Tina, Deborah, Krista . . . and Steven

NOTE: This post deals with the topics of rape, murder, and suicide, so please use discretion in deciding whether you want to read on. If you struggle with thoughts of depression and/or self-harm, as most of us have (myself included), please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 and get the help you need—even if you feel like it won’t make a difference. It will.

According to statistics available today, if you live in Wayne County, Ohio, your chances of being assaulted in any particular year are quite low—it happens to only 0.078 out of 100 residents. Your chances of being kidnapped are even lower: just 0.027 per 100 residents annually. And your chances of being murdered are almost infinitesimal: a mere 0.002 for every 100 residents. In fact, Wayne County, Ohio, is a less dangerous county to live in than three-quarters of all other counties nationwide.

Data is also available for the frequency of crimes in particular Wayne County towns. For example, my tiny hometown of Fredericksburg, population 423 in 2010, achieves only a “D” rating from CrimeGrade.org; Wooster, the closest “big city” when I was growing up (2010 population just over 26,000) receives grades of A, C, D, and F, depending on the area of town in which you live. And Marshallville, with a population of just under 800 souls in 2010, rates a solid A, the town and its surrounding areas marked in green (rather than orange or red, as are Wooster and Fredericksburg).

Statistics are good indicators of the likelihood or unlikelihood of certain events occurring, but they’re not guarantees. For example, the odds of an amateur golfer getting a hole-in-one are 12,750 to 1. But somewhere tomorrow, at least one amateur golfer will do it. The risk of a woman developing breast cancer at some point in her life is about one in eight—so the vast majority of women, seven out of eight, will never get it. But those statistics don’t bring comfort if you receive a frightening diagnosis.

According to the FBI, if you were a ten- or eleven-year-old girl back in the early 1980s, your chances of being murdered were less than those of any other age or gender group. And I’m sure if you were a ten- or eleven-year-old girl living in Marshallville, Ohio, at that time, the likelihood was far less than the national average.

But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen. And it did happen—to a girl named Krista Lea Harrison.

Tina

Before we get to Krista, though, let’s talk about another girl. Her name was Tina Marie Harmon, and she lived in Creston, Ohio, twenty minutes from Marshallville.

According to this article, she was twelve years old, “loved cats,” and was a good student with a fine singing voice. And according to another article, written by a friend of the family, “On October 29, 1981, Tina got a ride to the local Lawson’s from her father’s girlfriend, who dropped her off in front with a group of her friends. They went inside. Tina bought a Fudgsicle. Her friends last saw her sitting in front of the convenience store, eating her snack.” Then she was gone, and no one knew where or why.

“The girl’s body was discovered . . . five days later, on an oil-well access road in Bethlehem Township, about 40 miles away. She had been raped and strangled.” Her body was “neatly laid near the side of the road where anyone could see” (IndieOnline.com).

Deborah

Deborah Kaye Smith was only ten years old—ten years old—when she disappeared from a sidewalk festival in Massillon, Ohio. It was June of 1983. “She and her brother David were getting a drink at a concession stand. When he turned to ask Deborah what she wanted, she had vanished” (Scene).

“Her disappearance touched off a massive search of the entire city by law enforcement officials and volunteers, but the search turned up no clues about the girl’s whereabouts” (upi.com). And, tragically, “her decomposed body was found on the banks of the Tuscarawas River a month and a half later” (Scene). She had been kidnapped, raped, and murdered.

Krista

Krista Lea Harrison’s case is the best known of the three because her death led to the arrest of the man who raped and killed not only her but also Tina and Deborah. Krista was abducted in front of a witness—her friend, twelve-year-old Roy Wilson. Roy and Krista were collecting aluminum cans from the Marshallville ballfield on Saturday, July 17, 1982. Roy left Krista briefly to get a drink on the other side of the field. He was horrified to see a van pull up and a man get out who began fondling Krista and then forced her into the van. As the van drove away, the abductor leaned out the driver’s window and chillingly said, “Bye, Roy!”

Six days passed, and then some men who were out trapping turtles came across Krista’s body. She had been brutally, violently tortured before being strangled to death. Other sources can give you those details, but I will not. I also am not going to name the sickeningly evil killer who was put to death for Krista’s murder in 2002 because this post isn’t about the killer but about his victims.

But there was a fourth person whose death, I believe, was caused by the girls’ killer. His name was Steven Ewing, and I knew him.

Steven

You won’t see Steven Ewing’s name in any articles about this serial killer. But killers always harm victims other than those they kill—and Steven was, I believe, a sad example of such collateral damage.

This is all theoretical on my part. I may be completely wrong, but the connections to me seem more than coincidental.

Steven Ewing was born in 1957. His family moved to Wooster in 1960, and that’s where he grew up. Our paths didn’t cross, though, until the summer of 1982. I was working on the paint crew at the OARDC—the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center in Wooster. It was good work for college kids—the pay wasn’t too bad, and you got to be outside a lot, painting barns and homes and fences and pig sheds that belonged to the research center. A few of us—Pete, Ed, Rosemary, Shelly, and I—had worked there the summer before along with John, Denny, and Nolan, the full-time year-round painters. Sometime early that summer, Steven Ewing joined our crew.

I didn’t know him long, but what I remember is that he had wavy hair and a moustache and was extremely quiet (especially compared to us younger, goofier kids). He seemed to be a serious person. I also remember my coworker Ed mentioning something unusual about him one day.

“I wonder . . . if Steven’s had some bad times,” he said to me quietly.

“Why?”

“Did you ever notice his wrists and his neck? They’re scarred, like maybe he tried to kill himself or something.”

The next time we were riding in the van to a job, I was sitting in the back seat and Steven was in the front, and I took the opportunity to look for the scars Ed had mentioned. He was right.

Shortly after Steven started, I got a call and was hired by Rubbermaid, where my dad worked. OARDC pay wasn’t bad, but Rubbermaid pay was through the roof—$8.00 an hour! Few college kids were getting that kind of pay for summer jobs in those days. So I bailed on the OARDC and started working in the factory.

On Tuesday, July 27, the Wooster Daily Record broke the story of the finding of Krista Harrison’s body.

Almost one week after she was abducted from the park across from her Marshallville home, Krista Harrison may have been found dead.

Friday night at 7 p.m., a body, suspected to be that of the 11-year-old Marshallville girl, was found in four-foot-high weeds near an abandoned shed about 10 yards off Old Calico Road in Washington Township, Holmes County, about five miles east of Loudonville.

Decomposition hampered identification of the body, Holmes County Sheriff Phil Huff said, but preliminary identification seems to indicate that the body is Harrison’s. The body was fully clothed in a football jersey and shorts, the same articles Harrison was wearing when she was abducted last Saturday . . . by a man witnesses described as about 5-foot-10, and dark complected with a dark mustache. Witnesses said that he appeared to be between 25 and 35 years old. [Wooster Daily Record, 27 July 1982, p. 19]

I well remember seeing this article the day it came out—not only because I was saddened by the death of the girl but because the artist’s sketch of the suspect, based on witnesses’ descriptions, looked just like Steven Ewing! Seeing it, I immaturely burst into laughter and said, “Oh no! Poor Steve!” All I could think was, what would it be like to have your face appear in the paper as a potential murderer when you weren’t guilty!

Of course, I had no way of knowing whether he was guilty or not. But the idea that I might know someone who had done those horrible things to that little girl seemed ludicrous.

I stopped laughing, though, when I saw the next day’s paper. It held an obituary for my former coworker Steven Ewing.

Steven C. Ewing, 25, 139 Buena Vista Drive, Wooster, died Tuesday morning at his home.

Death was due to asphyxiation. Wayne County Coroner Dr. J. T. Questel has ruled the death was self inflicted. . . .

He was a 1975 graduate of Wooster High School where he participated in football and track. He attended Ohio State University and was employed at the OARDC.

He was a member of the Wooster United Methodist Church.

I was stunned and called Ed, who was still working at the OARDC. But there really wasn’t much to say other than he was gone and we couldn’t believe it.

I never forgot these incidents and often thought of them over the years. I decided to write about them and so contacted the Wooster County Library for research help. I expected to find a mystery—had Steven killed that girl? I figured no one knew.

But thanks to Amber R. Coffman, Reference Associate in the Genealogy and Local History Department at the Wayne County Public Library, I learned the truth.

Steven had not been the killer. Another man had killed Tina and Krista and would kill Deborah the next year. But in my opinion, based on the timing of his suicide, Steven C. Ewing was also a victim of Krista’s killer.

For years I assumed Steven had seen the artist’s sketch in the paper on Tuesday and recognized that it looked a lot like himself. And, I continued to assume, because of his presumed background of self-harm and mental struggles, that that recognition had caused him to end his life.

However, in looking carefully over the dates of the events, I realized recently that Steven passed away on the morning of Tuesday, July 27, but the Daily Record story wasn’t released until the afternoon of that same day. So it wasn’t the newspaper story that led to his death.

Had Ewing seen the artist’s sketch elsewhere, maybe on TV, before it appeared in the local paper? I have no idea, of course, and his tragic death at that time may well be no more than a coincidence. But I will always have strong suspicions that he was another tragic victim—“collateral damage,” to use a clinical and heartless phrase—of a perverted killer’s violence.

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Krista Lee Harrison is buried in the Marshallville, Ohio, cemetery. She was born on May 28, 1971, and her gravestone gives her date of passing as July 23, 1982. It also bears the following quote from Longfellow: “An angel visited the green earth, and took a flower away.”

If you are interested in more about Krista’s case, the television show Forensic Files Season 5, Episode 3, Material Evidence, is an interesting documentary about the tragic events.

Copyright 2023 by Steven Nyle Skaggs

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Wooster Daily Record, July 27, 1982, broke the story of the finding of Krista Harrison’s body. The artist’s sketch of the suspect is the one that reminded me of the guy I worked with, who was completely innocent.

The Marshallville Community Park, from which Krista Harrison was abducted, is now named in her honor.

Special thanks to Amber R. Coffman, Reference Associate in the Genealogy and Local History Department at the Wayne County, Ohio, Public Library, without whom I never would have known the end of this story.