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THE CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER
Excerpts From An Interrogation
Investigator Ron Craig questions witnesses
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Andrea Simakis
Plain Dealer Reporter
The three men who confessed to taking part in the 1990 murders of Bearnhardt and Cora Hartig recanted in 1997. They say Ron Craig, an investigator for the Portage County prosecutor, pressured them into admitting to crimes they didn't commit and naming a fourth man, Tyrone Noling, as the killer.
They said Craig and assistant prosecutors did not listen to their protestations of innocence, insisted they were guilty, put words in their mouths and twisted their answers. They claim they confessed only because they were told if they didn't cooperate, they would spend the rest of their lives in prison or die in the electric chair.
Prosecutor Victor Vigluicci defended his lawyers and his investigator. "Sometimes these questions get aggressive," he said. "It's the nature of the beast. You're not sitting down here with schoolchildren. You're sitting down here with murderers. And they have obvious reasons to lie and to protect themselves, so sometimes, the questioning gets aggressive. Not physically aggressive but verbally aggressive, and that's not unusual and it's not a tactic that's illegal. Neither is it illegal to use ruses or falsehoods in the course of the questioning. That's an acceptable tactic."
The following excerpts have been taken from early interrogations Craig conducted with Joey Dalesandro and Gary St. Clair, two of the men who now say their confessions were bogus.
On June 12, 1992, Craig visited Dalesandro at the Orient Correctional Institution. Dalesandro was serving three to 15 years for selling cocaine to an undercover police officer. It was their first meeting and lasted nearly an hour. Assistant Portage County Prosecutor Robert Durst and a colleague were also there. During that meeting, Dalesandro tells the same story he told detectives when they questioned him two years before: He had nothing to do with the Hartig murders and Noling hadn't killed the couple, either.
Dalesandro repeatedly tells Craig and assistant prosecutors that Noling robbed homes in Alliance, but didn't kill anyone.
He also says Noling sold the two guns he'd used in the robberies - a sawed-off shotgun and a .25-caliber handgun stolen from one of the victims - to a fence in Alliance. Police recovered those weapons after Noling led them to the fence and discovered they were not the guns used to kill the Hartigs.
Dalesandro denies driving Noling and the others to the Hartigs' house on the day of the murders.
Following is a partial transcript of that interview.
Ron Craig (RC): You have a right ... to tell us exactly what happened so we know from your own lips what happened. You have a right to tell us that so nobody else can make up any other stories about you. Do you understand that?
Joey Dalesandro (JD): I understand.
RC: . . . Now, you tell us what you did or didn't do. You tell us.
JD: I already told you what Tyrone did.
Assistant prosecutor Robert Durst (RD): Did you shoot those two old people, Joey?
JD: I don't even know nothing about that, man.
RC: You drove them there.
JD: Man, I never even knew where that town was.
RC: You drove them there!
JD: I don't know nothing about that, man.
RC: OK, you understand the seriousness of what's going on?
JD: Yeah, it's serious. Yeah.
RC: OK.
LATER
RC: But you have to answer this one thing.
JD: What do you mean "you have to answer"?
RC: One thing.
JD: What?
RC: Why are you afraid to tell us the truth? [Why are you protecting] Tyrone?
JD: I'm telling you the truth, man.
RC: What is this thing? Why [do] you have to protect Tyrone?
JD: Tyrone hurt f- - - - - no one.
RC: You said he did, you said it to many people - he blew them away.
JD: No, I didn't. They're lying.
RD: Joey, you are saying two things.
JD: Those are all lies.
RD: What you are telling us is, Tyrone didn't go there that day intending to hurt anybody, Tyrone is not that kind of guy.
JD: ... He never went out of Alliance.
RC: No.
JD: I never went out of Alliance unless I went to my dad's.
RD: You didn't go far out of Alliance, we know that. You're saying Tyrone is not that kind of person. What you are telling us is, you guys went out there that day, nobody intended to murder anybody. It happened.
JD: I ain't saying nothing 'cause I told you I don't know nothing.
Of Noling's putative accomplices, the testimony of Gary St. Clair was arguably the most crucial. Prosecutors said St. Clair followed Noling through the Hartigs' front door and watched him execute the husband and wife.
He was serving a prison sentence for robbing a couple in Alliance with Noling when Craig visited him in 1992 and told him he was being charged with two counts of aggravated murder.
When he heard the news, St. Clair shot out of his chair and pounded on the door until a guard let him out of the room, Craig wrote in his report.
In March 1993, St. Clair pleaded guilty to aggravated murder. Prosecutors asked that his sentencing be delayed until after Noling's trial.
St. Clair agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, but struggled to deliver a cogent account of the killings.
Following is a partial transcript of an interview between Craig and St. Clair in March 1993, immediately after St. Clair pleaded guilty.
Ron Craig (RC): What room were [the bodies] in?
Gary St. Clair (GSC): I think it was in the kitchen.
LATER
RC: Did he [Noling] shoot the people after they were already laying on the floor?
GSC: Did he shoot them while they was laying on the floor?
RC: Yeah.
GSC: I can't remember.
LATER
RC: Were Mr. and Mrs. Hartig screaming in the house?
GSC: I think they might have been.
RC: They were pleading for their life, weren't they?
GSC: I think.
RC: They were pretty scared people, weren't they? They were pleading to live, weren't they?
GSC: I think they were.
LATER
RC: When you came running out of that bedroom are they both laying on the floor?
GSC: When I come out of the bedroom I do believe both of them was on the floor.
RC: Did you see Tyrone shoot them while they were on the floor?
GSC: Yeah.
Editor's note: When Craig asked him what he and Noling said to each other inside the murder house, St. Clair stumbled and asked for help.
GSC: What's the words I want to say?
RC: Use your own words.
Editor's note: At trial, prosecutors told jurors that Noling had three guns - a shotgun, a stolen .25 that police recovered and ruled out as the murder weapon, and a handgun that was never recovered. That third gun, they contend, was used to kill the Hartigs. But none of Noling's compatriots could recall it in their early interviews, even after they'd agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
RC: How many guns did you ever see at any one time in the house [where St. Clair, Noling and the others often stayed]? Name them all.
GSC: ... A sawed-off shotgun - that's all they had around the house, until the robbery at Hughes and Tyrone got hold of that .25.
RC: Ever see another gun? ]y are you afraid to tell us the truth? [Why are you protecting] T
GSC: No sir.
RC: Ever been told about another gun?
GSC: Nah.
LATER
RC: There's another gun. Where did that gun come from? Did you guys ever steal another gun out of another house on a crime that hasn't been discovered?
GSC: If they got another gun, he might of made a deal ... with [the fence] to get another gun.
RC: Did they?
GSC: I have no idea. I'm just taking another guess. All I knew about was the sawed-off shotgun and the .25 automatic.
RC: Those guns weren't important. You had already gotten rid of them.
GSC: Right.
RC: Right. There is another gun.
GSC: If there is, I don't know anything about another gun.
RC: Did you ever shoot that gun?
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: asimakis@plaind.com, 216-999-4565
© 2006 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission.
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