Tag: Ohio

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Investigators say a convicted child killer and known sexual predator could be anywhere except where he is supposed to be: behind bars.

Lester Eubanks, 82, is one of the U.S. Marshals Service’s “15 Most Wanted Fugitives,” and Dep. U.S. Marshal Vinny Piccoli is now the lead investigator tasked with tracking him down.

“It’s kind of surreal and crazy to look back at a case from, you know, when this initial incident happened in 1965, and then now it’s come all this time and all this way,” Piccoli said.

On Nov. 14, 1965, Mansfield police found Mary Ellen Deener’s body behind a vacant house on North Mulberry Street. Within hours, Eubanks confessed to killing the 14-year-old during an attempted rape.

“My poor sweet sister,” said Myrtle Carter. “Gotta fight you. A person that has karate experience, black belts or yellow, whatever color. And you fight a child.”

At the time, Eubanks was out on bond for another attempted rape.

“He should have been in jail then, because it wasn’t his first one then,” Carter said.

Carter said her mother sent Mary Ellen and another younger sister, Bonnie, to finish chores at the laundromat after their home washer or dryer broke. She said Mary Ellen went by herself to get some change for the machines and Eubanks grabbed her on her way back.

“If she hadn’t run out of change, it would have been a whole different story,” Carter said. “Because he would have had to fight both of them.”

She said that when her little sister tried to resist Eubanks, he shot her and left the scene. She said Eubanks returned when he heard her moaning.

“That’s when he hit her in the head with a brick and killed her,” Carter said.

She said the laundromat the girls were using was next to their grandmother’s house.

“And her mother lived, like, say, 10 houses down on the opposite side of the street,” Carter said. “So where Mary Ellen’s body was found, that’s like halfway between both houses.”

She said Bonnie saw Eubanks outside the laundromat.

“We don’t know what he came back for, but she saw him in the window,” Carter said. “And when he left, she ran over to my grandmother’s house.”

Carter said their grandmother went looking for Mary Ellen and found a group of police officers. When she told them about her missing granddaughter, Carter said her grandmother was asked to identify Mary Ellen’s body.

“I never recall her talking about it,” Carter said.

Carter said she attended every day of the Eubanks’ trial.

“I wanted him to turn around and see me,” she said. “I just wanted him to know that somebody was here and somebody was there for her.”

“This is a court document from Nov. 26, 1968, from Richland County Court of Common Pleas showing that Eubanks was found guilty by a jury of his peers and sentence should be carried out,” Piccoli said, referring to a scanned document on his computer screen. “At the time, it was the death penalty.”

But before Eubanks had his appointment with Ohio Penitentiary’s electric chair, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in 1972. His sentence was commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“But you get to go Christmas shopping,” Carter said. “Make it make sense.”

On Dec. 7, 1973, Eubanks was treated to an unsupervised shopping trip in Columbus with other inmates as a reward for good behavior.

“Who are you buying a gift for?” Carter said. “The people that let you out?”

“Someone like him, he was supposed to be doing life,” Piccoli said. “He was literally sent to death and then was commuted to life in prison. So how he made his way onto an honor group, an honor assignment, is beyond me.“

Eubanks used the opportunity to escape.

“You look back at what he did, his crime back in 1965, and, you know, he spent roughly seven years in prison and then has been free for 50 plus years,” Piccoli said. “So it’s just, it’s not fair to Mary Ellen. It’s not fair to her family.“

Piccoli now oversees the manhunt for Eubanks. In his first year as lead investigator, he brings a fresh perspective to the case.

“I don’t believe that if he were to run, you know, now and try to escape, I don’t think he would be on the run for 50 years,” Piccoli said. “It’s just unfortunate. Back then, you know, investigators did all that they could with what they had. And he got lucky in a way.”

“Fugitives … on the run,” U.S. Marshal Peter Elliott said, “will make up a story about their past where nobody’s going to go back and ask questions about. And they’re not going to have any family or friends, you know, to the ones they’re talking to, because they’re going to say that ‘my family was killed in a fire, traffic accident,’ or so on and so on.“

But one thing Eubanks can’t change is his genetics.

Elliott said 60 years after Mary Ellen’s murder, the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office re-tested the clothes Eubanks wore that night and found his DNA in a pocket.

“It’s a game changer,” Elliott said. “It’s going to get us a step closer to catching him. It’s only a matter of time.”

Eubanks could be anywhere.

One of his last known sightings was in Southern California where Piccoli said Eubanks likely worked in a mattress factory in the 1970s using the alias “Victor Young.”

“There’s no doubt in my mind that someone has had recent contact with him,” Piccoli said. “You know, maybe not as recent as this week, but over, you know, the last month or years.”

He hopes that person will offer information leading to the violent fugitive.

“We have a job, and our job is to find individuals, no matter how long it takes to find individuals,” Piccoli said.

The arrest would give Mary Ellen’s family some long-awaited closure.

“I like to think I’d be like my mother would probably want me to be,” Carter said. “And say, ‘I forgive you.’”

The U.S. Marshals Service is offering up to a $50,000 reward for information leading to Lester Eubanks. His only known distinguishing feature is a 1-to 3-inch scar or burn mark on the upper outer portion of his right arm.

If you have any tips, call 1-866-4-WANTED.