Killing Dan Ott

Corruption and Murder in Small Town America

By: Rob St. Clair

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

The long-awaited sequel to “Saving Stacy: The Untold Story of the Moody Massacre,” St. Clair’s new thriller is “Killing Dan Ott: Corruption and Murder in Small Town America.” It’s the tragic true-crime story of a case of mistaken identity that took detectives from Geauga County, Ohio, ten long years to solve. Why so long? Logan County corruption.

Dan Ott was a 31-year-old pug grower, an expert at planting seedlings to grow into blooms. He didn’t know what caused him to wake up early that Friday morning, May 26, 2006. With the car fully loaded, Dan was anxious to move, ready to leave the quiet northeastern town of Burton, Ohio, for a new, better-paying job in Michigan. He had been sleeping on an air mattress in the empty living room with his girlfriend, Maryann Ricker, when he heard someone moving nearby. Now fully alert, Dan saw an intruder standing by the front door dressed in a camouflage jacket and wearing a black ski mask. Worse, he had a sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun in his hands. When the man noticed that Dan was awake, he was abrupt: “What’s your name?” Dan replied, hesitantly, “My name is Dan Ott.” The intruder paused, then pointed his shotgun at Dan’s chest, no more than six feet away, and pulled the trigger.

What was the motive? Geauga County police were stymied. Was it a home invasion? There was nothing of value in the house, everything had been moved out over the previous week and only kitchen utensils and other odds and ends remained. But later police would discover possible motives. After several lengthy interviews, more disturbing facts would be revealed. Dan’s dalliance with co-workers would become problematic. To further complicate matters, soft-spoken Dan had also been carrying on with another woman from town, and her motorcycle-club husband was known to be a violent, vengeful man. Was this a revenge killing?

More new leads would complicate matters. The detectives discovered that Dan lived in a rental house where the previous occupants had a 20-year-old son who was a known drug dealer. Was somebody looking for him, a prior drug deal gone bad? Then there was an escaped convict from New York, a convicted killer, on the run and had been seen in the area. His description matched the one given to detectives by Maryann. Had he been the one who had broken into Dan’s house, looking for a safe place to hide? After numerous months of intense investigation, none of the leads panned out. The murder of Dan Ott went unsolved.

It would take detectives ten long years to finally discover that there was another Dan Ott living in Cleveland, 40 miles away, who was the intended target that fateful morning in 2006. After searching an online database for insurance claims, Geauga County detectives discovered that the Logan County Sheriff’s Office in northwestern Ohio was investigating a plot to kill a man named Dan Ott, a snitch who had ratted on convicted felon Joe Rosebrook, a local well-known chop-shop king. But as Geauga County detectives dug deeper and worked with Logan County detectives, they would learn startling information – the shocking corruption embedded in the Logan County Sheriff’s Office. Murder cases went unsolved, especially when there was evidence of deputies being complicit in the crime – the Belle Center murders and the Moody massacre often mentioned; and that law enforcement officials were bribing prison inmates to frame others for unsolved crimes.

Killing Dan Ott was a mistake, and he didn’t need to die. Had it not been for Logan County deputy sheriffs – including previously fired ones and other pretenders – bribing prison inmates and setting up scams, Daniel Ott might still be alive today. The corruption discovered by the Geauga County detectives taking place in the Logan County Sheriff’s Office – facts long suspected by the citizens of Logan County – sickened them, especially when they finally discovered who had killed Dan Ott and the reasons why.