Patty Rebholz did not fight her killer.

        The 15-year-old Greenhills cheerleader was strangled into unconsciousness and dragged across a vacant field to a wire fence, where her upper body and head were repeatedly bludgeoned with a log-like post.

        The force of the blows drove her head into the ground, broke a rib and fractured her skull, former Hamilton County Coroner Frank Cleveland testified Wednesday in the trial of Michael Wehrung.

Wehrung

        Mr. Wehrung, 54, is accused of killing Patricia Ann Rebholz — his girlfriend — in 1963 when they were both 15. He was indicted on second-degree murder charges last year after a new investigation was launched into the once-cold Greenhills case.

        Mr. Wehrung sat stoically in a Hamilton County courtroom Wednesday as graphic autopsy photos of Patty's badly beaten body were displayed. The photos were taken shortly after her body was found in the early hours of Aug. 9, 1963, near Mr. Wehrung's home.

        Dr. Cleveland, who retired from office in 1996, testified Wednesday via videotape that Patty was not able to call for help because pressure to her throat damaged her larynx.

        He said he found no indication that she tried to defend herself and that there was no way of determining whether she had scratched her killer. He didn't take scrapings from under her nails.

        Dr. Cleveland was among three prosecution witnesses testifying Wednesday, the third day of the trial. Ten others took the stand Tuesday.

        Prosecutors say Mr. Wehrung became angry with Patty because she wished to end their relationship to go out with another boy. They say he ambushed her in the dark field across from his home.

        Although a primary suspect in 1963, he was never arrested or charged because a juvenile court judge intervened in the police investigation, made him a ward of the court and sent him out of state to school.

        Defense attorneys say Mr. Wehrung was at home when Patty was killed, and that there is no DNA evidence linking him to Patty's murder. He is an innocent man whose life is being ruined for a 38-year-old crime he didn't commit, they contend.

        Another prosecution witness testified Wednesday that Mr. Wehrung had a temper.

        But his temper was “no different from anyone else's,” said Ray St. Clair, who is Mr. Wehrung's ex-brother-in-law, close friend and owner of the roofing business where Mr. Wehrung is an executive.

        Mr. St. Clair, 56, was at the Wehrung house the night Patty was killed. She'd left a neighborhood dance about 9:30 p.m. and was on her way to the house to talk with Mr. Wehrung, but never made it there.

        Mr. St. Clair and several others in the home had gone to get hamburgers. They left Mr. Wehrung at home to wait for Patty. He said he never saw Mr. Wehrung leave the house.

        When they returned about 11 p.m., Mr. St. Clair testified, Mr. Wehrung didn't seem concerned that his girlfriend had never shown up.

        He said they played cards and that Mr. Wehrung showed him a scratch on the underside of his wrist that Mr. St. Clair hadn't noticed before.

        Mr. Wehrung told him he'd scratched himself when he drove a car earlier in the day.

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