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Man who murdered elderly woman by stabbing her 94 times loses appeal
JESSICA SHAMBAUGH
Special to the Legal News
Published: January 6, 2014
The 11th District Court of Appeals recently affirmed multiple convictions for a man found guilty of stabbing an elderly woman to death while ransacking her home.
Zachary Weimer appealed to the district court arguing that the Lake County Court of Common Pleas improperly admitted letters between him and his mother and convicted him against the manifest weight of the evidence.
His case stemmed from the death of 77-year-old Eleanor Robertson, which coincided with the theft of several of her personal belongings from her home on Canterbury Drive in Madison, Ohio.
At a jury trial the state presented evidence that several of Robertson’s neighbors noticed her van was missing but her garage door was open on June 13, 2012.
They noted that this was not normal behavior for Robertson and they grew concerned when they were unable to contact her.
Eventually, a neighbor contacted Robertson’s son and he arrived to check on his mother.
As they entered her home, they saw that it was “ransacked” with items strewn about Robertson’s bedroom and other rooms.
Several candles were lit and burning inside the home and the front door was barricaded with chairs.
Robertson’s son stated that he saw liquid squirted on the walls and floor of his mother’s bedroom and that the home was “trashed.”
He explained that there was a large pile of clothes in Robertson’s bedroom and the mattress had been slid over.
Meanwhile, a Euclid police officer was monitoring Gold Werks, a store where people often sold gold and other items.
The officer, Don Ivory, told the court that the area was known for drug activity and people often sold stolen property in Gold Werks.
On June 13, 2012, he noticed a woman sitting in her car near the store leaning from the driver’s seat to the passenger’s seat.
As he approached, he saw jewelry on the passenger seat and watched the woman test it with a magnet to determine if it was real. He also saw a large box of jewelry in the back seat as well as several other items.
Ivory asked the woman who the jewelry belonged to and she indicated that it was her son’s.
He then asked for her identification and saw a syringe in her purse when she retrieved it, indicating possible drug use.
After Ivory called for backup, the woman’s son, Weimer, exited Gold Werks.
Weimer told Ivory that he did not have identification and Ivory grew suspicious because Gold Werks requires an ID to sell an item.
Weimer also repeatedly put his hands in his pockets despite the officer’s request not to do so and was subsequently handcuffed.
Weimer and his mother were both arrested and the officers took photos of the items found in the car.
A lock box found in the car included Robertson’s name and photos of the items were sent to her son who was able to identify most of them.
Employees of the Lake County Crime Lab testified about the crime scene.
According to their testimony, Robertson’s body was found under a pile of clothes in her bedroom.
It was determined that she had been stabbed 94 times and had defensive wounds on her arms and forearm.
They also explained that the wounds could have been caused by a screwdriver, but no weapon could be identified.
No finger prints were found, but they did find shoe prints on Robertson’s bedding that was consistent with Weimer’s shoes at the time of his arrest.
Phone records showed that Weimer was in contact with his mother and was near Robertson’s home during the time of the robbery and her death.
Video surveillance from a private home showed that Weimer arrived at the home in Robertson’s van around 4:44 a.m. on the date in question.
He and his mother then moved several items from the van to her car before he drove away with the van.
In exchange for a lenient sentence for a separate offense, Richard Gould testified for the state.
He stated he was in jail with Weimer when Weimer told him about stabbing Robertson with a screwdriver “until his arms got tired.”
Gould said Weimer told him he squirted perfume and nail polish remover on the body and lit candles to “incinerate her” and barricaded the house.
The state also presented Patrick Sullivan, who testified that he was in jail with Weimer. He said Weimer told him “he didn’t believe that he stabbed her 90 times. He believed it was closer to nine than 90.”
Letters exchanged between Weimer and his mother encouraging Weimer to take a plea bargain and going over her version of the facts were also introduced as evidence.
The jury found Weimer guilty of aggravated murder, murder, aggravated robbery, aggravated burglary, felonious assault, tampering with evidence, grand theft of a motor vehicle, theft from an elderly person, and receiving stolen property.
He was sentenced to life without parole as well as 18 additional years to run consecutively.
On appeal to the 11th District, Weimer argued that the trial court improperly admitted the letters between his mother and himself.
“He asserts that the co-conspirator exception to the hearsay rule does not apply, since proper independent evidence of a conspiracy was not presented by the state,” Judge Diane Grendell wrote for the court.
The appellate judges found that the state was not required to charge Weimer with conspiracy to admit a co-conspirator’s statement, but instead must only show that a conspiracy existed.
In this case, the state showed that there was consistent communication between Weimer and his mother on the day of the crime and that they were seen together by witnesses.
Weimer took the stolen van to his mother’s home and she helped him with the items inside.
“These facts were enough to establish a prima facie case of conspiracy and allow for the admission of statements related to the conspiracy, i.e., (his mother’s) letters, under Evid.R. 801(D)(2)(e),” Grendell wrote, rejecting Weimer’s argument.
Weimer next contended that his murder convictions were against the manifest weight of the evidence because the only evidence that he committed the murder were statements from two inmates.
The judges, however, disagreed.
They found that the credibility of the inmates was to be determined by the jury and that the inmates gave information that they could not have gotten from a newspaper, including the use of a screwdriver as a weapon, the barricade, and the spraying of perfume and nail polish remover.
They further determined that significant evidence linked him to the scene, including the stolen items, his shoe prints and his phone records.
The jury had evidence that Weimer was in possession of Robertson’s jewelry, memorabilia and her van after her death.
“These facts all point to Zachary being in the home and stealing the property. It would be a far-fetched scenario to believe that Zachary committed the burglary and a completely unrelated murder of Eleanor coincidentally occurred on the same date,” Grendell continued.
Finding that the evidence supported his convictions, the appellate judges affirmed the lower court’s ruling.
Judges Thomas Wright and Colleen Mary O’Toole concurred.
The case is cited State v. Weimer, 2013-Ohio-5651.
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