'We're getting closer every day': Father of Casey Pitzer says he hasn't given up

Editor's Note: This is part five of a five-part series

WILMINGTON, Ohio (WKRC) - A 32-year-old single mother from Clinton County vanished on the eve of St. Patrick’s Day, 2013.

Her body turned up a week later in a retention pond outside of Wilmington.

A significant portion of the evidence in her case was destroyed or is irretrievable. Does that mean the investigation is dead as well?

The coroner ruled Casey Pitzer’s death a drowning, but the investigation has turned-up evidence that has only led to more questions than answers. Pitzer was in a physical altercation the night she disappeared with her friend, Tami McCay, who had Pitzer's purse, phone and wallet -- why didn't she go look for Pitzer?

McCay's boyfriend, Michael Hartley, and his friend Brandon Reed, said that they found Pitzer, but instead of taking her directly home, which was a nine minute drive, they began driving 14 minutes in another direction to Hartley's house. Why?

“Nothing was adding up,” said Kelly Pitzer Taylor, one of Pitzer's sisters.

She and another sister, Jenn Warnock, said that the lead detective in the case told them Hartley and Reed took polygraph tests.

“Josh Riley told us that they came back and passed with flying colors,” said Warnock. “That both boys passed the lie detector test with flying colors.”

They did not. Hartley's results came back inconclusive; Reed's test came back as deceptive. Why would the detective tell the sisters otherwise?

Detective Riley's dad was the mayor of Wilmington at the time. Local 12 spoke with Scott Baker, a former detective with the Wilmington Police Department.

“Josh Riley, the chief detective on this case, decided that he would do that interview," said Local 12.

“Correct,” Baker said

“And that seemed odd to you?” Local 12 said.

“If I had any kind of connection to the family, I would have had somebody else do it,” Baker said.

Riley wrote in a report that he searched the car driven by the men and he didn't find any evidence of a struggle but there were never forensics done on the car or the men, which means that there was no DNA samples taken. Why?

After Pitzer's body was pulled from a nearby retention pond a week later, autopsy photos showed that she was still gripping a clump of grass in one hand.

Greg Pitzer, Casey’s father, said that he knows why.

“She was raped, choked to death, and thrown in the pond.”

Pitzer's father said that he believes his daughter was gripping the grass because she was dragged to the pond against her will. He also points to an autopsy photo showing discoloration on Casey's neck as evidence she was either choked or held by her neck underwater.

But Hamilton County Coroner Lakshmi Sammarco, MD, said that from what she’s seen, the evidence presented is not conclusive.

“Most commonly there would be, you know, hyoid bone fractures,” Sammarco said.

Sammarco noted strangulation often results in the small bones in the throat fracturing, and the marks on Pitzer’s neck could be the result of many things.

“There's so many changes that happened to the body over a period of time,” Sammarco said. “But especially when they're underwater."

Still, Dr. Sammarco said that she would have had DNA samples taken from the suspects and compared them to the sexual assault kit taken from Pitzer. But that kit was never sent to BCI -- and the coroner swabs were destroyed when police -- just five years after Pitzer's death -- cleared out their evidence locker. Why?

Detective Baker would later become the custodian of the evidence room, where Pitzer’s sexual assault kit was held. When he requested thousands of pieces of evidence destroyed due to the evidence room bursting at the seams, he said that he didn't know Pitzer’s sexual assault kit was on that list, and that regardless, the case had been closed as accidental.

“So, you certainly didn't look at it and go, ‘Oh, rape kit, let's destroy it?'" Local 12 said.

“No, no, not at all. No,” Baker said.

Brian Shidaker was an assistant prosecutor in 2013.

“I just recall the prosecuting attorney indicating that it was not going to be a criminal matter and that I was not going to be involved in any type of prosecution," said Shidaker.

In 2016, he became Wilmington's director of public safety.

“Did it ever occur to you to perhaps direct the police department to reopen this case?" Local 12 said.

“I never had anyone from the police department come to me and say, ‘Hey, we should look at this or we should open this back up. And so, no, it did not," said Shidaker.

Now, Shidaker is the county prosecutor, and says he plans to review the case, but Wilmington's current chief of police, Robert Wilson, is skeptical.

“Based off of everything that I've seen in here, there's no indication that she was murdered,” said Chief Wilson.

“There is a perception in the public that there is either a conspiracy to cover up Casey Pitzer's murder or that there was just sloppy police work that was being covered up," said Local 12.

"I don't know what reason there would be for that,” said Wilson. “I can't control what people say, I can't control what goes over the internet. All I can do is look at what I have”

Still, Chief Wilson said that the Local 12 investigation has motivated him to refer the case to the FBI, even though in 2022, the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations turned down the case. But in its review, BCI documentation shows the case had no known suspects, ignoring Hartley and Reed.

Conspicuously present on BCI’s checklist is the fact that a rape kit was never tested. What it does not note is that the kit and other evidence was destroyed.

“With a lot of the evidence destroyed, with the amount of time that has passed, with memories fading the way they do, will we ever know what happened to Casey Pitzer?” Local 12 said.

The chief answered by saying her dad asked him the same thing. He said that he asked Greg, “Do you believe in God?"

His answer was yes.

"And I told him, that may be the only time that you get the answers that you want," said Wilson.

The case has taken its toll on Wilmington, and on the people who knew and loved Pitzer. Like Pitzer's boyfriend, Eric Hege, who said that he felt he didn't respond quickly enough to her request for a ride home that night, and still blames himself.

“I did, I blamed myself. I caused two boys to not have a mom, and I felt extremely guilty about that. And I was planning to take my own life because I just couldn't cope with that.”

Hege said that finding God saved him.

Local 12 asked Casey's dad to take a step back from his firm belief that his daughter was murdered.

“Have you ever considered that perhaps your daughter had too much to drink, was walking home, then dove into that pond or fell into that pond, and drowned?”

“No way," said Greg.

Greg said that he tries to visit his daughter's grave once a week, so he can reassure her that he hasn't given up.

“We're getting closer every day,” Greg said. “Just hang in there. Stay with me. We'll beat this. And we will get them.”

Will we ever know exactly what happened to Pitzer? It’s unlikely, unless law enforcement decides to reopen the case. If not, the truth may have drowned along with that young mother nearly 12 years ago.

Former chief detective Josh Riley; Tami, the woman who was with Pitzer the night she disappeared; and Hartley and Reed, the two men who say they gave Pitzer a ride that night; did not reply to our requests for interviews. No one, including Hartley and Reed, have ever faced any charges in connection with Pitzer's death.

Due to Local 12's reporting, the Wilmington police chief confirmed that he did speak to the FBI after the interview, and Prosecutor Shidacker says he sent a letter to the chief, requesting the case files for review.