Final Meal:
A cheeseburger with lettuce, pickle, onion, tomato, ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise along with french fries and a Pepsi.

Final Words:
No final statement.

Internet Sources:

Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (Death Row)

ProDeathPenalty.Com

The Wood county prosecuting attorney indicates that Richard Fox's execution date is set for February 12, 2003. Fox has exhausted all of his appeals. He will be executed unless governor Taft of a court intervenes.

Fox was convicted in the 1990 kidnapping and murder of 18-year-old Leslie Keckler, a student at Bowling Green State University. Fox is scheduled to be executed Feb. 12 for the 1989 murder of a college student he had lured to a nonexistent job interview. When the victim, Leslie Keckler, rejected Fox's sexual advances and tried to get out of the car, Fox stabbed and strangled her, prosecutors said. Police were led to Fox when they remembered a similar incident involving a Bowling Green State University student who had escaped from a man who had lured her into his car under a similar pretext. The key evidence against Fox included bloodstains in his car and a knife, which prosecutors said was used to kill Leslie.

In 1994 the U.S. Supreme court refused to hear the case. Attorneys for Fox argued Wood county prosecutors shouldn't have released a confession Fox gave to police shortly after his arrest. Prosecutor Alan Mayberry says frustration over the death penalty appeals process in cases such as Fox's, is what prompted Ohio voters to pass a state issue that sets a constitutional amendment on the number of appeals filed by the condemned. A 3 judge panel had sentenced Fox to die in the electric chair. Since that is no longer used, Fox will be executed by lethal injection.

UPDATE: Convicted murderer Richard E. Fox should find no mercy from Gov. Bob Taft, the Ohio Parole Board said. The board unanimously recommended that the governor reject Fox’s petition for clemency, allowing his execution to proceed as planned on Feb. 12. Fox was convicted in the Sept. 26, 1989, murder and kidnapping of Leslie Renae Keckler, an 18-year-old Owens Technical College freshman lured to a fraudulent job interview.

"Only now at the midnight hour has Fox had any type of remorse and found God," said new Wood County Prosecutor Raymond Fischer. "He has had eight or nine different stories of what happened. Even a couple of parole board members said he was still glib in his statements to them just two weeks ago." "His story has changed eight times since he first claimed an alibi," said Kim Norris, spokesman for Attorney General Jim Petro. "He’s still blaming the victim, saying she didn’t realize it was a date when he stalked her and got her information off a job application," spokesman Norris added. "Clearly they were not," she said. "These women were duped into getting into a vehicle with him. They were not dates. His apologies continue to ring hollow." Jeff Sutton, one of Fox’s attorneys said, "It was fraud to be sure, but it was not designed to commit sexual assault, certainly not to commit murder."

The daughter of Fox asked the Ohio Parole Board to recommend that Gov. Bob Taft spare the life of the man taken from her by police 13 years ago. "In killing him, you are doing exactly what he did - taking another life," said Jessica Fox, who was 6 at the time her father was arrested. "He has asked for forgiveness for what he has done," she said. "He is a changed man who would not even think about doing anything he has done in the past." However, the family of Leslie Renae Keckler, said the death-row inmate can expect no forgiveness from them. They asked the state to restore the victim’s dignity by carrying out Fox’s execution as scheduled on Feb. 12. Ms. Keckler’s family told the board Fox’s apologies are insincere and that he continues to partially blame her for what happened that night. "From the first time Fox saw Leslie, he thought of her as something less than a human being created by God," said her younger brother, Chad. "He thought of her as a toy, a toy that he could play with and manipulate to amuse him, and when his toy no longer pleased him, he destroyed her, then threw her away."

Gov. Bob Taft rejected Richard E. Fox’s plea for mercy one week before the state is scheduled to put him to death for killing an 18-year-old college student 13 years ago. "There is no doubt that Mr. Fox is guilty of brutally murdering Leslie Keckler," said Mr. Taft. "The claims of error with respect to the imposition of the death sentence advanced by attorneys for Mr. Fox have been reviewed and rejected by state and federal courts. There are no discussions in this case that would indicate any manifest injustice," he said. "I find that the aggravating circumstances and brutality of Mr. Fox’s crime outweigh any mitigating factors he has presented. I can find no compelling reason to grant clemency."

Fox, a Tontogany native, is scheduled to be executed at 10 a.m. Wednesday at the Southern Ohio Correctional Institution near Lucasville. He would be the sixth man executed since Ohio resumed carrying out the death penalty in 1999 and the first from northwest Ohio. He was convicted of aggravated murder and kidnapping for luring Leslie, a freshman at Owens Technical College, to an interview in Bowling Green on Sept. 26, 1989, for a nonexistent restaurant-supply sales job. He convinced her to get into his car under the pretext of showing her the sales route and drove to a rural area north of the city. When she rejected his advances, he stabbed her six times and strangled her.

Fox’s attorneys have argued that the murder was out of character for Fox, that he had no criminal record prior to the killing, and has been a model prisoner while on death row. The state, however, presented Fox as a predator who started out sexually harassing young job applicants and progressed to fabricating job interviews to get women alone to fulfill a long-held rape fantasy. "The Ohio Adult Parole Board gave a complete review of the matter and rendered an 8-0 unanimous decision to recommend denying clemency to Fox," said Wood County Prosecutor Raymond Fischer. "Governor Taft indicated that he spent considerable time reviewing the entire record in Mr. Fox’s case. We believe that due process has been afforded to Mr. Fox and to the family of Leslie Keckler," Mr. Fischer said. Leslie’s father, Lester, and two brothers, Chad and Brad, are expected to witness the execution. Fox’s daughter, Jessica, 6 years old when her father was imprisoned 13 years ago, also plans to be there.

Cincinnati Enquirer

"Man Executed For Killing College Student," by Liz Foreman. (AP Febrary 12, 2003)

A man who lured a college student to her death with the promise of a job was executed Wednesday. Richard E. Fox, 47, made no final statement before being killed by injection at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. He was pronounced dead at 10:13 a.m. It was the state's sixth execution since Ohio resumed the death penalty in 1999.

Fox kidnapped, stabbed and strangled Leslie Keckler, 18, of Bowling Green, on Sept. 26, 1989. Her body was found four days later in a ditch near the northwest Ohio city. Fox had confessed and was convicted in 1990 of aggravated murder and kidnapping. Students from Roman Catholic high schools in Cleveland and Cincinnati joined anti-death penalty protesters outside the prison in bitter cold Wednesday morning. School officials said 125 students made the trip. "It should be God who decides when someone dies," said Tiera Carson-Nicholson, 16 and a sophomore at Trinity High School in suburban Cleveland.

Gov. Bob Taft last week refused to grant clemency, saying there was no doubt that Fox was guilty. Greg Meyers, chief of the Ohio Public Defender's death penalty section, said then that there were no more legal issues to appeal. Andrea Dean, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, said Fox had spent the hours leading up to the execution with family members and that he was upbeat. He went to sleep about 1 a.m. and woke around 4:20 a.m., Dean said. He did not take a shower or eat his breakfast of coffee, apple juice, toast, dry cereal and peanut butter and jelly, Dean said. Dean said Fox had been compliant and spent time with spiritual advisers after being moved to Ohio's death house Tuesday from the Mansfield Correctional Institution. On Tuesday, Fox ate his requested meal of a cheeseburger with lettuce, pickle, onion, tomato, ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise along with french fries and a Pepsi, Dean said.

The injection Fox received consisted of sodium pentothal, which induces unconsciousness; pancuronium bromide, a muscle relaxant that stops breathing; and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

Authorities said Fox found Keckler, a student at Owens Community College near Toledo, through an application she filled out at the restaurant where he worked. After an initial meeting in hotel lobby, Keckler got into Fox's car so that they could check out businesses where supplies could be sold. In a rural area outside of Bowling Green, Fox started making advances. Keckler fought him and tried to open the car door. But he pulled her back, pulled her coat over her head and stabbed her six times in the back. He then drove to a secluded road where, he told police, he strangled her with a rope "just to make sure she was dead." Fox had lived in the northwest Ohio town of Tontogany.

Prosecutors said he had repeatedly used deception to lure women in the years before the murder. However, his attorneys said he used trickery to meet women, not to kill them. His attorneys argued that Fox was not the "worst of the worst" criminals for whom the death penalty is intended. They also said he should have been re-sentenced because guidelines used in his case later were declared flawed by the Ohio Supreme Court. The high court refused to delay the execution to hear the sentencing issue.

Ohio Death Row - Executions

Toledo Blade

"Fox Declines to Apologize Before Being Put to Death," by James Drew. (02/14/03)

LUCASVILLE, Ohio - Richard E. Fox had said, if he could, he would personally apologize to the family of the 18-year-old college freshman from Arcadia he murdered 13 years ago. But when given that chance yesterday moments before being put to death for killing Leslie Renae Keckler, the 47-year-old Tontogony native did not take advantage of the opportunity. Fox went to his death without looking at or talking to the three members of the Keckler family witnessing his execution. He was pronounced dead at 10:13 a.m. from a combination of three drugs that sedated him, shut down his lungs, and then stopped his heart.

"The family feels justice has been served, that Leslie and my mother can now be at peace," said Miss Keckler’s brother, Chad. The family says it believes Linda Keckler died from a broken heart after the death of the daughter she adopted as an infant. Fox became the sixth inmate executed by Ohio since it resumed carrying out the death penalty in 1999 and the fourth in less than 12 months. He marked the first execution of a northwest Ohio resident in more than 44 years.

Fox - standing 6 feet, 1 inch tall and weighing 285 pounds -was escorted into the execution chamber at 9:58 a.m. and stood briefly on a stool to get onto the injection gurney. He kept his eyes closed as members of the execution team strapped him down. The warden clutched a microphone as a team member at 10:02 a.m. prepared the injection of the drugs. Fox opened and closed his eyes several times.

At 10:03 a.m., the warden and an execution team member standing near Fox’s head moved closer to Fox. Separated from the inmate by a glass window, the victim’s maternal aunt, Angela Balderson, held hands with Miss Keckler’s father, Lester. He and his son, Chad, wore gray suits and appeared somber. On the left side of the chamber, the three witnesses Fox chose - Greg Meyers of the state Public Defenders’ Office, brother-in-law Jerry Wiles, and the Rev. Robert Henning - showed no emotion. At 10:05 a.m., the warden held the microphone over Fox’s head and asked: "Fox, do you have any last statement you’d like to make?’’ "No sir,’’ Fox replied.

Fox appeared to breathe regularly at 10:06 a.m., but a minute later he took some visible breaths and his abdomen and chest began to rise up and down. His lips moved, but no words were audible. By 10:08 a.m., Fox’s chest and abdomen did not move. The warden and the execution-team member at Fox’s head watched him intently and at 10:10 a.m., Ms. Balderson dabbed her mouth. There was no sound in the execution chamber. At 10:12 a.m., an execution-team member closed the curtain, and Mr. Henning bowed his head. The curtain was reopened as the warden declared the time of death. Fox’s face and arms were drained of any color.

Fox spent the last few hours of his life at the Southern Ohio Correctional Institution with his daughter, Jessica, who was 6 years old when her father was arrested in 1989. Now 20, she had planned to watch her father die but decided not to as the final hour approached. "Together, the decision was simply, ‘Let us leave in a way that the last picture memory in your mind is one of a warm and loving father, not a person strapped down like an animal to an injection execution table,’" Mr. Meyers said. Andrea Dean, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, described Fox’s mood in the hours before his execution as "upbeat," although he rejected the standard prison breakfast brought to him.

Fox, a short-order cook, had gotten the phone number of Miss Keckler, a student at the former Owens Technical College, from a job application at a restaurant where he worked. He lured her to an interview in Bowling Green for a nonexistent restaurant-supply sales job and convinced her to get into his car under the pretext of showing her the sales route. He then drove her to a rural area near his home in Tontogany. According to what he later told police, Miss Keckler rejected his advances, called him a derogatory name, and tried to get out of the car. He stabbed her six times with a knife he used to kill rabbits. Then he strangled her with a nylon rope and left her body in a deep drainage ditch.

Mr. Meyers said Fox chose not to make a personal statement to the Keckler family because he felt prior comments of remorse had been received as insincere. "Richard committed a horrible crime," he said. "He was not a horrible man. He went to his death with faith and with deep sorrow and apologies to Miss Keckler’s family. ... We know on a human level that can ring hollow. Richard Fox, in his own way, was a deeply moral man."

When he died, Fox took with him any information, if he had any to offer, on the death of his estranged wife, Kim Swinehart Fox, in 1983. Shortly before their final divorce hearing, Mrs. Fox was found dead with her arms and head over the side of a bathtub in her Oregon apartment, an apparent suicide. Her wrists had been slit and blood was found in the bathtub, but the coroner determined she died from asphyxiation as a result of neck compression, not blood loss.

Ms. Swinehart’s family and Oregon police had hoped Fox might provide information as his execution approached. He did not, maintaining his innocence of any murder other than that of Miss Keckler to the end.

"It was a terrible thing he did to take [Miss Keckler’s] life, but for us to take his life only makes another terrible thing," said Sister Marian Durkin, a nun at St. Augustus of Richfield near Cleveland who was among the protesters outside the prison walls as Fox’s execution took place. "We prayed for [the Keckler family] last night," she said. "We prayed for her, but we just really believe that he needs prayers too."

Ohio Post

"Calm and Quiet, Man Executed for Killing College Student," by Liz Sidoti. (AP February 14, 2003)

LUCASVILLE, Ohio — A calm and quiet Richard E. Fox was executed yesterday for his 14-year-old crime of kidnapping, strangling and stabbing a college student he had lured to a fake job interview. The 47-year-old politely declined to make a final statement and kept his eyes closed as three drugs were injected into his arms in the death chamber of the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. "No, sir," Fox answered when Warden James Haviland asked if he would like to say any last words.

No appeals were pending when Fox was brought into the death chamber at 10 a.m. Clemency was denied a week ago, and a court had refused to consider his claim that he should be resentenced. Fox was executed for killing Leslie Keckler, 18, near the northwest Ohio city of Bowling Green after she rejected his advances. "Justice has been served," Chad Keckler, one of her brothers, said later, standing in front of 12 friends and relatives holding hands. "Leslie and my mother can now be at peace."

The heavyset, balding Fox was strapped to a white-clothed gurney. He wore blue prison-issued pants with one red stripe down each leg, a white cotton shirt and brown shoes. Facing the ceiling, he avoided looking at witnesses, guards or the warden, who stood next to him. His hands were open, palms facing up and his eyes were closed, fluttering only briefly as the drugs began to take effect. Fox swallowed once and pursed his lips. His chest and stomach rose and fell quickly more than a dozen times, the force of the air causing his lips to sputter and his chin to shudder. As his breathing appeared to slow, Haviland watched his chest closely for several minutes before nodding to the doctor to determine the time of death — 10:13 a.m.

It was the sixth execution since Ohio reinstated the death penalty in 1999. The state prisons department expects four or five more this year, although only one has been scheduled.

Fox, of Tontogany in northwest Ohio, killed Keckler, of Bowling Green, on Sept. 26, 1989. Fox confessed and was convicted in 1990 of aggravated murder and kidnapping. He told authorities he found Keckler, a student at Owens Community College near Toledo, through an application she filled out at the restaurant where he worked. They met in a hotel lobby and then got into his car to look at businesses where restaurant supplies could be sold. Authorities say Fox stabbed Keckler six times in the back, then drove to a secluded road where, he told police, he strangled her with a rope "just to make sure she was dead." Her body was found four days later in a ditch.

Execution witnesses Chad Keckler, an aunt, Angela Balderson, and the victim's father, Lester Keckler, remained quiet and stared straight ahead through the glass separating them from the death chamber. Balderson was on the edge of her seat, clutching Keckler's father's hand. As Fox's death was announced, she looked to the ceiling and her eyes filled with tears. Also silent and still in a second witness room were Fox's spiritual adviser, the Rev. Robert Henning, a brother-in-law, the Rev. Jerry Wiles, and defense attorney Greg Meyers.

Meyers, of the state's public defender's office, took the place of Jessica Fox, who, at her father's request, decided Tuesday night against watching him die. Fox's daughter, 20, had wanted to be with her father to the very end, but changed her mind after spending time with him Tuesday, Meyers said. "Together the decision was simply, let us leave in a way where the last picture memory in your mind is one of a warm and loving father, not a person strapped down like an animal to an injection-execution table," he said.

The injection consisted of sodium pentothal, which induces unconsciousness; pancuronium bromide, a muscle relaxant that stops breathing; and potassium chloride, which stops the heart. Outside the prison stood about 100 anti-death penalty protesters, many of them students from Roman Catholic high schools in Cleveland and Cincinnati. "It should be God who decides when someone dies," said Tiera Carson-Nicholson, 16 and a sophomore at Trinity High School in suburban Cleveland.

Fox had chosen not to take a shower or eat his breakfast of dry cereal, toast, peanut butter and jelly, coffee and apple juice, said Andrea Dean, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.

Prosecutors said Fox had repeatedly used deception to lure women in the years before the murder. However, his attorneys said he used trickery to meet women, not to kill them. They argued that Fox was not the "worst of the worst" criminals for whom the death penalty is intended. They also said he should have been resentenced because guidelines used in his case later were declared flawed by the Ohio Supreme Court.

Ohioans to Stop Executions

Why Is Richard Fox the One We Execute?

Ohio recorded 652 murders in 1989, sentenced eight killers to death that year, and has scheduled a Wednesday February 12 execution for one who confessed, Richard Fox. State law permits execution for the worst murderers, where aggravating circumstances outweigh mitigating factors beyond a reasonable doubt. The Ohio criminal justice system singled out Richard Fox as its most deserving killer of the year because of geography and judicial error.

Fox deceived eighteen-year old Leslie Keckler into accompanying him in his car; when she rejected his advances he stabbed and strangled her in a fit of anger. He made an inadmissible confession prior to representation by counsel, disputed the kidnapping charge at trial, and acknowledged his guilt at the sentencing. The Wood county prosecutor decided to ask for the death penalty, and the victim's family approved; prosecutors in many other Ohio counties would have sought a life term based on his personal history or if the victim's family objected to execution. Several judges on the Ohio Appeals Court and Supreme Court found that the trial panel in sentencing Fox failed to provide the required explanation of its reasoning and by law should have imposed a life term.

The trial court did not convict Fox of planning the murder, but its opinion appears to weigh such unproven premeditation to kill as a decisive aggravating factor more significant than all the mitigating evidence presented--admission of guilt, expression of remorse, testimony by numerous witnesses to prior good citizenship and community service, sensitive care for his daughter, model behavior in prison where he rescued a diabetic inmate, expert opinion about a psychological disorder, and his six year old child Jessica's well being.

Ohio Supreme Court Justice Craig Wright joined by A.W. Sweeney dissented from the decision affirming Fox's death sentence, as did Judge James Sherck on the Court of Appeals; after leaving the bench Wright opposed the execution in statements to the Ohio Parole Authority and other venues. Jeffrey Sutton, nominated by President Bush to serve on the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, has petitioned the Ohio Supreme Court to grant Fox a new sentencing hearing.

The American Bar Association has called for a moratorium on executions because of serious defects in the criminal justice system. Non-partisan expert commissions in Illinois and Maryland concluded that their state systems have not made reliable judgments about guilt or innocence and which killers should be sentenced to death. Two days before leaving office, Republican Governor George Ryan emptied the Illinois death row and declared: "Our capital system is haunted by the demon of error . . . in determining who among the guilty deserves to die."

There is neither deterrence nor justice when our state singles out a single murderer such as Richard Fox as a symbol of our outrage at the 652 killings committed in 1989. Less than 2 per cent of murders result in death sentences for convicted killers. There were 4,830 murders recorded in Ohio from 1983-1990, 81 men were sentenced to death in those years, and since 1999 five convicts (O.1%) have been executed for those crimes.

The lengthy judicial proceedings, expensive death row incarceration, and execution of Richard Fox has cost Ohio far more than our taxpayers would have expended to imprison him for life; yet even at a time of extraordinary state and local budget deficits, money should not be the decisive factor. The cost to our collective humanity is far greater.

When Fox petitioned the Ohio Parole Authority for a life term, his daughter Jessica pleaded for his life; the victim's younger brother Chad argued for execution. Unlike the families of victims whose killers were sentenced to a life term in 1989, the Keckler family has sustained the false hope that a death row inmate's execution will somehow assuage their inconsolable grief. Murder Victim's Families for Reconciliation and Sister Helen Prejean offer compelling evidence that executing Richard Fox will create another victim-Jessica Fox-without remedying the Keckler's terrible loss. How does the state fairly determine which families see an execution and which must accept life term for the killer? The repeated political spectacle of bereaved victims and families of the condemned crying before the cameras affronts the dignity of all.

On February 12 an anonymous team of Ohio executioners will administer a lethal cocktail of three drugs to Richard Fox. Doctors taking the Hippocratic Oath swear to "Do no harm." After the drugs take effect, an Ohio doctor screened from witnesses by a curtain will certify that life has ended; the official certificate will indicate "homicide" as the cause of death.

Richard Fox should serve a life term for killing Leslie Keckler. His daughter Jessica lost her mother while a young child, and the state should not take her father's life. Vengeance belongs to the Lord, not to the victim's family, not to elected prosecutors and politicians. All the other democracies in Western Christendom have abolished the death penalty, just as they abolished slavery years before the U.S. followed. After five executions since 1999, Ohio has 207 inmates on death row and mounting opposition to a flawed legal system and to a cycle of violence that produces new victims.

Professor Howard Tolley, Jr., University of Cincinnati
January 14, 2003

TheDeathHouse.Com

"Ohio Executes Fox For Murder of Young Woman," by Robert Anthony Phillips. (February 12, 2003)

LUCASVILLE, Ohio -- Richard E. Fox was executed by lethal injection Wednesday morning for kidnapping and murdering a young woman he had lured to a fake job interview. Fox, 47, gave no last statement when he was led to the Death House at 10 a.m. He was pronounced dead from the lethal injection of drugs at 10:13 a.m. It was the first execution of 2003 in Ohio. The execution was at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility.

No Last Appeals

There were no last-ditch appeals pending in the days before Fox’s execution. Prison officials said Fox spent his final hours watching television and reading the Bible. Fox was convicted of the Sept. 26, 1989 murder of Leslie Keckler, 18, in a hotel parking lot, where the victim had agreed to meet him for a job interview. But there was no job. When Keckler rejected Fox's sexual advances, Fox stabbed and strangled her. After killing the young woman, Fox dumped her body in a ditch in Bowling Green.

Lured To Death

The key evidence against Fox were bloodstains in his car and a knife, which prosecutors said was used to kill Keckler. Fox also admitted that he killed Keckler. Fox was also suspected of attacking another woman during a similar job interview scam, but she escaped. Fox was, at one time, an assistant manager at a restaurant. Keckler had filled out an application to work at the restaurant. That was how Fox got her name. Keckler arranged to meet Fox for a job interview selling restaurant supplies. She was a student at Owens Community College. Prosecutors said he had used the ruse to try to meet other women.

Not ‘Worst’ Criminal’

Defense lawyers had unsuccessfully argued that the slaying of Keckler was not premeditated so, therefore, Fox should receive life in prison instead of death. Also they said he was not the worst of criminals, so the death penalty was inappropriate. Fox became the sixth condemned killer executed in Ohio since the death penalty was reestablished. The executions have occurred since 1999.

State v. Fox, Ohio App. 6 Dist. (1992) (Not Reported in N.E.2d).

MELVIN L. RESNICK, Judge.

This is an appeal from the Wood County Court of Common Pleas, wherein a three-judge panel found appellant, Richard E. Fox guilty of one count of aggravated murder with one death penalty specification and one count of kidnapping. Fox was sentenced to death.

I. A.

In early May 1989, Marla Ritchey applied for a job as a waitress at the Sundance Restaurant in Bowling Green, Ohio. A few days later she received a call from someone inviting her to a job interview at the Holiday Inn in Bowling Green. On May 8, 1989, Ritchey went to the lobby of the Holiday Inn for her interview. A man approached her and introduced himself as "Jeff Bennett." Ritchey saw that the man had a copy of her Sundance application on his clipboard. The man told her that his day had been hectic and that he had not finished all of his business. He asked Ritchey if she would accompany him on his business route so they could discuss the job. Ritchey agreed and got into his car.

As they were driving, the man explained that he was a representative for a company called "Great American Foods." He stated that the company did business with restaurants in the Northwest Ohio area and that they were interested in hiring a new company representative. He pulled into the parking lot of a bar called "Gamers" and stopped the car. He handed Ritchey a list of medical benefits supposedly included with the job and went inside of the bar. When he returned a few minutes later, Ritchey questioned him about the specifics of the job. The man answered vaguely, quickly changing the subject. He asked her if she thought she was dressed appropriately for the interview. He told her that he thought her skirt was too long. He then started the car and told her they would go back to the Holiday Inn to further discuss the job. Instead of returning in the direction they had come from, the man proceeded down a back road. Having decided that the interview was a hoax, Ritchey became alarmed and contemplated jumping out of the moving car. Nevertheless, they did return to the Holiday Inn parking lot where the man stopped the car. Ritchey explained that she was not interested in the job. The man asked her what she would do if someone pulled a knife on her and asked her for all of her money or asked her to do "other things." At that point, Ritchey did jump out of the car. The man attempted to grab for her and told her to come back. As Ritchey ran for her car, the man immediately pulled away.

Ritchey reported the incident to the police providing a description of the man and his car. As a result, the police compiled a composite drawing of a suspect.

B.

On September 14, 1989, eighteen-year-old Leslie Renee Keckler walked into the Bob Evans Restaurant in Bowling Green to apply for a job. Keckler sat at the restaurant's counter where she filled out an application. On that day, appellant, Richard Fox, was employed as grill cook at the restaurant. Restaurant manager, Ronald E. Laney, had Keckler's completed application in his hand when he was approached by Fox. Fox told Laney that he thought he recognized Keckler and he asked Laney for her name. Laney held up the application, pointed to her name and said "[H]er name is Leslie Keckler. Do you know her?" Fox answered no.

Keckler subsequently told family and friends that she had a job interview scheduled for September 26, 1989, at the Holiday Inn in Bowling Green. She told her mother, Linda Dunlap Wilson of Arcadia, Ohio, that the interview was with a man who had a sales route that he wanted to relinquish. The job was supposedly for a restaurant sales position that paid five dollars an hour plus commission. If hired, she would supply Bowling Green restaurants with restaurant supplies. Keckler's mother remembered that her daughter was very excited about the interview. Mike Crego, Keckler's boyfriend, remembered that Keckler expected the September 26 interview for a sales position to last approximately three hours. Keckler told Crego she would be going over her possible sales route during the interview. On the evening of September 26, Holiday Inn restaurant manager Holly Beaverson saw Keckler sitting on a couch in the lobby of the motel. Beaverson asked Keckler if she could be of assistance. Keckler answered no and explained that she was waiting for someone. According to Beaverson, Keckler was in the lobby approximately fifteen minutes. Beaverson did not see Keckler leave the Holiday Inn.

Early on the morning of September 27, Crego called Keckler's mother to inform her that her daughter had never returned home from the interview. A missing person's report on Keckler was filed with the Bowling Green Police Department on September 27.

On September 28, 1989, Investigator John Helm interviewed Marla Ritchey regarding the composite of "Jeff Bennett" that had been compiled in May 1989. The prior incident at the Holiday Inn involving Ritchey seemed relevant to the Keckler investigation. Ritchey had not been satisfied with the original composite drawing so she assisted Helms in its revision. The revised composite was completed on September 29, and was later released to the local media.

On September 30, 1989, Keckler's body was found in a ditch on the west side of Pargillis Road in Wood County. The coroner reported her immediate cause of death as ligature strangulation complicated by multiple stab wounds.

On October 2, 1989, Richard Kinsman went to the Bowling Green Police Department and identified the revised composite drawing as his former friend, Richard Fox of Tontogony, Ohio. A follow up computer check on Fox revealed that he had previously been involved in an incident at a local pizza store with a female job applicant. The police prepared a search warrant for the residence of Richard Fox.

On October 2, 1989, Detective Thomas Brokamp and Investigator Helm went to Fox's residence. Fox agreed to voluntarily go with the officers to the Bowling Green Police Department. It was there that Fox signed a waiver of his Miranda rights. Fox admitted to being the man that Marla Ritchey had met at the Holiday Inn. Fox also told the officers that he had seen Keckler enter the Bob Evans Restaurant on September 14 and that he had spoken to her about working at the restaurant. He stated that he met with Keckler at the Holiday Inn on September 26 and that later that evening they met by chance at the Woodland Mall in Bowling Green. They decided to go for a drive and she got into his car. They drove for a while and then parked on Liberty Hi Road in Wood County. According to Fox, "things started getting hot." Keckler got mad at Fox, called him an "asshole" and started to get out of the car. Fox pulled her back in and stabbed her approximately five times. He then got a rope out of his trunk and strangled her to "make sure she was dead." Fox then drove to Pargillis Road and left her body in a ditch.

C.

On October 4, 1989, Fox was indicted for the aggravated murder of Leslie Keckler with a specification that the offense was committed while Fox was committing or attempting to commit the offense of kidnapping and that Fox was the principal offender. Fox was also indicted on one count of kidnapping. On May 3, 1990, a three-judge panel found Fox guilty on both counts and the specification. Fox's counsel requested a mental examination of Fox pursuant to R.C. 2929.03(D) Following a mitigation hearing, the three-judge panel found beyond a reasonable doubt that the aggravating circumstance that Fox was found guilty of committing outweighed any of the mitigating factors presented to the court. The panel imposed the death penalty for the aggravated murder offense and a concurrent sentence of ten to twenty five years incarceration for the offense of kidnapping.

State v. Fox, 632 N.E.2d 134 (Ohio 1994).

Defendant was convicted of aggravated murder and kidnapping, and sentenced to death, by a three-judge panel of the Court of Common Pleas, Wood County. Defendant appealed. The Court of Appeals, Alice Robie Resnick, J., affirmed. On appeal as of right, the Supreme Court, Moyer, C.J., held that: (1) defendant was not prejudiced by prosecutor's filing of discovery responses with clerk of court; (2) retired judge was eligible to sit as panel member; (3) panel had not relied upon improper aggravating circumstances; and (4) death sentence was appropriate. Affirmed. Wright, J., filed opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, in which A. William Sweeney, J., joined.