penalty at the time these offenses were committed,” wrote Mr. Allen of the 1981 conviction that came before the reinstatement of the death penalty.
Then-Hamilton County Prosecutor Simon L. Leis Jr. complained 19 years ago that Mr. McCree had been released on parole without notification to his office, and that he objected to his release in any case. Within six months of his release, he had shot and killed Mr. Von Hoene.
Daniel Von Hoene was not there to enjoy 10 grandchildren and attend five weddings, for the high school and college graduations that came after he was killed. The football games some of his sons participated in. There was no father in the house as seven of his children grew into adulthood.
He worked hard as a pharmacist and as a husband and father. When he worked downtown he'd catch the bus from Madisonville to the Walgreens across from Government Square. In the six months he worked at the Walgreens on Linn Street, he drove to work.
Mr. Von Hoene was a religious man, an Air Force veteran, an athletic man who held his own even in his 40s at parish picnic softball games. He was a college graduate who encouraged his children to do their best academically. Birthdays and Christmas were special; so was Sunday Mass at St. Margaret of Cortona Church. Bill Von Hoene, 7 when his father was killed, recalled attending church with him, holding his hand, his father bundled in an overcoat, his voice raised in song.
Anne Von Hoene said her fondest memories of her father are the times she had him all to herself.
“It was really rare when you got a chance to be alone with Dad for more than a few minutes,” Anne said. “There were so many kids. It was something special, to be alone with Dad. So those times were a treat for me.”
Diane Von Hoene was 10 years old. She took it hard.
“That's like the big void,” Diane said. “It's always been kind of like a search for a father figure. Nowadays I still feel like a big void is there.”
Teachers helped, as did priests. “They were my lifeline,” Diane said. In 1986, she went to the Fernside Center for Grieving Children in Norwood for a couple of years, which helped, and returned again two years ago. She worried, though, that her participation would seem disconcerting to those who just recently lost loved ones and were hoping time would heal.
“It was 17 years since my dad and yet it was so raw still, as if it had just happened,” Diane said. “I thought those people would be discouraged since it had been 17 years and I was still hurting.”
Bob Von Hoene was 17 at the time and is now a Cincinnati firefighter. Sometimes irony can be cruel. The training facility for the fire department is within eyesight of where the shooting occurred. For 16 weeks in 1994, it was a constant reminder, both mute and telling. “Kind of weird,” Bob said.
Brenda Jones recalled, as a younger child, sitting on the floor next to her father in his chair, then climbing onto his lap. He'd rub his face against hers, and she remembers the sensation of his stubble against her face.
She regrets her father was not there to give her away at her wedding in 1997. “I really had a hard time with that,” she said.
Jim Von Hoene, who was 15, said part of the Christmas tradition at their house was for the older children not to betray the spirit of Santa Claus.
“Mom and Dad would be bringing gifts in from the garage,” Jim said. “We weren't supposed to know they were out there. For the younger ones we kept the tradition.”
Mike Von Hoene said his mother, Constance, tried to be strong for them, saying life goes on. But once, Mike was sent by his mother to get something from the bedroom and found Kleenex tucked under her pillow.
“Here's a lady who's been crying herself to sleep, probably for months,” Mike said. “That bothered me. I still remember that to this day.”
Mike and Jim got into coaching football to ensure their younger brothers, David and Bill, got the kind of attention they did from their father. Another older brother, Patrick, coached baseball for the same reason.
“We tried to fill the void of a missing father,” Mike said. “But no one could do that. We all tried.”
Samuel Ellis McCree maintained his innocence throughout the trial and did not testify. Tom Longano, still an assistant county prosecutor, was the lead counsel who prosecuted the case.
“The thing that stands out in my mind is the effect it had on the family,” Mr. Longano said. “He was cold throughout the trial. That's how I can best sum it up. Just a cold-blooded killing. He showed no emotion at all.”
Mr. McCree was imprisoned at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility (Lucasville) until August 1987, then transferred to the Lebanon Correctional Institution, a close-security prison. In October 1997, he was transferred to Chillicothe, a medium-security prison, where he lives in a privileged housing dormitory.
That he was transferred to less-restrictive prisons during his 19 years, said Lynn Goff, a spokeswoman for Chillicothe, indicates “positive steps.”
Anne Von Hoene said it was hard for her family to share their emotions when their father was killed.
“I think we all kind of scattered to our own separate corners and dealt with it in our own way,” she said.
But the upcoming parole hearing has given them a goal. “Which is to keep him where he is,” Anne said.
Her father occasionally smoked a pipe, and Anne, at a young age, liked the smell of it, watching the smoke curl in the air as her father read the paper. There were times when she would tug on his sleeve and ask whether she could sit on his lap.
He'd put the paper down, tap on his knee and she'd climb up.
She would lay her head on his chest and listen to him breathing, just listen to the sound of his heartbeat.
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