OH OH - Patricia 'Patty' Rebholz, 15, Cincinnati, 8 Aug 1963

02/03/11 at 6:40am by gnoble

Michael Wehrung, center, was Patty Rebholz's boyfriend. He was questioned about her death in 1963 but not charged until 2001. A jury found him not guilty. (Credit: Enquirer files, August 1963)

Click to expand...

[FONT=arial,helvetica]Wednesday, November 17, 1999
by Dan Horn
The Cincinnati Enquirer
[/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica]

Patricia Rebholz

[/FONT]They found Patricia Ann Rebholz at dawn, face down in the grass next to an old, wire fence. The Greenhills cheerleader was wearing the same clothes she had on the night before at a teen dance. Her slacks were damp with morning dew, and her blouse was spattered with blood.

As police officers swarmed around the 15-year-old's battered body, they searched in vain for clues that might lead them to her killer.
Thirty-six years later, they are ready to try again.

[FONT=arial,helvetica]

[/FONT]

Click to expand...

[FONT=arial,helvetica]Wednesday, May 3, 2000
by Dan Horn
The Cincinnati Enquirer[/FONT]

[FONT=arial,helvetica]Patty Rebholz was bludgeoned after a teen dance[/FONT]

Days after the beating death of Patricia Ann Rebholz, police were certain it wouldn't take long to solve the crime.
They had bags filled with evidence from the crime scene. They had interviews with friends who saw her that night. They had the bloody fence post used to kill her.

They also had a suspect.

It took them 37 years, but prosecutors finally charged that suspect Tuesday when they indicted Patricia's then-boyfriend, Michael Wehrung, for second-degree murder.

Click to expand...

Wednesday, December 20, 2000
by [FONT=arial,helvetica]Dan Horn
The Cincinnati Enquirer

'Other self' could have killed Patty Rebholz, suspect said then
[/FONT]
Michael Wehrung told police more than one story in 1963 when they asked what he did the night his girlfriend was beaten to death with a fence post in Greenhills.
But his last story is the one that got their attention.

According to a 35-year-old coroner's report, Mr. Wehrung admitted to police that he hit Patricia Ann Rebholz, knocked her to the ground and knelt beside her body on the night of Aug. 8, 1963.

“He feels certain in his mind there is a possibility he did kill Patricia Rebholz,” states the report, which was filed in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court late Tuesday. “He said he still can't help but feel his "other self' undoubtedly did it.”

Click to expand...

Greenhills and the death that won't go away
By Jeffrey Hillard · January 10th, 2002 · Cover Story

In the evening heat and humidity of summer 1963, in an experimental suburb called Greenhills, a teen-ager's body lies slumped in the corner of a small, fenced backyard.

It is past 10 p.m., and the darkness will conceal her body until a Greenhills Police officer finds her seven hours later, at 5:07 a.m.

Aug. 8, 1963: one of the hottest days of summer so far. Residents leave windows open most of the night.
Teens leaving a weekly dance at the American Legion Hall -- on a Thursday this time, instead of Wednesday -- wipe sweat from their necks and foreheads.

snipped
Earlier, even a few days before the dance, Patricia Ann Rebholz has a wish.
At the dance, her friend Jan Schroth asks Patty if she wants to go to a party in Wyoming. No, Patty says. She prefers tonight to see her boyfriend of four months, Michael Wehrung.

She doesn't reveal the wish to Jan, but it's something she wants to tell Michael, who lives on Illona Drive, just down the street from the Legion Hall, a 10-minute walk down Ingram Avenue...

Contaminated Evidence
From Nov. 26 to Dec. 6, 2001, Michael Wehrung stood trial for second-degree murder in the death of his girlfriend 38 years ago... After about 10 hours of deliberation, a jury found Wehrung not guilty of the murder.

snipped
On the first day of testimony, it seemed imperative for Allen and Chief Assistant Prosecutor Mark Piepmeier to establish the time frame of Patty's final walk in order to establish evidence of a motive. That motive dealt with Patty's wish.

The Wish Deferred
What about Patty's wish? It was connected to a possible motive police could not substantiate in 1963.

According to testimony by two of Patty's friends, she was ready to break up with Wehrung. Patty called one of them on the day of the dance and mentioned that Tom "Stoney" Stonefield wanted to go on a date. Patty felt she needed to break up with Mike first.

Click to expand...

By Rebecca Leung
CBS
February 11, 2009 7:59 PM

snipped
"She got here about 8 o'clock and there would just be kids dancing. It was a summer kind of tradition, every Thursday night," says Kuhlman. "And around 9:30, she called Mike Wehrung."

Wehrung, 15, was a football player at Greenhills High School. He was dating Patty and he had told her not to go to the dance. "He didn't like coming up here, and he didn't want her to be up here on her own," says Kuhlman. "Jealousy, I guess."

snipped
The next morning, police found Patty's body in the backyard, across the street from Wehrung's home. She had been strangled and beaten, apparently with a fence post. Patty's father broke the news to the rest of the family.

"At that point we just went crazy," recalls Patty's brother, Mel.

According to what Kuhlman has learned, Wehrung had a different reaction to the news. "Michael came out on his porch and looked across at what was going on," says Kuhlman. "There was a body being covered, and there were police around, and somebody went over and said to Michael, 'Hey, that's Patty's body.' He didn't come over to investigate. He went inside and went to bed."

Click to expand...

Posted on 6/11/2013 9:46:00 AM by Ezra Goldstein
Cincinnati Magazine

The day before, mid-afternoon on Dec. 6, 2001, attorney Maiman sat beside Wehrung in a small, packed courtroom on the third floor of the Hamilton County Courthouse. On his first criminal case after 20 years of civil law, Maiman leaned over and whispered to his client, “I did everything I possibly could. I want you to know that.” Wehrung replied, “I know that you did.” They then watched as half a dozen sheriff’s deputies took positions around the courtroom. “There were so many of them,” Wehrung said later. “I knew they didn’t know more than I did, but down deep these doubts started creeping in: ‘Is there something they know? Did they let something slip here?’ My mind was going a mile a minute.”

A jury of seven women and five men filed in, and the a sheet of paper to the clerk, Chris Collini, who passed it to the judge, Patrick Dinkelacker, who glanced at it, then passed it back to Collini. Collini read, “We the jury, being duly sworn and impaneled, do hereby find the defendant, Michael Wehrung, not guilty of murder in the second degree.”

At the “not” a shout of joy erupted from the defendant’s side of the courtroom. Wehrung threw his head back and exhaled as he stared at the ceiling. Debi burst into tears and her two grown sons, tears also streaming down their faces, encircled her in a hug.

Across the aisle, in a row of seats behind the prosecutor’s table, Mel Rebholz’s broad shoulders slumped almost imperceptibly. It was Mel’s sister, Patty, who had been murdered 38 years, three months and 29 days before. That’s how long one of Ohio’s most sensational crimes had gone unsolved, how long Wehrung had protested his innocence, and how long Mel Rebholz and lots of other people had been absolutely sure of his guilt.

Click to expand...

BY STEVE KEMME
The Cincinnati Enquirer
February 05, 2000

[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica] HAMILTON — Nancy Ann Theobold, Victoria May Hincher and Tammy Lynn King never knew each other, but the three young women may share a tragic bond. All three young women appear to have been strangled, years apart, by the same person.
[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]The fourth case involves the death of Kermit Vencill, 41, of Springboro, whose body was found on Dec. 5, 1985, inside the office of a truck service business on Dixie Highway in Middletown. He was co-owner of the business. [/FONT]
The similarities in the slayings of the three young women are too striking to be dismissed as coincidence, Sheriff Gabbard said:
• The three women were young, attractive brunettes.
• All were sexually assaulted before being strangled.
• They were killed in the same time of the year — mid-October to mid-November.
• Their nude or partially clothed bodies were dumped in rural areas in southern Butler County.

Click to expand...