Sunday, February 13, 2000
Tough, powerful prosecutor is unyielding under fire
Holcomb faces critics, challenger
BY JANICE MORSE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
John F. Holcomb faces his first election challenge in 12 years.
(Michael Snyder photo)
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After 27 years in office, Butler County Prosecutor John F. Holcomb is used to doing things his way.
He's Ohio's longest-serving prosecutor and the county's chief legal adviser. He controls a $3.4 million budget and influences 1,500 criminal cases each year.
He's won re-election six times, half of them without opposition. His employees routinely pay into his campaign fund. In an overwhelmingly Republican county, he's the only Democrat in elected countywide office.
Variously described as brilliantly bull-headed or a bullying brute, he's widely regarded as the most powerful man in the county.
But now, Mr. Holcomb, 62, is under attack. He faces nasty disputes with county officials, concerns over his health and his first contested election in 12 years.
Public documents and interviews with dozens of current and former county officials and employees paint a picture of a headstrong county servant who demands — and generously rewards — loyalty. Friends are given parties, sports tickets and unwavering support, even when their actions are professionally embarrassing.
Foes cross him at their peril. And when Mr. Holcomb is provoked, he's apt to holler and hurl profanities.
“For years, there have been things going on with John's office that are of legitimate public concern, but everyone has been afraid to question John because it's well known that if you cross him, he'll get you,” Butler County Commissioner Mike Fox says.
“Friends get favors, privileges and protection. Enemies get harassed and punished. And others get mostly ignored. That's the way John Holcomb operates.”
Health problems have left Mr. Holcomb, at 6-feet-1 and 184 pounds, unsteady on his feet.
But like the diamondback rattlesnake whose skin embellishes his walking cane, he remains poised to strike.
“If you see a snake down in the road, or on the sidewalk, you don't want to go up and kick on him and trample on him, because he might not be dead,” Mr. Holcomb warned recently. “He might jump up and bite you in the ass.”
"In a superlative way'
For nearly three decades, Mr. Holcomb has remained an imposing figure. He's won some of the state's most sensational murder cases: Guilty verdicts for a man who killed 11 family members on Easter 1975, a satanist who dismembered a Fairfield woman in 1987, a Liberty Township woman who conspired with her boyfriend to kill her husband with a crossbow in 1993.
“I always did what I promised, and I always performed my job in a superlative way. Always,” he says. His conviction rate in criminal cases is “out of this world,” he says. His office, he adds, has won 98 percent to 99 percent of all cases it's handled.
Mr. Holcomb's style is unmistakable.
Both in the courtroom and out, his voice can be whisper-soft or loud enough to make a listener shudder. His gunmetal-blue eyes can light up at the sight of children or darken to a glare that wilts adversaries.
“Go for the jugular” is Mr. Holcomb's standard operating procedure, says lawyer Mike Gmoser, a longtime friend and former assistant prosecutor. “If people don't know what they're talking about, and they want to take John on in an argument, they're in trouble.”
Several county officials who have tangled with Mr. Holcomb take a more jaundiced view.
Judge Rob Lyons and Auditor Kay Rogers have both asked that anyone other than Mr. Holcomb represent them in county business, which is part of his job. They say he's been so vindictive toward them that they cannot depend on his office for the legal help they need.
Judge Lyons first wrote a 1998 letter to the editor taking issue with Mr. Holcomb's characterization of Republican constituents in West Chester as “fools.” Mr. Holcomb later charged in a news conference that the judge's law firm improperly took fees from a public fund for indigent defendants, a charge Judge Lyons denies.
The fight with Ms. Rogers started almost from the day she took office in 1995. She says he made a big fuss when she changed a longstanding practice of releasing county paychecks early. Then he balked at giving her documentation for sick leave, vacation and money owed to employees.
In December, he accused her of using county workers to clean up her flooded basement and of improperly intervening in a legal dispute between her boyfriend and his ex-wife. He filed an ethics complaint; she says she did nothing wrong.
“He thinks he's above the law, but he's sure willing to tell all of us what the law is,” Ms. Rogers says. “Most of the other officeholders, we all kind of work together, but with John it's his way or no way.”
Ms. Rogers “may not think she can trust me, and she's probably right,” Mr. Holcomb told the Hamilton Journal-News last month. “What (Ms. Rogers) needs to do is calm her hate and calm her mouth. ... She just doesn't like it because I tweaked her a little bit.”
Loyalty above all
A favorite saying around Mr. Holcomb's office is, “There is no "I' in "TEAM.'”
“On my scale of virtues, loyalty is tops,” Mr. Holcomb says.
Team players in Mr. Holcomb's office — 80 percent of them, according to campaign filings last month — belong to the “2 Percent Club.” They regularly contribute about 2 percent of their pay to Mr. Holcomb's re-election “kitty,” which exceeds $162,000.
Ohio law five years ago banned state officials from collecting campaign funds this way; lawmakers reasoned that workers could be intimidated into giving. But Mr. Holcomb is a county official, not subject to the law. And he says the contributions are “perfectly legal” voluntary donations.
“Would you rather have me go to Mr. Industrialist or Mr. Manufacturer and get some big-time help? I don't take their money,” he told The Enquirer last October, when the newspaper reported the practice.
Team players in Mr. Holcomb's office also contribute money for big-ticket Christmas and birthday gifts for their boss — things like reupholstering his leather office furniture, a VCR duplicating machine, cash for his favorite pastime: betting on horse races at Turfway Park.
In turn, Mr. Holcomb uses money from his campaign fund to throw Christmas parties for his staff. He spent $4,640 from the fund last year on Cincinnati Reds and Bengals tickets for employee use. Illnesses, retirements and special occasions are marked with flowers or gifts. Charities and youth sports teams also enjoy the largesse from the campaign fund.
Mr. Holcomb grants pay raises to his lawyers without formal performance evaluations. Annual, formal reviews are customary in most private businesses and in most other Butler County offices.
Mr. Holcomb also “doesn't keep a time clock” on assistant prosecutors who have private law practices. He doesn't have to, he says, because he keeps up with the lawyers' work himself and trusts them to work full time for the county.
Each of the 38 assistant prosecutors makes $40,000 a year and up, plus health and retirement benefits typically exceeding $10,000 a year.
Ms. Rogers, the auditor, says she would like to verify that benefits are properly going only to full-time workers, but she lacks authority to investigate.
“If he tells me they're full-time, they're full-time,” she says.
Victoria Daiker, an assistant prosecutor for 22 years, says she values the trust that Mr. Holcomb has in his lawyers.
“I think we've all felt over the years that he was standing behind us,” she says. “That's very important, because people don't necessarily think we're wonderful.”
Support from the boss
Ms. Daiker was one of two assistant prosecutors whose loyalty Mr. Holcomb rewarded in 1998.
As a lawyer who handles cases involving the Children Services Board, which investigates child abuse and neglect for the county, she found herself in a precarious predicament. She almost quit her job until Mr. Holcomb stepped in.
The case involved a phone conversation she had with Susan Campbell, an Oxford woman who had been investigated for alleged abuse. Children Services officials, noting the generally confidential nature of their investigations, say Ms. Daiker never should have talked about the case with Ms. Campbell.
“I considered this a breach of client confidentiality, and I wanted (Mr. Holcomb) to be aware of that, to take steps to prevent this from happening again,” says Bob Cottrell, then president of the county Children Services Board.
But Mr. Holcomb didn't respond to a request for a meeting with Children Services officials.
“I didn't want to meet with them. Didn't have time,” Mr. Holcomb says. “I concluded that it was all a bunch of garbage.”
Ms. Daiker says she now regrets the conversation with Ms. Campbell, but insists she divulged no confidences and only chatted about matters of little consequence.
Ms. Daiker offered to resign in the aftermath, she says, but not because of any misconduct. Instead, Mr. Holcomb says she was embarrassed because she had used profanities during the phone conversation, which Ms. Campbell had taped.
“Being a person of coarse language myself, I didn't give much credence to that,” Mr. Holcomb says. “It required no action on my part. I just told her, "Don't cuss on the phone anymore.'”
Mr. Holcomb also stood by another assistant prosecutor, Timothy Carlson, who was involved in a complicated — and ultimately costly — legal battle.
Mr. Carlson, Mr. Holcomb, a special prosecutor and Butler County were sued for malicious prosecution of a Middletown couple. Marvin and Patricia Wills sued after they were indicted for receiving improper payments as executors of a mul timillion-dollar estate.
The couple claimed Mr. Carlson had already settled the dispute with them in probate court, then improperly used the power of his office to pursue criminal charges against them.
“I did nothing wrong in that case,” Mr. Carlson says. He says he took part in a grand jury hearing only because the special prosecutor asked him.
Mr. Holcomb says he saw nothing wrong with Mr. Carlson's varying roles in the case, either. And as for the Wills couple, Mr. Holcomb says: “Why should I give a damn what they felt? They were benefiting from it. They were sticking money in their jeans off it!”
“Those are the kind of comments and that sort of attitude is why Butler County had to pay so much money,” says William Gustavson, a Cincinnati lawyer who represented the couple in federal court.
A judge cited a “flawed” grand jury process and dismissed the indictment against the Willses. The couple received a $162,000 settlement from the county.
Cruise on the river
Some of Mr. Holcomb's employees still are talking about a July 1998 riverboat cruise they took at taxpayers' expense. Accustomed to doing things his way, Mr. Holcomb had made it a command performance; he told 60 of his employees to be there for an “educational” seminar.
Back at the office, paperwork piled up. Voice mail answered calls, and courtrooms sat almost idle.
Mr. Holcomb says he lectured for two hours on one subject: “The Five Ps: Prior Preparation Prevents Poor Performance.”
But five ex-employees say he talked for a much shorter time, giving a pep talk for a political pal.
“You're at a seminar,” the ex-employees recall him saying, in case anyone wondered. “Now everyone say it with me: SEM-IN-AR.”
The five asked that their names not be used, saying they fear retaliation by Mr. Holcomb. Four work in law offices that might have dealings with his office; there is no evidence that any of the five left on bad terms.
As they recall it, employees aboard The Spirit of Cincinnati lunched on jumbo and miniature croissants and champagne fruit salad. Some drank alcohol from a cash bar. And before the party began, Mr. Holcomb told them that, as team players, they needed to support First Assistant Prosecutor Dan Eichel's campaign for county judge.
“That's a lie,” Mr. Holcomb says. “Dan Eichel's name was never mentioned.”
Mr. Eichel, who was defeated by Patricia Oney, says the boat trip had nothing to do with his campaign, to which the Prosecutor John Holcomb Committee gave $2,500.
Mr. Holcomb says he's surprised that anyone would misinterpret his reasons for the Ohio River cruise. “Nobody told me they were bothered,” he says. “They all acted like they were having a hell of a good time.”
The boat trip cost taxpayers about $6,500, including five hours of pay for the employees who went, $560 for two chartered, air-conditioned buses and $1,440 for the cruise.
Kim Norris, spokeswoman for the state auditor, says her office will examine the propriety of paying for the trip from Mr. Holcomb's Furtherance of Justice Fund during a regular audit this month.
The fund was set up for county prosecutors and sheriffs to pay for unanticipated expenses “in the course of their official duties” and “in the furtherance of justice.”
Mr. Eichel's friendship with Mr. Holcomb goes back a quarter century, to 1975 when Mr. Holcomb hired him. In 1998, the same year Mr. Eichel made his failed run for judge, he successfully nominated Mr. Holcomb as Ohio Prosecutor of the Year.
Comeback after illness
Critics and friends alike thought a life-threatening aortic aneurysm in 1996 might be the end of Mr. Holcomb's career. Emergency surgery to correct the defect, then complications, kept him out of work for more than 400 days.
In October, he made his first high-profile courtroom appearance in three years.
The case was sensational enough, a 14-year-old murder that was finally being prosecuted on the basis of new computerized fingerprint technology. The defendant, Kevin W. Walls, was 15 when Ann Zwiefelhoefer, 83, was stabbed repeatedly and bled to death in her Hamilton home in 1985.
Slowly, with difficulty, Mr. Holcomb stood up and wrapped up the case with a rousing closing argument.
“This case is about a cruel, cold-blooded, animalistic act,” he told jurors. “I don't care if (the suspect) is 15 or 50. It's a man's work, and he's got to pay a man's consequences.”
The jury deliberated three hours and found Mr. Walls guilty.
Mr. Holcomb says his near-death experience brought him closer to God and gave him new appreciation for Judy, his wife of 37 years, and his children: sons John M., Andy and Jeff; and daughter Mary Ann Goins. John M., who goes by “Junior,” is an assistant prosecutor in Mr. Holcomb's office, and Jeff is a lawyer in the firm his father established in Hamilton in 1962.
Mr. Holcomb's illness cost him more than 100 pounds, but none of his rattlesnake's bite.
His main target these days is Republican Robin Piper, an assistant Butler County prosecutor for 14 years and the man who's challenging him for his job. “I'm going to run over him like a steamroller over a pissant,” Mr. Holcomb vows.
Mr. Piper says he's up to the fight. Mr. Holcomb “is a mud wrestler. I'm not a mud wrestler,” Mr. Piper says. “Anyone who attempts to disagree with him becomes the subject of his public broadcasting and castigation — and that's not right.”
Whatever the outcome of the November election, the race is taking place in more hostile circumstances than any Mr. Holcomb faced in 1972. When he first ran for office, registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans, and workers were mostly blue-collar.
Almost three decades later, Butler County's population has grown 48 percent, to more than 334,000. Many of the old paper mills, foundries and tool companies are gone. Most people are employed in service jobs, and there are twice as many registered Republicans as Democrats.
In previous elections, the GOP had no reason to challenge Mr. Holcomb because “he did his job and he did it reasonably well,” says Carlos Todd, chairman of the county Republican Party. “He could have retired from that office and gone down in history as being a good prosecutor.”
Instead, Mr. Todd says, Mr. Holcomb held on, becoming “one of those holdovers, one of those leftovers who was perceived to do a good job in his younger years.” The problem, he says, is that constituents today “see that he has tried to bully people to keep himself in his position. And they don't like it.”
When Mr. Holcomb fell ill, Mr. Piper says he and his colleagues assumed that fragile health would prevent their boss from seeking re-election in 2000. One of them suggested that Mr. Piper seek the post, so he did.
But that, in Mr. Holcomb's view, violated rule No. 1.
“This guy was disloyal. He was dishonorable. He turned on me. He couldn't wait until I died,” Mr. Holcomb says. “So there's no way I'm going to back off. I don't care if I drop dead. I'm gonna be after him all the way to the graveyard.”
Mr. Holcomb's career is chronicled in eight black, newspaper-sized scrapbooks that he compiled himself. He keeps the books handy in his office, a lifetime's work remembered in yellowed news articles and gory crime-scene photos. One day, he intends to pass the books on to his children.
“I wanted my kids to know why I was never home,” he says. “I was at the office working 15 hours a day, always. In fact, sometimes I stayed all night. I had a change of clothes in my office.”
His kids, Mr. Holcomb says, “were little and growing up and needed me. And now I feel really, really bad about it. That's why I kept 'em.”
And there's another reason for keeping the scrapbooks, he says: “It also is a real accurate way of keeping track of who said what.”
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