State: DNA links former truck driver to rape, four homicides
DNA tied to crimes in 1990s, possibly more victims.
DNA testing has MEDINA — linked a former long-distance truck driver to a 1997 Medina County rape case and four unsolved homicides, three in Ohio and one in Illinois, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and Medina County officials announced. Samuel William Legg III, 49, has so far only been charged in the rape case but is being investigated in connection with the homicides. He was arraigned Thursday and is being held on a $1 million bond.
Yost said none of the homicides occurred in Medina County. He said the killings happened in the 1990s both before and after the Medina County rape.
Medina County Prosecutor S. Forrest Thompson said the rape victim, who was 17 when she reported being assaulted at a Speedway at Interstate 71 and U.S. Route 224 in Westfield Township, is pleased that charges have at last been filed.
“I think she was more relieved to finally be believed,” said Thompson. “She wants to see the man brought to justice. She was devastated by the gravity of the other cases.”
Yost and Thompson credited DNA technology and cooperation among law enforcement agencies in Ohio and other states with the break in the cold cases.
The new developments began in December in another Ohio county with an investigation of an unsolved murder by the Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation (BCI) and prosecutors. Investigators took a sample from an unknown male who was a suspect in the murder and looked at familial DNA, which searches for Y chromosomes shared by men in the same family.
The search led them to the results from a rape kit from the unsolved Medina County rape case, indicating the person responsible was in the same family as the person tied to the murder, Yost said.
The attorney general’s office reached out to Thompson, who dusted off the long-dormant rape case.
The rape involved a 17-year-old girl from Lexington who said she was sexually assaulted on Sept. 7, 1997, by a truck driver who gave her a ride when she was hitchhiking back home after visiting her boyfriend in Cleveland. Lexington police did a rape kit and turned it over to the Medina County Sheriff.
Detectives and prosecutors identified Legg, an independent truck driver who worked for a company in Hinckley and drove through Ohio and other states, as a potential suspect but opted not to prosecute. They cited credibility questions, Thompson said.
Thompson said he found “insufficiencies in the investigation” and asked Medina County Detective Kevin Ross to follow up on them.
“We made the decision the rejection of the case was premature,” Thompson said.
Investigators traveled to the group home where Legg was living in Chandler, Arizona, arrested him and obtained samples of his DNA. They gave the samples to BCI, which confirmed Legg’s DNA from the 1997 rape kit, Yost said.
Thompson said Legg has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, and this may have been the reason for his placement in the group home. He said Legg lived in several states, including Florida and Texas, and likely ended up in Arizona because his late father lived in Tucson.
Legg is charged with two counts of rape, a first-degree felony.
Legg’s DNA also was linked to four unsolved homicides, all involving female victims killed at truck stops and left naked or partially naked, Yost said.
The developments of this case have drawn the interest of other law enforcement agencies along the I-71 corridor, Thompson said.