By Tom O'Neill
The Cincinnati Enquirer

A Price Hill man accepted a plea agreement Monday calling for 13 years in prison in connection with the shooting death of his ex-girlfriend, a 911 dispatcher - even though he didn't pull the trigger.

Ridder	Boyles

William Boyles, 27, now must provide information that police believe will lead to the killer, or the deal offered by Hamilton County prosecutors is off.

Monday was to be the first day of his trial. His next court date is Jan. 6.

In the agreement, Mr. Boyles pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter with specifications, a first-degree felony; two counts of having weapons under disability; and one count each of aggravated burglary and domestic violence.

The most serious of the counts he initially faced was complicity to aggravated murder in the death of 24-year-old Cincinnati police dispatcher Sara Ridder, the mother of his three children.

From the start, it was an unconventional case, one which ultimately might have hinged on grand jury testimony from a different case - of domestic violence - against Mr. Boyles.

In that case, from March, he allegedly threatened Ms. Ridder. She was fatally shot April 15 in her Westwood home - the day Mr. Boyles was scheduled to appear in court on the domestic violence charge.

Last month, Common Pleas Judge Steve Martin, who oversaw Monday's hearing, ruled that grand jury testimony about Mr. Boyles' threats to Ms. Ridder were admissible in his murder trial. The defense argued that including Ms. Ridder's testimony to the grand jury amounted to violating Mr. Boyles' right to face his accuser.

By then, of course, his accuser was dead. But when that defense argument was rejected, talk of a plea agreement escalated.

Prosecutors think Mr. Boyles played a direct role in the death of Ms. Ridder, who had broken off her relationship with Mr. Boyles and taken steps to avoid him, including a temporary protection order and a personal safety monitor in her home.

Ms. Ridder - whose father, Pete, is a retired Cincinnati police sergeant and former president of the Fraternal Order of Police - has three children with Mr. Boyles throughout an increasingly turbulent relationship.

But on April 15, Mr. Boyles seemed to have a solid defense - he was wearing an electronic monitoring device that indicated he was nowhere near Ms. Ridder's home.

"The change of heart was that there's no doubt he didn't pull the trigger," Mr. Boyles' defense attorney, William Welsh, said after the hearing. "There is a person out there (who did) and I believe he (Boyles) really wants justice."

Mr. Welsh praised police and prosecutors for assembling "the pieces of the puzzle."

"But is there a final piece of the puzzle, probably," he said.

E-mail toneill@enquirer.com