CHILLICOTHE — Frustrated with the progress of the official investigation, the family of Harry Smith has turned to private investigators to determine how the 89-year-old died.
In late April, the family hired a team of investigators from the Columbus-based Lycurgus Group, led by retired Columbus Police Department homicide detective Michael McCann, in hopes of bringing closure to a case that began with Smith’s death Oct. 16, 2011, after he was pulled from his burning home at 14546 Ohio 772.
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Smith’s relatives think he was bound, assaulted and robbed before his home was set on fire by a murderer-arsonist. They also have said they think a theory of suicide, partially prompted by the April 2011 death of his wife of 67 years, Opal, derailed the investigation and not enough priority has been given to the case.
The Ross County sheriff’s and coroner’s offices have investigated Smith’s death as suspicious, but have yet to release an official cause of death, much to the dismay of Smith’s relatives.
Sheriff George Lavender said Wednesday that officials from his office, the coroner’s office, the State Fire Marshal’s Office and the Bureau of Criminal Investigation will be meeting “in the very near future” to make a determination on the cause of death and decide which criminal charges to pursue, if any. He told the Gazette this past week he received word that the last of the evidence had been processed by the BCI, allowing the various agencies to make a final ruling.
“We want to do this investigation right, no matter what the outcome is,” Lavender said Wednesday, adding that if there is a criminal element to the case, they only get one shot at bringing someone to justice.
McCann mostly was tight-lipped about his team’s investigation, but said they are making public records requests and interviewing witnesses. McCann’s team is made up of former homicide detectives and an arson investigator, he said.
“This is basically a homicide investigation from scratch. It’s more of a cold case than anything else,” McCann said.
“I can’t really say if it was a homicide,” he said. “Given our experience as homicide detectives, it looks beyond suspicious.”
McCann said his team’s involvement in the case “clearly is a mark of the family’s frustration.” He said there needs to be better communication between the sheriff’s office and the Smiths.
Andrea Smith, the self-described family spokeswoman, put it more bluntly: “(Lavender’s) job is to communicate with families (of victims) and he’s failed on a basic, fundamental level to even communicate with this family.”
Smith said the family deserves closure and the community has the right to know if there’s a murderer in its midst. She said she has grown increasingly frustrated with Lavender and the progress of the eight-month investigation.
“We felt like if we didn’t hire these investigators, he’d come back to us with an undetermined cause of death,” she said.
Smith said several family members could end up paying upwards of $10,000 to the Lycurgus Group “just to get a cause of death.”
Smith said the family is struggling to understand why it’s taking so long for Lavender to sit down with the other agencies and issue their findings.
“What does he have going on that’s more important than a potential unsolved murder in our community?” she said.
Smith said she’d like to know what single piece of evidence would be holding up the case. McCann, too, is puzzled by the delay.
“I honestly don’t have a clue what has taken so long for all of these entities to come together to make a determination as to the cause of death,” he said.
Lavender said he has no problem with private investigators working the case.
“We’re just going to continue doing our job and doing it properly,” he said.
