Free Tyrone Noling

Death row doubts
Lies Put Man On Death Row, Men Say

Sunday, August 13, 2006

Andrea Simakis
Plain Dealer Reporter

Ten years ago, Butch Wolcott told a packed courtroom a gripping story. Wolcott was one of a group of young punks led by a hellion named Tyrone Noling. One day as Wolcott waited outside, Noling forced his way into the home of an elderly couple in Atwater Township, then shot them dead. Wolcott even described for the jury the smoking gun Noling carried as he fled the house.

Today, Wolcott lives on the Hawaiian island of Oahu; Noling is on death row in the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown.

But Wolcott can't find peace in paradise. Noling is innocent, Wolcott says, condemned to die because of the lies Wolcott told a decade ago. Two other men who pleaded guilty to taking part in the slayings also say Noling is innocent. All have claimed in affidavits that their testimony was coerced and coached by an overzealous investigator for the Portage County prosecutor's office.

But prosecutors, who once built a case on the men's damning confessions, now dismiss what they have to say as self-serving fiction.

A Plain Dealer examination of the investigation into the murders of Bearnhardt and Cora Hartig raises serious doubts about the testimony the government used to sentence Noling to death.

The case against Noling is shot through with inconsistencies. A psychologist hired by prosecutors to assess Wolcott and who helped him try to remember details of the murders says he's not sure those memories are true.

Though Noling was an incorrigible thief, the slain couple wasn't robbed. Noling's guns weren't used to kill the Hartigs. A cigarette butt found in the driveway yielded DNA that didn't belong to Noling or members of his gang. Except for the flawed and conflicting statements of Wolcott and others, no evidence points to Noling as the killer.

It wasn't like Bearnhardt Hartig to leave his garage door open and the riding mower outside. He and his wife, Cora, both in their 80s, kept their house and lawn tidy. So after seeing the orange tractor in the drive for several days, neighbors called the sheriff on April 7, 1990.

The Hartigs' living room was littered with papers when deputies arrived, like a filing cabinet had exploded. A few feet away in the kitchen, Cora lay on her side, her pink sweatshirt stained rusty red. She'd been shot five times.

On the floor in front of her was her husband. Like his wife, it looked as if he'd been sitting in a chair when someone fired three bullets into him.

Cora's wedding band was on her finger, Bearnhardt's wallet in his pocket, filled with cash. Watches and other jewelry sat untouched. Deputies found $160 in a vanity beneath the bathroom sink. The killer had opened the doors, but left the money behind.

Deputies found no witnesses or fingerprints and struggled to pin anything down -- even the date of the murders. They guessed the Hartigs had been at the kitchen table, perhaps talking with someone they knew, when they were shot. There was no sign of a break-in or scuffle.

The same week the Hartigs were killed, Noling was robbing old people in nearby Alliance. He left his fingerprints everywhere, his victims terrified but alive. He stole jewelry, cash and VCRs. During one home invasion, he accidentally fired a bullet into the floor. He asked the 74-year-old woman who lived there if she was OK. She told detectives the gunshot scared him more than it did her.

A natural suspect but no murder weapon.

Police quickly homed in on the 18-year-old with a thick file in juvenile court. Noling was living in a house with Gary St. Clair, a 21-year-old high school dropout; Joey Dalesandro, 18, who drove a baby blue Olds; and Wolcott, a 14-year-old runaway from Akron.

Noling was the alpha dog and butted heads with Wolcott from the day they met. Skinny and small for his age, Wolcott talked his way out of trouble. But he couldn't charm Noling. Once, Noling hogtied him and left him bound for hours; another time, he put a gun to Wolcott's head.

Police raided the house and found a diamond-studded Rolex and other booty from the Alliance heists strewn about. They dragged Noling out of an attic crawl space. He confessed to the robberies within hours.

News of the Hartig killings had broken the night before. Given his history, Noling was a natural suspect.

Noling led deputies to the guns he'd used in the robberies -- a sawed-off shotgun and a Browning .25-caliber handgun he'd taken from one of the homes. The Hartigs had been shot with a .25, and authorities thought they had their killer, but a ballistics test proved Noling's gun wasn't the murder weapon.

DNA tests showed a cigarette butt police plucked from the Hartigs' driveway didn't match Noling or any of his cronies. With no evidence linking Noling or the others to the crime scene, the murder investigation stalled.

Noling pleaded guilty to the Alliance robberies and was sentenced to five to 25 years.

In 1992, Ron Craig, an investigator for the Portage County prosecutor, picked up the Hartig file. He zeroed in on Noling's old cohorts.

Craig went after Wolcott first. He told the 16-year-old that a witness had seen Dalesandro's blue Olds on the Hartigs' street the day of the murders and that they'd found a cigarette butt in the driveway they could link to Wolcott, accord ing to Wolcott and a lawyer and family friend who sat in on some meetings.

Neither was true. There was no witness and the butt didn't have Wolcott's DNA, but police are allowed to lie to suspects during investigations. Prosecutors gave him a choice: Testify against Noling and go free. Refuse and be charged in the killings. Wolcott took the deal.

"I sold my soul that day," he says now. And, Wolcott says, Craig helped him do it.

But Wolcott couldn't provide the details prosecutors needed to make the case. He couldn't remember the date of the drive to the Hartigs. He couldn't describe the exterior of their neat ranch though he claimed to have waited in the couple's driveway while Noling and St. Clair forced their way past Cora.

The Portage County prosecutor's office hired Alfred Grzegorek, a Stow psychologist, in 1992 to help. Grzegorek's charge was to conduct a psychological assessment of Wolcott and determine why the 16-year-old couldn't remember much about the killings.

In his report, Grzegorek wrote that Wolcott "was quite clear with me that he is extremely frightened that he will not be able to recall enough to win the immunity recommendation premised on his cooperation in the investigation."

Wolcott, he wrote, had begun to think he was "going crazy," not certain if his recollections of the murders were real or imagined.

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