By John Futti and Jodi Nirode - The Columbus Dispatch

Thursday, November 29, 2001

The day before his arrest, Christian Stephen Fuhr gloated to his Whitehall neighbors that he no longer was a suspect in the slayings of three South Side women.

Police had just questioned him for the second time, taken his blood and scoured his truck for evidence after following him for days. Then they sent him home. "I'm vindicated. They don't have nothing on me," neighbor Thomas Ward recalled Fuhr saying.

Yesterday, Fuhr, a 33-year-old tree trimmer, was charged with two counts of murder in the deaths of Shawna L. Sowers, 30, and Lisa A. Crow, 36. He also is a suspect in the slaying of Kimberly Rodgers, 29. All three were prostitutes, police said.

Columbus police were led to Fuhr on Thanksgiving morning through a pickup truck found near Ohio Wire Form and Spring on S. High Street, where Crow's body had been discovered that morning.

The truck belonged to Fuhr's boss, Terry Laymon, who told investigators that he had loaned it to Fuhr the day before Thanksgiving.

With the aid of neighbors, police camped outside Fuhr's mobile home in Old Trailer Court off E. Main Street and questioned Fuhr.

"He knew he was a suspect and so did we," Laymon said.

Fuhr had spent Thanksgiving Day and the night before at the home of his ex-wife, Terri D. Byers, on Mithoff Street in Merion Village. She said they knew police were following them on Friday.

"I was giving him a ride to his trailer, and they were following us," Byers said. "It was an unmarked car with tinted windows. There was no mistaking it." Byers, 27, and Fuhr married in August 1999. She said his cocaine addiction destroyed their marriage. When their divorce became final in May, she was granted custody of their son, who is nearly 2 years old.

Byers, a lifetime South Side resident, said she met Fuhr about four years ago when he moved to Columbus from New York.

Although their relationship was marked by periods of violence, Byers said she was stunned by the charges against Fuhr.

"He'd get upset like any husband and we'd bicker, but for him to kill someone? No, I can't imagine him doing that," she said.

There was a history of domestic disturbances in the household, the divorce file showed. On Jan. 28, 2000, Fuhr pleaded guilty to domestic violence.

"He choked me one time, and it was for about five seconds and it wasn't bad enough where I couldn't breathe," Byers said.

She said she knew nothing about Fuhr frequenting prostitutes, which police alleged.

Byers discovered that Fuhr was a cocaine addict shortly after the birth of their son, she said.

"He was disappearing and money would come up missing. I'd go out driving around trying to find him," she said.

Byers said that his disappearances lasted a few hours to three or four days and that he refused to say where he'd been.

"Cocaine owned Christian," she said. "He couldn't say no."

One of Fuhr's hangouts was the New Point Tavern, 2631 Parsons Ave. Bartenders and patrons there said they never saw any sign that Fuhr used drugs or patronized prostitutes.

"He was friendly, never caused problems," bartender Gary Maynard said. "When I seen that on the news, it blew me away," he said of the charges against Fuhr.

But Maynard and the bar's patrons said they weren't surprised that the suspect is someone they know.

"Everybody said all along, 'It's gonna be someone we know,'" he said. "On the south end, everybody knows everybody."

A bartender at the Friendly Tavern, 1766 Parsons Ave., said Fuhr made only one visit to that bar, but it was a memorable one.

He said Fuhr came in by himself one day last week and soon was "kissing on" two women at the bar. The three left together and returned after a couple of hours. Fuhr then approached another woman at the bar and kissed her, biting her lip, said the bartender, who asked not to be named. Fuhr eventually left by himself. The next day, homicide detectives stopped at the Friendly Tavern to ask about Fuhr's visit. The bartender said they also showed him a photograph of Crow, the third homicide victim.

Neighbors in his Whitehall trailer park had a different impression of Fuhr, as someone who is arrogant and quick-tempered.

"If he didn't think he was the best, he'd try to be," one neighbor said.

But to girlfriend Ammie Turos, Fuhr has been a perfect gentleman during the three months they have dated. The Whitehall woman said she trusts him; she even spent Friday night with him after she learned he was a murder suspect.

"I can't say a bad thing about him," she said, although the couple had argued about where he had been the night before Thanksgiving.

Turos had loaned Fuhr her cellphone and tried to call him numerous times on Nov. 21, but he never answered.

She didn't hear from him until at about 6 a.m. on Thanksgiving, when he called asking for a ride. Angry, Turos refused.

Crow's body was found shortly before 1 p.m. on Thanksgiving.

Detectives obtained samples of Fuhr's blood on Monday through a court-ordered search warrant. Yesterday, they were still waiting for test results, such as DNA evidence.

More than a dozen detectives met Tuesday to discuss the progress in the investigation. It appears now that they decided to charge Fuhr at that meeting. Yesterday, Fuhr agreed to come to Central Police Headquarters for a third interview. Detectives, communicating by radio, followed Fuhr in several vehicles to the interview.

Once inside, Fuhr reportedly asked for a lawyer. He was arrested after 3 p.m. Police spokesman Sgt. Earl W. Smith would not say whether physical evidence, witnesses, Fuhr's statements or a combination of the three led to the charges. "Clearly, he is a suspect in Kimberly Rodgers' death, but we are still pursuing other leads as well," Smith said. "Detectives said his name surfaced fairly early in the investigation. We do know that he did associate with prostitutes and he was known to be a crack user."

Police had been reluctant to call the slayings the work of a serial killer, but had called in the FBI and sent out a nationwide computer alert about the unsolved slayings.

"This is probably one of the best examples of cooperation within law enforcement across the board," Smith said after the arrest.

In the end, Columbus detectives said they solved the case without help from outside agencies.

New York records show Fuhr served 28 months in prison on a conviction of possession of stolen property. He was released in May 1992.

The three victims were white women found within a half-mile of one another between Nov. 7 and last Thursday.

Police and Franklin County Coroner Brad Lewis have refused to be specific about the cause of death.

Rodgers, whose body was found Nov. 7 in a cornfield off Groveport Road, was strangled.

Sowers, whose body was found Nov. 18 at a construction site 30 yards away, had a broken neck.

Crow, a mother of four, was found behind a business at 2270 S. High St. Lewis said Crow suffered "blunt trauma," but Crow's mother said a funeral director told her that she also had been strangled.

Unlike the other victims, Crow had no convictions for prostitution, but Jean Crow said she was involved in it.

Despite the publicity surrounding the case, six female prostitutes, including five on the South Side, were arrested this week, according to jail records.