Robert Seman, Alleged Rapist And Murderer, Jumps To Death From Courthouse Balcony

4-11-17 Ohio:

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — A man charged with setting a fire that killed a girl he was accused of raping and her grandparents jumped to his death from a fourth-floor courthouse balcony on Monday, the day before jury selection in his death penalty trial.

Forty-eight-year-old Robert Seman Jr. was being led by deputies from a courtroom after a status conference to a holding cell at the Mahoning County Courthouse in Youngstown when he killed himself, Sheriff Jerry Greene told the Youngstown Vindicator.

"According to a couple of the attorneys and basically everybody there, it seemed like he was in pretty good spirits,'' Greene said. "He was talking about the future of his trial, and he just decided to jump.''

Seman could have faced the death penalty if convicted in the deaths of 10-year-old Corrine Gump, 63-year-old William Schmidt and 61-year-old Judith Schmidt. The March 2015 fire at the family's home occurred the day Seman's trial in Corrine's rape was scheduled to begin in Youngstown. Investigators concluded that the fire was fuelled by gasoline. Burns were found on Seman's body after his arrest, prosecutors said.

Suspect in teenage girl's shooting takes own life in Detroit casino hotel parking garage

1-10-2014 Michigan:

DETROIT — Authorities say a man (Lance Cottrell) who killed himself in a downtown Detroit casino and hotel parking garage was suspected in the earlier shooting of a 13-year-old girl and was being investigated in the reported sexual assault of her 15-year-old sister.

Eastpointe police say the man wounded the younger girl in the leg about 7 a.m. Friday in the community just north of Detroit.

The body of the 32-year-old Waterford Township resident was found later Friday morning atop the elevator control room of the Greektown Casino garage.

Detroit police officer Adam Madera said it appeared the man fell from the 13th floor of the parking structure after shooting himself.

Police in Oakland County's Waterford Township had been investigating the man in the reported sexual assault of a girl he met online. ..Source.. by The Republic.com

Man shot by Tampa airport police registered as sex offender in August

10-29-2013 Florida:

TAMPA — A man shot by police Monday at Tampa International Airport before jumping to his death from a parking garage recently had registered as a sex offender.

Allen Piano, 46, of Palm Harbor, registered after being sentenced to probation in August for providing obscene materials to a minor.

Piano was shot late Monday afternoon when he lunged at TIA Police Officer Jason Virt on the fourth floor of the airport's long-term parking garage, authorities said.

Airport officials said an airport police officer approached Piano about 4:30 p.m. on the eighth floor of the short-term parking garage.

Piano said he was watching planes. A background check revealed he was a sex offender for whom Pinellas officials were about to issue an arrest warrant, according to his probation officer.

The probation officer also said a shotgun was missing from the home of Piano's mother, with whom he lived.

Man who plunged from tower was suspect in 3 slayings

Posted in Related Deaths

4-8-2012 Mississippi:

BAY ST. LOUIS -- Authorities suspect a twice-convicted felon killed his mother, stepfather and girlfriend at their home on Citizen Street before he climbed a cellphone tower in Waveland and plunged about 300 feet to his death.

The triple homicide and two other homicides Saturday in Hancock County marked what is believed to be a record of five homicides reported in a single day in the coastal counties.

“It was like a double full moon,” said Waveland Police Chief Kenny Hurt, previously chief investigator of the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office.

“All of us officials and investigators have been talking about how we don’t recall ever having this many at a time. We had a double homicide several years ago, but never anything like this,” Hurt said.

No motives have been revealed in any of the killings.

Authorities on Sunday identified victims in the slayings on Citizen Street as Wilton Bernard Jr., 69, his wife, Jeanie Bernard, 66, and Kathleen Deese, 50.

Deese was the suspect’s girlfriend, said Bay Deputy Police Chief Christine Johnson.

The suspect, Anthony Garrett, 46, died later Saturday night as authorities tried to talk him down from a tower and a crowd gathered to watch. Investigators are considering the possibility that he slipped and fell while trying to get down.

Witnesses reported Garrett shouted at onlookers and law enforcement officers, claiming he had killed his family with a hammer, and said he had been in prison a number of years.

Garrett was convicted of sexual battery in 1985 and again in 1988. He had given officials his mother’s home address as his address for the Mississippi Sex Offender Registry. The website said his picture was last updated March 27.

Back-to-back autopsies were performed Sunday, but authorities have not yet said how the three on Citizen Street were killed.

The Bernards were retired and mostly kept to themselves, said their next-door neighbor, who asked not to be identified. She said the couple had lived there about 10 years and had recently finished planting flowers in their yard.

Crime-scene tape was still tied around the yard Sunday afternoon. An American flag waved in the breeze from a short pole on a tripod-style planter of flowers in front of the light-colored stucco home, where sego palms grow underneath a set of double windows in front.

Three vehicles were parked on the property. A pickup truck and station wagon were in the front yard, and a car was parked under a lean-to built adjacent to a shed.

Public records show Garrett and Deese had previously lived in Meridian.

They apparently all lived together in a house at the corner of Citizen Street and Old Spanish Trail. Citizen Street is a dead-end road. Numerous motorists passed by and slowed down to look at the house Sunday and turned around and left.

Police said the three were found dead at 7:42 p.m. Saturday.

The neighbor said she had no idea anything had happened until a string of patrol cars drove up as she sat on her porch. She said authorities were still there when she went to bed about 3 a.m. Sunday. The woman said she heard no gunshots or sounds of distress.

Authorities linked Garrett to the slayings after Waveland police and Hancock County deputies responded to a report of a man who had jumped a fence and climbed onto a cell phone tower at U.S. 90 and Kiln-Waveland Cutoff Road in Waveland.

The tower is a three- or four-mile drive from the home on Citizen Street.

The sight of a man near the top of the tower drew a crowd of several dozen from neighboring businesses including the Knock Knock Lounge.

The Hancock County Sheriff’s Office and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation are assisting in the probe of those incidents. ..Source.. by ROBIN FITZGERALD

Broward lawyer Stephen D. Jerome, 61, kills self amid child porn probe

3-14-2012 Florida:

Police say that Stephen D. Jerome jumped from the roof of his Fort Lauderdale office building after they searched his home for child pornography and arrested him for drugs

Stephen David Jerome had a flair for the dramatic.

The Pompano Beach bankruptcy lawyer acted in community theatre, and was known to break into song in the courtroom.

Early Friday morning, he chose a dramatic ending to his own life. Police say he jumped from the roof of the 11-story BankAtlantic building at 1600 S. Federal Hwy., where he kept an eighth-floor office, hours after bonding out of the Broward County Jail on minor drug charges.

Suicide jumper was target of sex crimes inquiry

8-25-2010 Florida:

The man who jumped to his death from the 21st floor of a downtown West Palm Beach office building last week was under investigation by a sex crimes task force, authorities and his employer told Page Two.

Brett Hall, 24, who was buried Tuesday in Valhalla, N.Y., was questioned by members of the Palm Beach County Sexual Predator Enforcement Task Force about two hours before he committed suicide Thursday.

The secretive Boca-based unit is made up of detectives from the state attorney's office, Boca Raton and Boynton Beach police, the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Through advanced data-mining techniques, the group investigates mainly child porn distributed via the Internet.

A spokeswoman for the Boca Raton Resort & Club, where Hall worked as an accountant, said detectives served a search warrant at Hall's work station about 9 a.m. Carole Boucard, the resort's director of public relations, said she didn't know what the investigators were looking for. A source close to the probe told me they mainly searched Hall's work computer.

A resort employee described how Hall was walked to his car by hotel security after the detectives left. He was stripped of his employee ID and sent on his way.

Boucard couldn't confirm that, but said Hall was not fired.

Uniformed Boca cops, meanwhile, were dispatched to Hall's apartment off Palmetto Park Road, according to Boca PD spokeswoman Sandra Boonenberg. The officers, however, never made contact with Hall there. ..Source.. by Jose Lambiet

Murfreesboro child abuse suspect commits suicide

12-9-2009 Tennessee:

A newly employed pediatric nurse who was soon to be arrested and charged with child sexual abuse reportedly killed himself Thursday by jumping from a medical office building in Nashville, police reported.

Elliot Lash, 26, of Peachtree Street in Murfreesboro, jumped from the top of his workplace as Murfreesboro Police Detective Tommy Roberts worked to arrest him on sex charges, according to a Murfreesboro Police incident report.

The man's wife reported her husband to police after she found a "disturbing video" on a home laptop, according to a report filed by Roberts.

The video reportedly showed Elliot Lash inappropriately touching a child, whose age was redacted in a police report, according to the police report. The child was shown on the camera naked.

Lash's wife, who admitted she'd had trouble in her marriage for the past six years, had recently moved back to her mother's home when she found the video file on a laptop computer her husband had used.

She contacted police in reference to the video. Less than halfway through the material, Murfreesboro Police Officer Jason Harding knew, "I had watched enough to know that a detective was needed from that point."

Detective Roberts took over the investigation at that point. During his investigation he confiscated three computers belonging to Elliot Lash.

"Investigators found hundreds of images and video on the three computers," said Murfreesboro Police spokesman Kyle Evans. "They've been sent to the TBI for forensic analysis. Investigators want to see if these are downloaded images or images he may have taken himself."

Roberts later obtained warrants for sexual exploitation of a minor and sexual battery and contacted Lash by phone.

"I asked him to come in and speak with me," Roberts said. "I went by his place of employment, St. Thomas Medical Group, Pediatrics (Dr. Timothy Mangrum) and was told he did not show up for work."

Later that same day, Roberts received a call from Brent Horst, Lash's attorney. Horst told the detective he would tell Lash to turn himself in, but was not sure that he would.

That same night I received a call from Metro Detective Steven Jolly ... (who) stated it appeared Lash had committed suicide by jumping off a building," Roberts reported.

Evans said investigators may, at some point, work in concert with the Metro Nashville Police Department on the case.

"We're looking to see if there are other people involved in the trade of these materials and to see if we can identify more victims, as his tenure in the medical field was always as a pediatric nurse," Evans said. "If the evidence reveals those are pictures he took, we would ask Nashville to get involved in the investigation, since the doctor's office he worked at is located in Nashville."

However, Chief Operating Officer Bill Grayson of Nashville Healthcare Solutions, said Lash had only worked for St. Thomas Medical Group for "six days" and had very little access to patients of Mangrum.

The medical group is not owned or operated by Saint Thomas Health Services, which owns Saint Thomas Hospital and Middle Tennessee Medical Center. The medical group's office building is attached to Saint Thomas Hospital in Nashville and doctors with the medical group have privileges to practice at the hospital.

"To the best of our knowledge, he was never alone and never unsupervised in a patient room," Grayson said. "We hope that ... quashes any nervousness about anyone thinking he committed any impropriety here."

Grayson added that the medical practice hired Lash because he had no marks on his criminal background, he passed a drug screen and he had good references.

"His (criminal) background was completely negative (for any charges)," Grayson said.

A statement released by Grayson on behalf of St. Thomas Medical Group says: "We are saddened to acknowledge the tragic death of one of our employees on December 3, 2009. Elliot Lash was a veteran of the U.S. Navy, and had dedicated his life to nursing.

"Mr. Lash became an employee of (the St. Thomas Medical Group) on November 23, 2009, was still in training, and in the short time we knew him was a very personable co-worker," the release reads. "This tragic incident has been a shock for our staff and our patients, and we wish Mr. Lash's family and friends solemn condolences at this difficult time."

Kristen Helm with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said she could not comment on any evidence being processed by the TBI. ..Source.. by MARK BELL • GANNETT TENNESSEE

Man who leaped from hotel had felony conviction

9-8-2007 Indiana:

A Northside Indianapolis man who died after jumping from the ninth floor of a Downtown hotel was wanted for violating probation on a 2006 child molesting conviction, police said Friday.

The incident occurred Thursday night while tens of thousands of people filled the area around Monument Circle for the NFL Kickoff celebration before the Colts-Saints game.

Tim Krochalk, 32, had an outstanding warrant against him stemming from his December conviction for Class C felony child molestation, said Lt. Jeff Duhamell of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department.

Krochalk was released from prison in May, according to the Indiana Department of Correction.

Police found Krochalk in an alley behind the Sheraton Indianapolis City Centre Hotel, 31 W. Ohio St., shortly after 7 p.m., according to a police report.

Witnesses told police the man jumped from the outdoor pool and recreation area on the ninth floor of the hotel, according to the report. A fence about 5 feet high encloses the area. Krochalk later died at Wishard Memorial Hospital.

Joseph McAtee, IMPD Area II commander, said Krochalk was wearing swimming trunks or shorts. McAtee said the man left his belongings, including his wallet, on a table near the pool, but he left no identification.

McAtee said none of the witnesses who spoke to police knew the man.

Hotel officials who were present at the accident scene after police left declined to comment on the incident.

No injuries on the ground were reported, police said. ..more.. by Indy Star