The Serial Killer's Apprentice ////// 54 | Forensic Files

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that's enough of the business Captain everybody gather around grab a chair the garage door's closing grab a beer let's
talk some true [Music] cry this is true crime garage and this is the serial killer
[Music] Apprentice July 17th 1982 11-year-old Christa Harrison is abducted and 6 days
later her body is found in October of 1983 a 28-year-old woman flees the home of Robert
bule she tells police she was kidnapped raped and tortured police arrest 43-year-old
Robert bule for the kidnapping and raping of two women but he is quickly connected to the murder of Christa
Harris and two other young girls bule admits to the rapes in fact he pled no contest and was sentenced to 121
years in prison but maintains he is innocent in the deaths of the young girls in 2000 as his execution day nears
Robert bule a man who has never previously granted a media interview wants to talk
like a caged animal buol Paces back and forth in handcuffs and leg irons shaking
documents from a murder trial 17 years earlier he points to a witness that was never called to testify who told police
he saw a vehicle that looked like the killers at the time when bule was at work bu claims to have found murders of
girls in Ohio and western Pennsylvania that he has identified six more cases of strangulation and molestation similar to
christe Harrison's proving that a killer is still out there of those six police have
considered bule as a suspect in two of them but never charging him on September 24th 2002 62-year-old Robert bule was
executed for the strangulation death of 11-year-old Christa Harrison his final meal a single black unpitted
[Music] olive his final words Jerry and Shirley I didn't kill your daughter the prosecutor knows that
and they left the real killer out there on the street to kill again and again and
again so that some good may come of this I ask that you Contin continue to pursue
this to the end don't let the prosecutor continue to spin this out of focus and force them to find out who really killed
your daughter that's all I have to [Music] [Applause] [Music] say [Music] well we have a strange and weird case to
talk about this week don't we Captain MH we have a case of a serial rapist a suspected serial killer uh from the
state of Ohio um and we had to bring in one of our friends James rener true crime author James rener to help us with
this this story because it's not an open and shut case and for those of you listening to the show for quite some
time you know that James rener has helped us out before we talked about the mara Murray Cas well he might be your
friend but I mean he's a journalist so he's the enemy he well he helped us out with the
mar Murray case right he's the enemy and he wrote and you're right he wrote a book called True Crime addict involving
that case he's the enemy and he is the captain's enemy and uh no he's a very nice guy
writes very interesting books and he also wrote about the Amy mahalic case um and we discussed that on our show as
well you can find that one in iTunes at the iTunes Store yeah that to me that's one of our most interesting podcasts
that we have ever done one because I'm not on it and two uh I didn't actually listen to the interview when we recorded
it so it was the first time I ever heard it and uh that's a very fascinating case
if you haven't checked that out that's uh iTunes like you mentioned and in the website store that's right and um you
know you can pick up his either of those books as well um you know he has covered
many cases from the Cleveland acran area and this one is out of the akran area uh
the one that we're talking about today um so like I said it's not a open and shut case um and he knows intimate
details of why there is suspicion on this case so but before we get to James rener a little background regarding this
case and this starts way back in Thursday of October 29th 1981 12-year-old Tina Harmon was trying
to get to the Union 76 Truck Stop in loie mhm now this is just a few miles away from where she is from she's from a
small town in Ohio called Creston and so at that time the only real entertainment
the only really cool thing to do in town was the truck stop they had a game room
there and you know they probably had a few arcade games and maybe a pool table well this is where some of the young
teenage kids would go and hang out MH Tina's first stop is to a convenience store she got a ride from her father's
girlfriend and at the convenience store she hung out with a small group of friends after getting another ride she
event eventually makes it to loie where she is met there's several people that see her there okay and they had reported
seeing her there with an unshaven man wearing a jean jacket a unshaven so he has a beard he just has long hair all
over his body okay so this is 81 so this is coming right out of the 70s so beards
were popular long hair was popular for guys yeah I I'm joking I don't know if he actually had long hair the only
description they give of the man was he was not a clean shaved man he was he was
didn't he was sporting some kind of beard or some kind of you know 5:00 shadow that's what real men do so there
you go so he's wearing a jean jacket and he looked to be in his early 20s now this is the last that Tina Harmon has
seen his nickname was Teen Wolf her body is found several days later this is about 40 mil from her home it was
determined that she had been sexually assaulted and that she had been strangled now all of this they
determined occurred shortly after her abduction when she was found she had been found fully clothed and her body
had been neatly laid out her body was placed in an area that was used frequently and persons working in the
area the day before they didn't see the body so we know that she was not placed there terribly long before her body was
discovered on her clothes the coroner found dog hairs in several fibers now this would come into play later in our
story now we have another disappearance this is on July 27th 1982 so less than a year later this was
a Saturday 11-year-old Christa Harrison she's at the park with her friend and schoolmate 12-year-old Roy Wilson
they're picking up aluminum cans they're collecting these cans and you know putting them in a trash bag and
collecting them for later uh around 5:00 p.m. they see a maroon van with you remember those old bubble windows that
you see on some of the older bigger vans that popular in the 70s yeah so this was
a maroon van with bubble Windows they see this van enter the park and the van swung around so that it would face the
road now the door opens and a white skinny man with dark brown curly hair a long mustache and a big nose he gets out
of the van and he goes over to the bleachers and he sits down now this is near where Christa Harrison has parked
her bike now these Vans were really popular and cool back in the 70s it was a thing but the these types of Vans then
became known as The Creeper van yeah they became a very creepy van because people were using them for terrible
things I think you could kind of outfit the inside of the van right you could take chairs out or you could take the
bench seat out I think you could kind of customize the inside a little bit some people would turn them into almost like
a little limo type thing so this van enters the park around 5 p.m and uh swings around so that it's facing the
road and and we get a pretty good description of the man that gets out of the van here we we we hear he's he's
white he's a skinny man with dark brown curly hair he's got a long mustache a big nose and he went over and he sat
down next to where Christa's bike is this is on the bleachers now Roy her her classmate and friend he sees Christa
eventually go over and talk to the man and this is where it gets super yeah which I wonder if he's um motioning to
her at all what would make her go over and talk to him yeah I Roy does not say he he I don't know I mean Roy might not
have seen that action exactly and he but he does see her talking to the man and exactly he notices the man reaches
inside of Christa's blouse and the Man actually did this like three or four times and each time
the girl like swats his hand away yeah now CHR appropriate very inappropriate Christa starts to get on her bike I'm
presuming to leave the situation this weird situation uh this is when the man he gets up and he whispers something in
Christa's ear now Roy could not hear what was said to the young girl right hence the whisper but Christa then
starts to cry and after she starts to cry she gets off of her bike and she walks over and gets into the van now she
gets into the van via the driver's side door and she sits on the floor between the bucket seats yeah the man gets into
the van and he shouts out the window by Roy and then he drives off Roy hops on Christa's bike and he rides to Christa's
parents' home and he tells them what he had seen tells them about the van and about the the creepy man yeah and that
is when they notify the police that their daughter has been abducted that's probably the fastest he ever rode you
know now 6 days later Chris body is found in a remote area an autopsy reveals that she had been viciously
sexually assaulted and that she had been strangled to death her feet were bound with a large piece of plastic tape and
her hair and her clothing showed the presence of orange carpet fibers which would possibly be from the
van because a lot of them would be lined with the carpet yeah and some of them even had that longer carpet that just
seemed to shed and get on everything that's called Shag so we're seeing here with the first two girls we have two
girls that have gone missing they're both found about five or six days after their last scene and we're talking about
similar situations we're seeing a sexual assault with a strangulation both of them are last seen in the presence of a
of a strange man um and this man is actually described by Roy as somebody that would have been in his Pro probably
about 25 to 35 years of age so not terribly far off from the multiple witnesses that had seen Tina Harmon with
a man that looked to be in his early 20s right so we had the first case took place in late 1981 and then we had a
case mid 1982 took place in July and then now we're at 11 months later in June of
1983 again this was a 10-year-old girl girl who disappeared from a street fair in masselin Ohio now the very strange
strange part about this case here Captain is that later that day Debbie Smith who had disappeared she called
home uh and she it's reported that she did sound upset but she wouldn't say where she was she wouldn't say what was
going on and this would be the last time that anybody would hear from Young Debbie Smith uh a canist uh this was
just several days later August 6th 1983 a canist found Debb's body on the banks of the Tuscarora River uh she had been
raped and she most likely had been stabbed although the body also showed signs of blunt force trauma right they
did find melted wax it was found on her body itself and the candles which the wax had come from they were found near
the dump site they were recovered as well well and there was no there was no wax found on the first two victims uh
there was not any listed on the autopsy or coroner reports um I the thing here is we would have the most information
regarding The Disappearance and the murder of 11-year-old Christa Harrison that it being a crime that went to court
and we we had somebody that was convicted of this of this case so we would have well so then that becomes
closed and then they open it up to the public and that's probably why we have more information about it yeah you would
have more public knowledge about that case and and in that case there is nothing that specifically says or
references wax or candle wax in the Christa Harrison case now again we do have it in this most recent case taking
place in 1983 and I wonder if there's any possibility of like that being postmortem and that's probably a very
difficult thing to figure out after the fact but I mean they found the wax right
by where her body was dumped so I I just wonder if that's a a possibility and one
thing that's not clear here with this third case is you know where we've seen signs in the first two cases where the
police and the authorities are saying well this girl was missing for a period of days mhm and she was not found until
five or six days later and we we know of a situation where we had people in the area and we can confirm that she was
dumped relatively soon before being found uh she was dumped within probably within 24 hours of of her body being
found which is similar to the other two this case being lying on the bank of the
Tuscarora River we just don't know how long she was there we don't know how long that body was there until she was
discovered MH and it's very strange to me too that somebody would dump the candles right Captain like I mean yeah
yeah you you use them on the body and maybe you're a little worried that that you use the wax on the body and you
could connect it to the candle somehow but I do find it a little strange that the candles were dumped nearby the body
and we're talking about a different situation in my opinion we're seeing here um some ACT some activity that we
didn't see with the first two situations we're seeing a stabbing and some signs of blunt force trauma where in the other
two cases very obviously it was it strangulation right so possibly not a connection to the other two I don't know
that that police were uh starting to link these together at the time I got to believe that they were though because
this is not something that happens all that frequently we're talking about girls of a similar age um they're all
from roughly the same area you know there's there is miles of distance between the three of them but we're
talking about three girls one is 10 one is 11 and one is 12 and within um what two and a half year time period a little
over two and a half years yeah well the police are now looking for the boogeyman
right we have somebody in North Ohio no they're looking for the unshaven man with the big nose who is killing young
girls he's abducting and killing young girls and actually in the the case of Christa Harrison we have a very good
description we have the actual abduction is witnessed by her friend where in other situations we just have a man that
was with the girl and we can't confirm that that's actually who had taken her but we
we have multiple people saying that that's who had seen was seen last with the girl excuse me and we have a we have
a description of the vehicle possibly too and then in the third case we have a girl that disappeared from a street fair
in masselin which who knows how many people were there um and obviously there's there's no no description of a
of an abductor there and some people might be actually familiar with masselin right because there was that documentary
about the masin Tigers which is a very we are the tigers I think is the name of it yeah so anybody's seen that you'd
have an idea of the the area and it's not a true crime dock it's a it's a high school football dock so yeah because
they're they're kind of an uh what a high school football team that's somewhat on the national Spotlight from
time to time they're well known especially this area right but if you ever seen that youd kind of know the lay
of the land a little bit and just before we chat with James rener I do want to read a little quick excerpt from his
book this serial Killer's Apprentice mhm these murders were still on the minds of
police and area residents 2 months later when Franklin Township Police received a
chilling call from a doy toown resident there was a shaved naked woman with a handcuff attached to one wrist standing
in her kitchen the caller said the woman had shown up at her doorstep claiming that she had been held captive in a
house across the street which was a little little ranch house owned by Robert bu before we join up with James
rener and learn more about Robert bule serial rapist and potential serial killer and we're also going to talk
about James's second killer theory that he titles the serial killer Apprentice but before that how about a quick this
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to the sponsors now here's Nick and James rener okay so James who is Robert bu Robert bule was uh a an employ
employee of the city of akan back in the early 80s um uh by all all reports uh a really fun
guy to hang out with a very affable um Joker in the office uh one of those guys you don't think about twice um and also
a serial rapist and murderer uh and and when you say serial rapist and murder he was suspected or known to have
abducted adult females so yeah let me let me tell you how he he got caught because everything kind of comes off of
there okay um at the time bule was working for the city of akan this is we're talking early ' 80s ' 82
83 um he was living in a ranch house in Doylestown um a suburb you know a little
ways outside of akan okay a little quiet little suburb in this ranch house for our International listeners akan is
where LeBron James is from yeah there you go yeah right you know bule gets in his in his car goes to
work about half an hour after he leaves um a woman comes running out of his out of his house um
naked with a handcuff dangling from her wrist and she runs to the neighbor's house and says oh my god I've been kept
prisoner in that house that guy is going to he he rap me he's going to try and kill me um so now the police descend on
this house in Doylestown found out find out that Robert bu lived there and they quickly link him to a series of Unsolved
abductions and and rapes of um of adult women and uh of which this this woman was lucky enough to to have been the
last um and they all kind of fit the same description um you know they're in their 20s early 30s um into yeah into
their 30s and uh um you know he would uh abduct them in his van he had a a big brown van uh creepy looking van and he'd
pull up and sometimes find them at gas stations or in shopping malls he'd force them into the van um sometimes he'd have
sex with them there sometimes he'd bring them back to the house in Doylestown keep them for a day or two um and then
drive them back and drop them off and release them and release them and when takes these girls these women he he he
just jumps out of the van and and forcibly takes them you know gunpoint or yeah sometimes he would use a gun and
point a gun at them and say get in the van um and uh so yeah adult women and he would always let them go now when when
when these women are at his home though he you I mean you say rape but this I mean I've read descriptions of it's the
most horrible this guy did and it's it's it's rape and torture it's torture it's
he's uh the word is sadistic um and and it's uh I mean we're talking the worst things you can imagine we're talking
like electrocution we're talking you know he'd shave their heads he would chain them to a workbench he would um
put clamps on them and then uh electrocute them and then when when he was done getting his kicks after a
couple days he would he would then drop them off um and blindfold them you know coming in and out of the place and his
house and uh they quickly linked him to all these rapes they processed his house
during the time as they were processing the house they they started finding evidence um fibers and cat hair and um
paraffin wax okay that were important pieces of evidence in a series of unsolved murders what is paraffin wax
it's this uh it's like um back in the day you used to get these uh pieces of wax they almost look like bars of of
soap and you would use them to seal letters you would or seal things um there are people that get sexual
gratification out of um burning the the wax so that it drips hot wax on your skin and and that's probably what he was
using it for uh because these um the the reason that the wax was an important piece of evidence is um
around this area they uh a bunch of girls bodies had turned up girls were being abducted by somebody um and you
say girls these are not women these are not the same age as the women that he was taking raping torturing and
releasing these are 10-year-old girls um 10 11 12y old girls uh prepubescent um they were abducted um sexually assaulted
and murdered and uh police found wax on their bodies that matched the paraffin wax in bu's house they found cat hair on
um some of these and I'm sorry dog hair they found dog hair on um these girls bodies that matched the dog hair found
uh all over bule's house um they found paint um on one of the girls uh bodies that matched the paint in in one of the
rooms um they found fibers from a rug that uh were on these girls bodies that they found uh definitively matched
fibers from a carpet that was rolled up behind bu's couch so they're like oh my gosh we've hit the Honeypot is the
Boogeyman not only is he responsible for rapes of of these grown women but murders of these These Girls uh and the
girls were let's name them Christa Harrison Tina Harmon and Deborah K Smith okay and they find this this mountain of
physical evidence at his home now take us let's talk about his uh living arrangements so to
speak um other you mean people that lived with him yeah yeah he he he was uh not living alone this entire time living
with them alone um and and if you don't mind let me skip forward just a little bit because eventually what happens is
bule pleads guilty to the rapes of these grown women okay steadfastly denies any involvement
he's already going to jail for life um steadfastly denies any involvement in the girl murders in
Christa Harrison Tina Harman or Deborah K Smith's murder they try him for Christa Harmon uh I'm sorry Christa
Harrison's murder he's he's put on trial he goes to trial he's found guilty I mean after all he's got all this
evidence against him right um they find him guilty sentence him he is sentenced to death he is executed in
2002 okay his last uh meal request was a single unpitted Olive MH uh because because he had in mind that an olive
tree would grow from his remains and he would have eternal life he's probably right um so did you did you witness that
execution or did you know you were a journalist at the time I've spoken to people that were there okay um you know
one of the last things he said was I did not you know M Mr Mrs Harmon I did not kill your daughter okay um and he left
behind a box of notes um and evidence uh and police reports um and he begun to S
suggest that somebody else was responsible for the crime um but he wouldn't really ever say who um and that
box uh by the way it's a creepy you when I say like a cardboard box you're probably picturing you know with the
flaps like a cigar box is what I picture well okay that's interesting too but this was a very peculiar box um it it to
me it looked like almost like a kid's coffin it was it was a long very sturdy cardboard box and the lid slipped onto
it like a sarcophagus lid not like it not like flaps it was a lid that kind of lifted off and and when placed on it it
almost feels like it it forms a seal once it gets to its end point exactly you know like like where they found the
Arc of the Covenant you know and Raiders of the Lost Arc and this box eventually
ends up at the office of Cleveland Scene um where I'm a um a you know a rookie reporter and I find it and I'm like
what's this oh well this is a story that you know nobody's been able to tell that's you know guy that murdered very
obviously you know killed these girls and always denied it and the somewhere in this box is evidence that he didn't
do it and Cleveland Scene gets this box how um I believe it comes from was it a religious leader or preer comes from a
um like a priest or a reverend who um was helping U bule out in the days leading up to his execution you know
being there for him as a as a counselor or something of that yeah so bu left this box to him and then that he
eventually gives it to scene and that's where I get it and I start going through
it and it slow it well not slowly it quickly Dawns on me that there is another suspect here um and uh I had my
hunches already okay and I but what I did next was uh I contacted the um Wayne County prosecutor's office they're the
ones that tried bule for Christa Harrison's murder I said hey I'd like to take a look at your old files on on the
Harrison case they're like Harrison that's a closed case what are you looking at I'm like doesn't matter I
said can I look it can I see the files I and by the way as a reporter I hate it when like you ask for a report and they
ask you why you need it like that's that's illegal by the way like in the state of Ohio under Sunshine laws
they're not allowed to ask you that question they ask it all the time right um so anyways I get down there one day
and I drive down and I end up in this uh creepy basement microfilm room and uh I get all these old files
that they've that they've put on microfilm from bu's um first case and I pull up the film and as soon as I see it
I know what it is it's the grand jury report and grand jury reports are sealed nobody's allowed to see them certainly
not reporters um it's illegal for us to obtain them but they made a mistake they
gave it to me so I'm go through these grand jury reports and the first thing I see is that the prosecutor their star
witness is a guy named Ralph Ross Jr and these this is testimony the prosecutor's
questioning him and and the prosecutor says hey he's trying to get information about bule linking them to these murders
hey um do you think your uncle killed these girls well yeah uh you know let me tell you
what happened um I was you know Ralph Ross Jr said that he was living with his uncle bule self- admitted self admitted
yeah he was living at that R Ranch House um and he said yeah my uncle I used to get in the van with him and we'd go
cruising for women man and Prosecutor's like what do you mean he's like well we used to drive around and bu would tell
me you know how we go looking for women to abduct and he would tell me how he was going to get this woman in the van
and take her back home and we'd take turns and um he's like but um but I thought it was all talk well and bule
was such he was such a prick that he he he even says like to to Ralph you know every woman has a a a rape fantasy or an
abduction rape fantasy right right that's how he justified it you know let's let's let them fulfill their
fantasy now um Ralph on the stand says you know I was you know it comes out that he was suggesting girls and you's
like oh come on let's you know let's not cross that line you know I've got I've got standards man and uh um so we've got
Ralph Ross Jr suggesting let's you know let's go after girls and bu doesn't want
any part of it um if you go digging in Christa Harrison's the police reports um you find that bule was spotted at a
baseball game game that she attended uh that she played at um she was abducted from that baseball field uh about a week
after her game um and she was abducted by a man in a van that matched the description of bu's Van um there was an
eyewitness there was an eyewitness yeah uh a young boy who was playing with Christa um sees this van pull up and a
guy forc her into the van um and but if you read the police report you find out that at that baseball game that bule
attended where Christa played there was another guy with him um the guy was holding a camera um and uh at the time
of the abduction you know um they showed uh later on after bu was arrested they went to the witness and
they're like hey you know we found that guy with the van uh you know here's his picture and the kid took a look at it
he's like no that's not the guy that came out of the van and took Christa um looked kind of like him but
that wasn't him right um and Ralph Frost Jr looks uh so much like bule in some ways which is crazy they're they're not
actually related no they're not but when you see pictures of them side by side you you would believe them to be related
almost very similar yeah they have similar features dark hair and yeah and uh in fact they look so much alike that
Ralph Ross sometimes used bu's license um to get uh into bars okay so um you know they they'd swap license so so long
story short Ralph Frost Jr was was living in the apart the the house in doy toown um and I find out that he's living
there when Christa Harrison is abducted in fact he's living there until they her body was dumped several days
after her abduction um and uh after that he quits his job in akan and moves back home to
Marietta uh near Marietta um and uh there there's a description in the reports where um he shows up to work
with his arm all bandaged uh the day after um Christa's body was found uh and uh he actually calls off the day that
Christa Christa's body was dumped bule has an alibi by the way uh for the day that you know because there's a witness
that saw um uh the guy dumping Christ's Christa's body um so we know when that happened bule has an alibi he was out
shopping by a buying a dryer okay um Ralph Ross called off work that day he does not have an alibi the next day he
shows up with what he says is a broken arm he's got it in a sling he's all kind of messed up um and then he moves out of
bu's house so he's there the whole time that even the prosecution is saying bule
has Christa and we know um from the adult women that were definitively raped by bule uh he kept them at the house so
if it's bule doing this he's got Christa at the house you know so at the very least at the very least Ralph Ross Jr
had to have been present for that if he's not complicit if he didn't participate if he didn't do the killing
um guy was living there when Christa was in that house um and all that evidence the fibers the carpet um you know the
plastic that they found around her all that that came from the house Ralph Ross Junior had access to that too and what
about the van that she was abducted from that had to have been bu's van well guess what bu did for his nephew he
Tracked Down the same make and model van and got it for his nephew they drove the
same van and they had rigged these uh um these metal hooks in the back the van they took out a seat um you know
so that they had a place to to chain the girls to hold somebody to hold somebody
yeah um so all that evidence that ties be to the crime also ties Ralph uh Ralph Ross Jr um and so this suddenly became
very interesting to me yeah and I track I track Ralph Ross Jr down and he's living living um near uh Stubenville
area actually uh when I finally finally get him he's still still he's never been
convicted he's still free and um I find that he's living um where like an eighth
of a mile like right around the corner from where Barbara Barnes was last seen it's a cold case from Stubenville area
uh young girl about the same age as Christa Harrison was um abducted uh her body was found on the
side of a river uh months later um Ralph Ross Jr's uh when I tracked them down was working for a cable company
installing cable boxes in people's homes um after I wrote about them and linked them to these these crimes um at least
uh to the point where he had to have known about Christa Harrison um they fired uh they fired him from the cable
company the FBI came in and processed the van that he was using I don't know that they found anything I know they
were very interested taking a look at it and uh um last I heard uh every once a while somebody will give me an update on
him CU he's still free he's still down there never really been questioned um uh he's now working for UPS you know he
loves any sort of job that gets you in near people's homes um so it's a it's a messed up it's a messed up case very
convoluted very very interesting um the other the other girl of course uh you know bule was only tried and executed
for Harrison and and I once asked the detective I said why didn't you guys try him for Tina Haron um we know the
evidence links them why didn't you try him for Deborah K Smith and the detective said you well we only need to
kill him once you know we we got the conviction on Christo why would we go after it
so I get together with Tina harman's family this was uh probably about five or six years ago and uh her Tina
Harmon's case had never been closed and I said well um you know what what do you
think Happ Happ and they're like well we don't think it was bule uh they won't never close the case and I went to the
prosecutor and I said uh you know why haven't you contacted the family you know you didn't even call them to tell
them that you believe it was bule so you're not investigating the case anymore and so it went back and forth
and eventually I started working with the Harmon family as a uh victim's Advocate um sort of thing and and uh as
a liaison between them and the press and we held a press conference and we demanded that the prose U test the
evidence in the Tina Harman case to to definitively link it U to bule if they could um my thought was maybe it'll link
to Ralph Ross Jr you know we haven't tested the evidence let's see um so uh the prosecutor came back and said no it
you know where are we going to find the funds you know to test this evidence that's 30 years old said well how much
is it going to cost he's like it's well man it's going to be at least $300 H I said I'll give you $300 you know let's
test this thing he's like no that's not how how it's done so we ran another article and it said prosecutor won't
spend $300 to close a three you know 30-year-old Cold Case it embarrassed him enough that they actually did the test
um and the test came back a couple weeks later that they had bu's DNA on Tina Harmon's pants so they were able to say
well there you go uh it was bu after all we're going to close the case now um I still have my doubts you know I have my
doubts about the way the evidence was tested um I have uh I have my doubts that it was bule working alone you know
I think I I'm I know I know Ralph Ross Jr at least had to have have been compli complicit in some way in Christa
Harrison's murder um at least had knowledge that it happened before anybody else did so it
would it would uh I would assume that that would be true also for Tina Harmon um and Deborah K
Smith so bule he the girl that gets the woman that gets away she flees to the neighbor's home
that's how police they they get into bu's home and they that starts the ball roll they come up with this all this
evidence does she say at any point she doesn't give any indication that there was more than one abductor
though no no um and and by then Ralph Ross Jr had had moved away had moved out because your suspicions might have been
he moved away because of the the the death of that young girl it's too much of a coincidence that you know he calls
off the day that her body was dumped that bule has an alibi for the time that the body was dumped that Ralph Russ J
shows up to work the next day with his arm in a sling and then quits his job and moves back home I think he thought
that the police were coming for both of them I mean the acts that bule did anyway are strange in nature by far and
you know heinous crimes that he committed but uh regardless if he killed the girls or not but the you know the
the things he did to these women are despicable yeah but the thing that's odd to me is
do we I I don't know do we see people graduate from murder to releasing victims I mean no absolutely not in fact
I spoke to a couple profilers on this I believe I spoke to John Douglas directly
again um on this case to get that opinion and you talk to criminal profilers that that do this for a living
and they will tell you no in in the history in the history of Serial killing you don't have a serial killer that
gruesomely murders girls who also just abducts and releases grown women right those are two different MOS those are
two different monsters you know um you don't go from killing to backing off and and doing Catch and Release so the the
schools of thought here would be either bule did do these things that he was convicted of and and ultimately
sentenced to death for or with the assistance of his not really his nephew but his nephew
through marriage yeah uh you know that the two of them did these crimes together you know or that Ralph Ross Jr
did these by himself and and got lucky because he happened to live with a seral rapist right um and I don't know the
answer to that question I do know this um it's not the only time that Ralph Ross Jr and Robert bule um
were working together in a sexual nature um a woman came forward and spoke to me
that I was able to confirm had a a relationship with Robert bule and she uh you know in in a grownup
kind of ashamed way told me about how um what bu like to do is is have three sums
with women and his nephew Ralph Ross Jr and so he'd get and and these were admittedly at least started consensual
um and she'd go over and and uh you know bule would have her have sex with Ralph
Ross Jr so they were they were in the thick of it together now if if you know you're you're living at my home and and
and it how do I not know if if you're killing children right killing girls and you live in my home with me how do I not
know that if I'm Robert bule of course of course how do I not know that you know that you I mean if if he's got the
girl in the house you see it you see it happen you see the things that he's doing and maybe it scares you so much
that you run away you know so there's there's answers to this case there's a guy running around with with
answers and and the prosecutor what made me so mad was you read through these grand jury transcripts Ralph Ross Jr's
on the stand he's very much making himself a suspect in the case M but the prosecutor knew that was invaluable as a
witness he was the case against bule he was the first witness that the prosecution called and he's the one that
um essentially convicted his uncle bule um and what's bule going to say no no no
you know yeah my nephew did it you know he did it too he knew he knew the evidence against him and you obviously
this this case is featured in your true crime book serial Killer's Apprentice but it also kind of bleeds into one of
your fictional Works do you want to touch on that just real quick well um yeah I've written a couple novels the
first one is the man from Primrose Lane and the man from Primrose Lane there it was definitely inspired by my work as a
true crime journalist for the Cleveland Scene and free times um and yeah there's
uh some similarities between some of the um the pieces of this case the serial Killer's Apprentice um there's also some
similarities to you know um you know a a bizarre case out of East Lake where a guy committed suicide and the police
went to contact next of Ken and they find out that uh oh you know they they're like we've got some bad news
about your brother he committed suicide they reached this woman she's like what you know my brother died in 1948 what
are you talking about and that's how they they learned that this this guy in East Lake had been living under a fake
name in Cleveland for 30 years mhm so yeah there's there's bits and pieces that definitely inspired Primrose Lane
Primrose Lane though is uh you know uh it's sci-fi you know there's time travel involved and um you know so it's a very
different story too I found that story to be fascinating Captain I tell you I found out about
this oh probably about three or four years ago now I had already knew about the Robert bule case and I knew about
the uh the the girl that he was convicted of killing right as well as having been suspected of two
other girls right and I knew that they had found the um you know the the the one woman had uh got out of his house as
he left for work and got away from him and that's what started the ball rolling on all this I knew about this but I
always just assumed you know that Robert bule that that he was just proclaiming his innocence because he was going to be
sentenced to death I didn't know that there was anything behind there there's kind of a story behind the story here
right and we didn't see this until we're able to talk to somebody like James rener who
had some additional access to some of this information because of his job because of where he worked and people
that he interacted with I mean he he worked very closely with a journalist that spent a lot of time with Robert
bule before his execution it seems like uh Robert bule also he wasn't just saying hey I didn't do this he also
tried to point you in the the correct direction or what he felt was the the correct direction and so a little bit of
an armchair detective well he it he was kind of cryptic about that though I don't know that he ever outright said
that this this so-called nephew of his would have been involved in anything but what he kept reminding everybody of was
that there's still a killer out there and he actually pointed to some crimes that took place in Ohio and western
Pennsylvania of girls roughly the same age now one of the cities of the girl of one of these girls was Stubenville and
you heard James rener talk about that that is where his his uh nephew by marriage would eventually end up living
right uh so that kind of points a finger at him uh one of the cases too that he talks about was the Amy mahalic case
which is actually quite similar to to the uh Tina Haron case that we talked about today there are some Sim
similarities there however yeah both both were found with uh dog hairs and fibers on them correct and there and
there was a situation with the with the stabbing and possible um uh blunt force trauma so there's some interesting
connections there um I think my in my opinion is it possible that that his nephew was involved I definitely think
so I think that there is there's something weird going on here because there's no way and but I don't believe
bule completely cuz bule wants to make it sound like yeah I raped some women you know yeah I I tortured and here's
the thing when he says I raped some women when you dive into the case you figure out he didn't just rape these
women he held them captive for days and he tortured them I mean he did horrible things to these women it was as close as
you can to killing somebody so what I'm getting at here though is there's no way
that these two men live together and they weren't in this thing together somehow because I I just don't see how
one could not know what the other one was up to there's no way that bu is cap is holding women captive raping them and
unbeknownst to his his nephew well his roommate yeah yeah and then on the other hand there's no way that the nephew is
abducting young girls and killing them and here's the thing too I kept looking at this thinking because we talked about
bule had one of those big Vans right and so did his nephew his nephew had a very
similar van well here's the problem with that they're like creepy van buddies and
I kept thinking I'm like well maybe maybe the nephew kept the girls in his in the van you know but we're talking
about several days go by it's certainly a possibility however there are things in the house that linked the house to
the girls so either those items were were in the van with the girls at the time or the girls were in the house
which I think is the most likely situation or the the items would be transferred I mean like as far as carpet
fibers and dog hairs and stuff like that maybe a dog never goes into your van but
there is transfer and the nephew actually kind of fingers himself a little bit because he he's talking about
in the grand jury when the grand jury is trying to to decide if they're going to
indict Robert bule uh the the nephew is then giving his account of things that he knew of that might have been going on
in the house or things that he saw when when he lived there and he kind of puts himself he kind of throws his hat in the
ring so to speak as being potentially involved in this situation well yeah I mean he definitely throws himself
underneath the creepy van and I don't think you know Robert bu I don't think he wanted to exactly point the finger at
his nephew because if you do that and and you and you go out and you seek out this man and
you bring him to Justice it all just kind of circles back to you doesn't it I mean it doesn't really clear you of
anything it just points out that maybe you this was a tag team effort uh on on some occasions yeah definitely that I
mean yeah and who knows I mean he could just be lying about the whole thing in general and we we do have to keep in
mind though that after the nephew moved out bule continued to commit crimes and that's when he was raping these grown
women and and holding them captive so we do need we should point that out before
you know keep that in mind when you're considering this other person as a suspect keep in mind the the person that
we have to look at in his character and what we know he is 100% capable of while
we're looking at this other guy so it's always great to have uh James rener aka the enemy on the show The Frenemy yeah
and make sure that you pick up I mean he he has a lot of interesting books you have seral Apprentice the serial killer
Apprentice serial killers Apprentice you have the Amy mahalic story Y and then you have the True Crime addict and which
which is a is a very fascinating read and you hear him talk about uh one of his fiction books there uh the man from
Primrose Lane uh he and he also has the great forgetting so there's plenty of good uh books our recommended reading is
well just buy something from bu James rener no the the man from Primrose Lane is actually one of my favorite fiction
books of all time but we are of course recommending this week that you check out the serial killer Apprentice by
James rener this obviously featur featuring the case that we just discussed and many many more including
The Disappearance of Ray gar the unsolved murder of Joseph cup uh both of these cases are cases that listeners
have asked us to cover they are listener request and both of them are featured in
this serial Killer's apprentice and another case that James covered is now the very famous case which is that of
The Disappearance of Amanda Barry and Gina De Jesus which of course were later solved and thank God they found those
girls that was the case where the three girls had been living captive which included Michelle Knight all three were
abducted by Ariel Castro and during their time in captivity Castro even fathered a child or two with with one or
one of the girls or more than one of the girls uh when James wrote about this when he wrote the serial Killer's
apprentice and and it covered this case that case was unsolved at the time and in fact no one had really linked the
disappearances to that of Michelle Knight now I do like to go back and read about a solved case before it was solved
uh so pick up the serial Killer's Apprentice true stories of Cleveland's most intriguing unsolved crimes do that
at our website uh recommended books are listed on the recommended page yeah let's go a true crime garage.com and
yeah I mean once you listen to our show and then you read this book by James rener you're never going to want to
visit Ohio ever again but uh yeah it's a it's a very good read yeah so go to True
Crim garage.com click on the Amazon banner and type in the name of the book that you are looking for or really any
other item that you want to pick up uh because if that you're in need of because every little bit helps the show
yeah I just bought 63 yo-yos off of Amazon got a good deal bulk I buy bulk he's a yo-yo collector hey know you got
to do some things Yo Yo Ma cheers my beautiful friends have fun this weekend and till next time be good be kind and
don't [Music] litter [Music] you can start your day off right when you find a professional on Angie to get
your plumbing right first connect with skill professionals to get all your home projects done well
visit angie.com you can do this when you Angie that

The Serial Killer's Apprentice ////// 54

TrueCrimeGarage.com

In the early 80's, someone was killing little girls in northern Ohio. Between October 1981 and June of 1983 the bodies of three young girls had turned up. In the first case, 12 year old victim Tina Harmon was seen with a man in his early 20's shortly before she went missing. The next victim 11 year old Krista Harrison was abducted right in front of her friend. The friend described the kidnapper as a white man who looked to be about 25 to 35 years old. In 1983 police connected the crimes to a local serial rapist 43 year old Robert Buell. Robert quickly admits to the rapes of several grown women. He would claim his innocence regarding the deaths of the young girls for the next 18 years, including his last words before his execution. Tonight we are joined again by long time garage friend James Renner to discuss the possiblity of the second killer theory known as the serial killer's apprentice.

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Brief Summary

The episode discusses Robert Bule's serial killings, his nephew's potential involvement, and the complexities of the case with insights from author James Renner.

Key points

Robert Bule's Execution. Robert Bule is executed for the murder of Christa Harrison, maintaining his innocence.
The Serial Killer Apprentice. A chilling exploration of a serial rapist and suspected killer in Ohio.
Christa Harrison's Abduction. 11-year-old Christa Harrison is abducted in 1982, leading to a tragic discovery.
The Dark Side of Robert Bule. Robert Bule, a seemingly affable city employee, was also a serial rapist and murderer.
Bule's Execution and Last Words. Robert Bule was executed in 2002, leaving behind a box of notes suggesting innocence.
Prosecutor's Reluctance. The prosecutor refuses to spend $300 to test evidence in a cold case, prompting public outrage.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Jerry and Shirley, I didn't kill your daughter.

Robert Bule's final words before execution, pleading his innocence.

6:47WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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