5. Behind the Badge

Thank you so much for listening to Ice Cold Case. Your support means the world to me as I go through this mentally and emotionally challenging process of solving my dad’s murder. If you’d like to continue supporting, please consider following, rating, and reviewing this podcast wherever you are listening. It helps our show reach new people who might be able to help solve this case. You can also stay up to date in between episodes on social media. I’ve started adding research materials and episode transcripts to our website icecoldcase.com. If you have any tips you can email them to icecoldcasepodcast@gmail.com. 

Part 0: First Impressions

You never get a second chance at a first impression. It sets the tone for any relationship. For me, using my intuition, trust is built within the first few minutes of meeting someone. I remember my first interaction with the Belmont County Sheriff’s Department. From the second I mentioned J.C. McGhee’s murder – things felt suspiciously tense.

I naively assumed that the police would be happy someone was investigating a 20-year-old cold case. One less thing for them to worry about and maybe it gets solved and brings some positive attention to the county and the police department. But I didn’t get the feeling that these detectives were happy about my curiosity.

There was something I couldn’t pick up on when I first spoke with the police. But that feeling raised some red flags. And where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire…

Part 1: May 25, 2020

On May 25, 2020 George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis Police Officer and the entire country erupted in calls for police reform and racial justice. It was Memorial Day. A few hours before George Floyd’s murder, I had called the Belmont County Sheriff’s Department asking questions about my dad. This day was particularly monumental for two reasons – one: it was a holiday. Because of that, the usual secretary was off for the day so the officers took turns manning the front desk and answering phones. When I called, Tom DeVaul answered – the only person still working at the Belmont County Sheriff’s Department who was on the scene the day of my dad’s murder. Nothing is a coincidence. 

If you remember, in May of 2020 I drove from Portland, Oregon to my hometown in West Virginia and felt inspired to look into my dad’s case. It wasn’t until the last day of my visit that I finally took the leap and called the Belmont County Sheriff’s Department.

The initial conversation was somewhat pleasant. I asked Detective DeVaul if he knew how I could get some information about a cold case in their county – What case? he asked. When I said “J.C. McGhee'' … there was a pause. I could feel the tension growing through the phone. His voice picked up pace – he asked who was calling, why I was calling, and explained that they couldn’t just share information with me. It almost felt like I was being questioned as a suspect. 

Here’s the nuance with cold cases. A case is technically open until it’s solved. Even if no one is actively investigating. So the phrase “reopening a case” is not applicable here – my dad’s murder was never closed. 

The case is still very much open and will always be opened until it’s closed. The term cold case, you know… It could be called a cold case three or four days later. Cold just means is we’re not getting any new information. It does not mean we are not proceeding with anything we can.

Because this is an open case, the police department doesn’t have to share everything they have with me. But in order to share anything at all, they would have to get permission from the Belmont County Prosecutor’s Office. Detective DeVaul let me know once he puts in the public records request it would take a couple weeks and then I should hear from their office. I gave him my information and hung up feeling a little hopeful that information was coming.

Being it’s an open investigation still I can give you the basics of what happened, ok?

About 8 hours after that conversation, my mom and I got in the car to start the road trip back to Portland, Oregon. Our first stop — that had been planned for nearly a month? Minneapolis. This is the second reason this day is so monumental – May 25, 2020 marked a pivotal moment in police/civilian relations. And we were unknowingly heading into the eye of the storm. 

I remember the conflicting feelings I faced the first few days after George Floyd’s murder. I wanted things to change. But I also knew I needed the police – at least the ones in Belmont County. Without them, how would I ever solve my dad’s murder? They felt like my only path to justice. 

Tensions were high across the country, across the world, for months after May 25. And I’m sure when I was calling the Belmont County Sheriff’s Department that summer to follow up about the police file for my black dad’s unsolved murder, they were on edge. If anything out of the ordinary was in those files, it makes sense why they would be hesitant to release them.

What started out as “it’ll take two weeks to get you those files” took over six months of me calling, and calling, and calling again. Finally I got the files in December of 2020 after I skipped over the Belmont County Sheriff’s Department and directly called the Prosecutor’s Office. 

I still don’t know why it took the Sheriff’s Department so long to process my request, or if they sent over my request at all. But that didn’t stop me from continuing to reach out. In May of 2021, I did another road trip from Portland, Oregon to West Virginia to visit my family. While I was in town, I wanted to try to sit down with Detective DeVaul to chat through this case. By this time I had carefully combed through the police files and had a lot of questions about the obvious holes – Omar, evidence, Daryl Sm ith, Butchie, all the theories I’ve laid out for you. Detective DeVaul agreed to talk with me. So I drove up to Belmont County to meet in person.

Part 2: The One and Only Interview

When I walked into the lobby of the Belmont County Sheriff’s Department, it was silent. It was still COVID times – and there was no foot traffic whatsoever. I was wearing a mask from Everlane that said one hundred percent human in the corner. When Detective DeVaul came out to meet me I could see his eyes go straight to my mask. It wasn’t intentionally a political statement, but given the context – it fit. 

He walked me back through their office, which happens to be attached to Belmont County Jail. It was filled with those weird police office sounds –  squeaking radios, quiet whispers. I couldn’t help but wonder if everyone in the office knew who I was and why I was there. We went back to Detective DeVaul’s office and I asked him if I could record our conversation. He granted me permission while giving me a chilling warning – “my body cam is on” he said. We were sitting in his office, on either side of his desk, what did he think was going to happen in here that he would need his body cam on? 

As we got to talking, Detective DeVaul seemed to keep things very real with me. It didn’t feel like he was shying away from any hard truths. He talked about my dad being an informant. He talked about Omar’s testimony and his changing stories. He talked about Daryl Smith and the trial. But he said something that I remember sticking out to me – he said if given the chance he would want to talk with a very important witness. Remember Kim Smith? Omar’s girlfriend at the time of the murder who was a victim of the home invasion. She had helped identify one suspect already.

Kim saw the picture of Daryl and went “oh my god, he was there”.

Detective DeVaul thought Kim might offer up more information since it’s been so long and she was no longer connected to Omar. But DeVaul told me that he couldn’t find her. The last he heard, she was living in Pennsylvania. He was very confident in this – and had me totally convinced that if he could just find Kim Smith, he would talk to her. 

Kim Smith – last we heard she was in Pennsylvania. I’d love to talk to her.

He went on to tell me that he was nearing the end of his career, only a few years away from being able to retire. But his goal, before he called it quits, was to solve this case. 

In my career, this case right here is one I want to solve.

He even said that my dad’s case gets brought up often in their office… What exactly do they talk about when they talk about J.C. McGhee? 

This case here definitely comes out of my mouth at least once a week in talking to people. 

This was the first and last time I spoke at length with Detective DeVaul. I have tried to get on the phone with him again but I have barely been able to get a response via email. But he seemed genuine in his quest to solve this case. And I knew that he was dealing with some circumstances that were out of his control, so I tried to see it from his perspective and his limitations.

A lot of things again because this is you know an open investigation. It’s never been closed. And Detective Allar we have all the files and everything it’s in a box like this. But with Daryl and what the prosecutor’s office gave you and what I can answer for you… And believe me I’ve given you everything I can.

I left feeling a small bit of optimism. Maybe if I could just find out a little more information from my family, Detective DeVaul could solve this case. 

I wanna solve this case. I do. I’m not bullshitting you. I’m not sugar coating it. I wanna solve this case.

But then as I was doing some digging, I realized that I wasn’t told the whole truth. 

I got in my car, still parked in the parking lot of the Belmont County Sheriff’s Department and I looked up Kim Smith on Facebook. A few seconds later, I found her. She’s married with a new last name. But it was her. And she didn’t live in Pennsylvania. She did for a while after my dad’s murder, but she was back… living in Belmont County. 

But Detective DeVaul said he couldn’t find her… and that if he could, he would want to talk to her. She’s not hiding like he made it seem.

So I emailed him, and shared that I found her on Facebook and she was still living in the area. But Detective DeVaul never reached out to Kim to follow up.

Kim Smith is not hard to find — Even Alyssa runs into her around town.

And Kim… Why the hell would she move back to Belair is what I’m trying to figure out. She’s around here.

Part 3: Blue Bonds

Belmont County is situated in rural Ohio. On the border of West Virginia, this area has a mostly white population. The police force reflects that. Detective Nippert is white. Detective DeVaul is white. The current investigator, chief, and sheriff in Belmont County are white. I hate to assume, but I would probably guess that every officer assigned to my dad’s case was white. I’m not trying to “make it about race.” But for my dad, the system that was meant to protect him didn’t have anyone who looked like him. 

The bond between cops holds them together, but it doesn’t hold them accountable. In a sense, they are above the law. There’s no one checking the police if they don’t follow protocol, so what’s the point of the protocol?

Cops are supposed to tape off a murder scene. They call it “securing the scene.” But my dad’s house was never taped off to prevent people from walking in and out of the house. So what happens if the police don’t tape off a murder scene? Who do they answer to? They answer to one another – their peers. Cops are more likely to give grace to other cops. That blue bond is a tie that binds. 

Whether it was subconscious bias or blatant disregard, my dad’s case was brushed off by most of the officials in Belmont County.

How did they overlook this? I don’t understand how the Belmont County Sheriff’s Department let a murder investigation go on for twenty-one years and get this complicated. The complexities of this case shouldn’t deter them from doing their job. They should be the ones solving this case. I shouldn’t have to.

I don’t think the people in Saint Clairsville investigating it wanted to know. Maybe it had something to do with them.

Part 4: Life of an Informant

On page eleven of the police report, my dad was identified as a Confidential Informant. An informant is a secret source who works with a contact officer to supply information on criminal activity to the police. Most people would call that a snitch. Identities of Confidential Informants are not public record. It could put the lives of the informant or their family in danger if it was made public. However, if someone goes to trial because of information provided by an informant, their identity is revealed. There was no system in place to protect my dad if his identity was made public. The people you see in witness protection don’t usually look like my dad – black men who may or may not be drug dealing don’t get the same treatment as white whistleblowers. 

My dad was putting a lot on the line to be a police informant. The only people who would know why he took such a risk would be my dad and his contact officer – Detective Nippert. 

I heard that he was a snitch. And I know that he was talking to this officer named Nippert.

Still on page eleven of the police report, just underneath the reveal that my dad was an informant was another note: my dad was involved in the indictment of Butchie Griffin. 

If my dad was murdered because he was an informant, that would not be a good look for the Belmont County Sheriff’s Department. They would probably have a hard time recruiting more informants if one their own was murdered  for outing someone. I started to wonder, not necessarily if a cover up was happening on behalf of the Sheriff’s Department, but if only half of the story was being shared in these files. If these files revealed an informant died for sharing information, and word got out, it could significantly halt the flow of information to the Sheriff’s Department for a long time. 

Belmont County is a high traffic area for drugs. And its proximity to Wheeling, West Virginia made it a hot spot for the feds to crack down on drug dealers. The unique positioning of this area allows you to cross from Ohio to West Virginia and from West Virginia to Pennsylvania in less than an hour. That makes any drug crime a federal offense. 

The ACLU calls the war on drugs the new Jim Crow, citing that these laws had and continue to have the most harmful impact on black people and were created to penalize black Americans more than they were created to help enhance the lives of everyday citizens.

Racial disparities exist at every level of the criminal justice system, from arrest to sentencing. The NAACP reported that African Americans are incarcerated at more than 5 times the rate of white Americans. The police in Belmont County were cracking down on drugs. My dad became an informant to save himself, he didn’t turn on his own people because he wanted to. I know I could sit here and blame a hundred people for my dad’s murder. It’s really only the fault of the man who pulled the trigger and anyone involved directly in the events that transpired that morning. But I blame the system, too. The system that puts black people in jail at rates much higher and for sentences much longer than white people for the same crimes.

If the police were covering up that my dad was killed because of the work he was doing for their department, I wonder if they would ever admit that. Police officers seem to want to protect and defend their own, even if there is questionable behavior. 

It’s possible that my dad was just a casualty in the Belmont County Sheriff’s Department’s grander mission. In their eyes my dad was just an informant – a drug dealer they could take advantage of to gain information and access. At the time of dad’s murder, drug dealers were robbing other drug dealers because they knew a drug dealer would never call the cops to report that their money or stash was stolen. It was an easy hit. The police really did throw my dad’s murder into that group of robberies. 

What we’ve always felt was this was a home invasion set after Omar.

I think they were planning on doing a second home invasion. On their end it went to shit. And boom – and then they ran.

But it still didn’t make sense – nothing from my dad’s house was stolen. And if these guys were after that safe, they never found it. This seemed like an obvious targeted attack, but the police never called it that. It didn’t even seem like that was something they considered at all. 

But believe me every stone that we come on, was turned.

Once they formed their version of the story that morning, they did not veer off the tracks much. Even with Omar, never considering him more than a victim. If they could have ruled him out with strong evidence, anyone nearby should have been looked at as a suspect. At the very least identify motive and proximity. But they didn’t. It seems like they didn’t turn over every stone like they said.

Omar has lied so much in this. But the Prosecutor’s office on the day it went to Grand Jury – they said, they told us to keep working him as a victim. And eventually Omar shut up.

Part 5: Whose Car is That

There’s more rumors going around. But as I investigate what’s documented, I want to also dive into the rumors. In each rumor there could be splices of the truth and I will leave no stone unturned. 

My sister’s birthday is July 4. In 2002, she turned 16. My dad had a party for her at his house. His house is situated on top of a hill. At the bottom of that hill is that dead end road that leads to the Brake shop – the one Omar made his 9-1-1 call from. But just above the road is the highway. It’s loosely covered by some trees but you can see the cars passing by. My dad’s friend told me that he saw an unmarked black SUV pulled off on the side of the highway within view of my dad’s house. He remembers it sitting there for a long time. 

Another family member told me they remembered a black SUV *sound effect: revving engine* driving around the neighborhood for a few weeks before my dad’s murder. 

And another family member told me that on the day of the murder, they too saw a black SUV driving away from the scene once more police had arrived. 

Was this a police vehicle? Was it the same vehicle every time? That’s the problem with this case – there’s so many questions, and no one wants to answer them.

Do I think the police could have been involved in my dad’s murder? It’s possible. Do I think they were involved in the cover up? That’s more likely, but I can’t pin down a motive. So far, looking at the suspects, it’s been easy to identify if they did it, why they did it. Even if it’s not a cover up – Do I think they actively neglected this investigation? Absolutely.

Part 6: The Holes

I’m told by the police that the scene was “secured.” I’m assuming this means taped off with that yellow crime scene tape we see on television shows and movies. But when my sister got home from giving her statement, the family was inside the house – some were cleaning up the blood from the floor and the walls. This is hours after the shooting. Any additional hands touching this crime scene would contaminate any possible evidence. You can’t test for fingerprints when half of the family has been inside touching everything. The police let that happen. They didn’t stop anyone from going inside. 

My sister also said when she got home from the police station, all the guns were missing. There were none in the house. The police told me that my dad likely got shot because he was reaching for a gun when the men kicked in the door. But now there are no guns?

Why I think your dad was killed right there? Closet door was opened, there was a 22 rifle there. I think your dad was going for that gun when they shot him.

I was asking them where are the guns that were in here? Dad had probably 20 guns.

There’s an even weirder explanation for that. Alyssa saw one of my cousins sitting in the bed of a truck with blankets over something when she got home. At the time, she didn’t have the mental capacity to be monitoring what was going in and out of the house. She just watched our dad die. But it stuck enough that she remembers it still. Detective Nippert, the cop my dad was reporting to as an informant, told my uncle to “get all the guns out of the house.” So he did. 

He was protecting a truck load of stuff that was coming out of our house when dad was murdered the day he was murdered. And I came back from the police station after being questioned by the police to the whole house full of our family our whole family was in the house.

A few weeks ago my dad’s good friend called me. He had listened to the  podcast and had never heard that my dad was shot with a shotgun. I have heard many different types of guns, even from the police, but a shotgun is what is listed in the police report so that’s what I went with. My dad’s friend pointed out that my dad owned a shotgun, and he had never considered until listening to my podcast that maybe my dad was shot with his own gun. Would be a weird coincidence if my dad was killed with his own gun and that morning the police told my uncle to get all the guns out of the house. 

In our photos we have, yeah – he had a 22 rifle there. I think he heard something there and that closet door was open.

I do a weird pause here in the recording that I want cut out → This can’t be proven, unless there were photos of the house with no guns. 

I’ve never seen a list of the evidence collected from the scene. I have no photos of anything, even the file is a copy of a copy. I do not think much, if anything, was gathered that could be tested today. These men went inside of Pearl and Omar’s house, ransacked it, and the police didn’t try to swipe for fingerprints. This didn’t happen in the 1950’s. It was 2002. DNA fingerprints were introduced to forensics in 1986. Things are not adding up.

That was all done you know at the scene, but the house was ransacked over at Pearl’s. It was not the nicest of houses. And they said they had gloves on, too. So fingerprints, that kind of stuff. At that time DNA was all new.

I don’t know why. I don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes. I’ve said before the Belmont County Sheriff’s Department continues to say there’s not enough evidence to convict anybody.

A few things that should be concrete are not established in the police files. The type of gun used varies depending on the cop I am talking to, and those accounts differ from the actual police file. I’m told the scene was secured, but I’m also told people were walking in and out. I’ve heard there’s a list of evidence, but nothing has been tested for DNA. 

With all the hearsay, the stories, the motives to lie – It’s hard to know which version, if any, are true. But it’s clear that more could have been done.

Part 7: The Math Isn’t Mathing

The current lead investigator for the Belmont County Sheriff’s Department is Detective Allar. I reached out to him a few months before this podcast was released. We chatted in April for a little over an hour about the case. He was working at the jail at the time that my dad was murdered and wasn’t involved in the investigation. He only knew the general story, but he seemed willing to go back and investigate. But it got me thinking – as the lead investigator – how do you not know a lot about one of your very few cold cases? 

I don’t know what happened. And I talked with the Prosecutor about this yesterday because I wanted to go over some stuff. I didn’t know how much I could talk to you about so I wanted to see what he was ok with me sharing. He was pretty, pretty open.

One of the many struggles with this case, and my mission to solve it, is that I’m at the mercy of people who aren’t taking this as seriously as I am. I need my family to come forward with what they know. I need the police to investigate the right people and ask the right questions. I can only make this podcast and hope that it gains enough traction to pressure the officials in Belmont County to do more.

Some of my family – my dad’s siblings and even my mom – called the police department for years after my dad’s murder trying to get the police to further investigate. My family shouldn’t have to beg the Belmont County Sheriff’s Department to solve this case.

And I never went and said hey you know can you guys help me… ‘cause it’s like why aren’t you doing anything. And the family did I’m pretty sure that people who cared probably did call in and say hey how come you haven’t done anything with my brother’s murder?

This case was mishandled, mistreated, and ultimately neglected for reasons I’ll only be able to guess and never be able to prove. Blame has been tossed back and forth from the family onto the cops and from the cops onto the family.

During a conversation with Detective Nippert, my mom remembers something that stuck out to her. 

When I reached out to the detective he told me that he felt the person that was responsible was already incarcerated – that if the family wants it solved, it will be solved.

Next Time on Ice Cold Case

‘Cause eventually, you’re going to get someone in a ringer and they’re going to say… I know something.

I think Omar’s girlfriend Kim is a wealth of knowledge, but she’s not going to say anything.

And I think the family knows this. They wanna admit it or not. I don’t know like I said you weren’t involved in their life. I don’t know if they don’t want a skeleton brought out. That’s a good possibility.

Credits:

Ice Cold Case is brought to you by Yes!
It is written and produced by Madison McGhee
Also produced by Jeremy Benbow 
Recorded by Danny Sellers
Mixed by Cody Campbell
Our music is by Matt Bettinson
With creative direction by Austin Christianson