By Janice Morse
The Cincinnati Enquirer

HAMILTON - Just hours after Jason Sam Campbell escaped from a minimum-security Warren County corrections center, he killed a Hamilton couple in a violent struggle, Assistant Prosecutor Megan Shanahan said Tuesday.

Campbell was cold and desperate for cash when he found the Harmon Avenue door of Helen and Donald Riley unlocked on Feb. 23, 2003, Shanahan told a Butler County jury Tuesday in her opening statement in Campbell's trial.

He found the Rileys sleeping in their bed and slashed Helen Riley's throat and then strangled her husband, the prosecutor said.

All, the prosecutor said, for $20 in cash.

"The defendant cleaned himself up, put on some of the Rileys' clothes, went to a local bar and got drunk," she said.

"Next, he went back to the Rileys' residence, where they lay dead in their bedroom, and slept in the spare bedroom."

Shanahan urged jurors to convict Campbell of charges that could bring the death penalty. Campbell, 22, is among five Butler County defendants facing the death penalty if convicted on murder charges.

Defense attorney Melynda Cook-Reich did not dispute the case Shanahan outlined and conceded that jurors would likely find her client guilty. But she asked jurors to make prosecutors prove their case.

Shanahan told jurors she is confident they will have ample evidence to convict Campbell on all charges: aggravated robbery, aggravated burglary, escape and two counts of aggravated murder.

Formerly of Hamilton and Middletown, Campbell was arrested in Florida on stolen-property charges in March 2003, a month after the Rileys were killed. Five months passed before authorities received tips that led to his indictment in the double homicide.

The jury of six men and six women is expected to continue hearing testimony until Thursday or Friday.

E-mail jmorse@enquirer.com