Basement gives awful look at drug trade
For a glimpse at the drug trade’s horrific underbelly and the toll it takes on Columbus, look to the basement of a Hilltop building on Sullivant Avenue.
It was there that, in August 2018, the dismembered corpses of a man and woman were entombed in concrete. There they remained for more than two years, until a drug investigation led authorities to make the grisly discovery this year.
Last week, five men were indicted in federal court in Columbus in connection with a larger drug case that include those killings and an earlier one. Four other defendants already were charged for their involvement in dismembering, moving and burying the two bodies later found in the Sullivant house.
The deadly violence now tied to this group began with a June 2018 home invasion in North Linden that led to the killing of Connor Reynolds, 23, of Grove City.
Larry J. Williams Jr., according to federal investigators, killed Reynolds during what was planned as a robbery of high-quality marijuana. Williams, who already was awaiting trial on federal drug charges when the murder indictments were filed last week, was part of a group “linked to a faction of the Latin Kings criminal street gang in Chicago, Ill., that were suspected of distributing kilogram quantities of heroin and cocaine into the Columbus, Ohio area,” federal agents said in court documents.
Following the Reynolds homicide, Williams asked a man named Henry Watson to dispose of a gun used in the robbery, investigators said.
Watson did, but he also made a lethal mistake. Investigators said he told other people he had disposed of the gun for Williams, and told those people why.
Sometime around Aug. 24, 2018, federal agents said, Williams killed Watson to silence him and also killed Watson’s friend, Tera Pennington.
Then Williams turned to an acquaintance, Patrick Foster, to coordinate disposal of the bodies, investigators said.
Here’s where events grow so gruesome that one is tempted to look away. Don’t.
The killings, investigators said, occurred at Williams’ house on Stevens Avenue in Franklinton. The landlord later told investigators that after she evicted Williams from the property, she noticed he had “removed the drywall and flooring from a rear room.”
Investigators noticed more, mainly “five suspected bullet holes ... as well as evidence of a large amount of blood on the concrete floor. This blood evidence was not visible to the naked eye.”
Investigators said they eventually learned that Foster dispatched two employees to Stevens Avenue to help Williams dispose of the bodies. It was there that they dismembered the victims using tools and materials from Foster’s home remodeling business.
“This included a work van, plastic wrapping, and a Sawzall tool,” court documents show.
Foster instructed his employees to deposit the bodies inside the Sullivant Avenue address, which he owned and which investigators later noted was equipped with multiple surveillance cameras despite being vacant and full mostly of junk.
The job was too big for two men, so they enlisted the help of a third, who told investigators “the digging and burial took until morning.”
At one point, Foster dropped by the Sullivant Avenue address to see if they needed anything “to complete the job,” court documents show.
“During the process, Foster paid for a wood chipper to be used to accomplish the disposal and burial.”
“The three employees broke through the concrete .. .. They dug into the dirt below the concrete . ... They placed the dismembered bodies in a hole which was approximately 3-5 feet deep. This hole was covered in concrete owned by Foster.”
When investigators entered the home on Jan. 13 of this year, “there were several unused bags of concrete mix still in the basement area, including one in the room where the burial was said to have occurred.”
The bodies were unearthed using heavy equipment from the fire division “to dig through many feet of concrete.” On that first day of digging, they found only “two human feet and part of a torso.” They needed a second day to finish the job.
We can look away from events like these, allow them to slip by as traffic passed by the house on Sullivant, the drivers oblivious to the horror that unfolded inside.
We can spin the situation, as Foster’s attorneys did when trying to free him pending trial.
“He is married with children and is a life-long resident of Franklin County, Ohio,” they wrote in their bid for his release. “Mr. Foster owns and restores real estate, which increases his substantial ties to the community.”
Or we can break through this concrete denial and recognize that Columbus, a fine city in so many ways, remains a work in a progress. tdecker@dispatch.com @Theoodore_decker