By: Joe Strupp The Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal may examine records related to a January triple homicide that had been withheld after Ohio's 11th District Court of Appeals ruled in its favor, the paper reported Thursday.
The newspaper reports that it had asked for police call logs from nearby Brimfield Township for Jan. 21 and Jan. 22, 2005 -- the night that 42-year-old Renee Bauer, her 7-year-old son, Dakota, and 22-year-old college student Sarah Positano were murdered. James Earl Trimble, Bauer's 45-year-old boyfriend, is being tried in their deaths.
The Beacon Journal had also requested records of calls made through the Brimfield Township Police Department's non-emergency line, which included at least one call from Positano while Trimble allegedly held her hostage.
In Trimble's trial, lawyers have claimed Positano was shot while on the phone with hostage negotiators. Defense lawyers reportedly contend the shooting happened after authorities tried to sneak a sniper into Positano's apartment, a move they say startled Trimble, the paper reported.
Although the Beacon Journal had received call logs from the Portage County Sheriff's Office from that night and 911 calls, authorities had withheld the other information, arguing the documents were confidential law enforcement records and made in preparation for the trial, the paper said.
The Beacon Journal sued Portage County on Jan. 25.
The three-page ruling, handed down Friday, was written by Judge William O'Neill with Judge Colleen Mary O'Toole concurring, the paper reported. The decision found that the records were not created in preparation for trial nor were confidential law enforcement investigatory records and were public records that the paper sufficiently described in its request, the Beacon Journal reported.
Assistant Portage County Prosecutor Pamela Holder told a Beacon Journal reporter Wednesday that the records will be turned over Monday after references to personal phone numbers of police officers are redacted, as the decision allowed.
Judge Donald R. Ford dissented from the opinion, the paper reported, because he believed that personal police phone calls to the station "readily inferred the nature of the tactics which were employed to handle the ongoing situation."
As such, they were confidential law enforcement investigatory records and should not be revealed publicly, he wrote.
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