The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Thomas found guilty of rape, murder in retrial
A Lake County jury found Joseph L. Thomas guilty of 10 of the 11 charges stemming from the Black Friday 2010 rape and murder of Annie McSween outside of a Mentor-on-the-Lake bar.
Thomas, 34, was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole plus 36 years immediately following the July 25 verdict.
McSween is believed to have been murdered around 4:30 a.m. outside of Mario’s Lakeway Lounge where she worked as a bartender and closed the bar that night. Her body was found a few hours later in a wooded area near the bar. It was her 49th birthday.
Thomas was found guilty on three of the four aggravated murder charges he faced. He was found not guilty only on the aggravated murder charge that there was prior calculation and design. His other charges were one count of rape, three counts of kidnapping, two counts of aggravated robbery and one count of tampering with evidence.
Thomas was arrested on June 7, 2011, a few weeks after investigators found clothing and other items belonging to McSween in a 55-gallon burn barrel at the Marine Parkway Drive home Thomas was residing at the time of the murder.
He was originally convicted on all 11 counts in 2012 and was sentenced to death. The Ohio Supreme Court in 2017 overturned the conviction and ordered a new trial for Thomas. Thomas has maintained his innocence.
Assistant Lake County Prosecutor Paul Kaplan called McSween’s death “animalistic, brutal and inhuman.”
“The level of suffering and pain and degradation inflicted upon Annie McSween is just unthinkable,” Kaplan said. Lake County Common Pleas Court Judge Eugene A. Lucci said the crimes committed against McSween were beyond words. McSween had been punched in the face, strangled and stabbed in the back and neck multiple times. Defensive wounds were found on her hands. Assistant Lake County Prosecutor Carolyn Mulligan described McSween as a fighter.
At one point during her assault, McSween escaped her attacker and tried to get help at a home behind the bar. Fearing she was an intruder, those in the home closed the door on McSween. She was dragged away from the home and killed.
She was wearing only socks when she was found in the wooded area hours after her murder. McSween’s longtime neighbor Terri Lutz read a letter to the court on behalf of McSween’s sister Ellen Valore.
“On Nov. 26, 2010, while simply trying to earn an honest living, she was needlessly subjected to everyone woman’s worst nightmare,” Valore wrote. “Brutally attacked, beaten, rape and finally murdered in the darkness of night by an evil monster.”
The questions of why and how this happened are questions that haunt Valore constantly. She said those questions “should haunt us all.”
Valore said the “horrendous impact” of people like Thomas goes far beyond victims like McSween. Psychological wounds from family members can appear at any time, triggered by something as simple as a sound or a picture. “I am personally now frightened to go out alone, especially at night,” she wrote. “Any sound in my home causes me to freeze. A strange man in stores standing behind me or simply walking by alerts my whole body to expect violence, nightmares and overwhelming grief.”
The Lake County Prosecutor’s Office took death penalty specifications off the table prior to the retrial. Kaplan said the decision was made after speaking with McSween’s family and the Mentor-on-theLake Police Department.
“The state, as well as the family, feels there is a need for a more immediate finality to this case,” Kaplan said in January.
If Thomas was convicted a second time and again received the death penalty, the appeals process could take nearly 20 years, Lake County Prosecutor Charles Coulson said. With the death penalty off the table, the appeals process will be significantly shorter. Defense attorney Don Malarcik said he advised Thomas “not to make any statements with respect to allocution.”
“It is our intent to appeal this,” Malarcik said.
Mentor-on-the-Lake Police Chief John Gielink said the jury again made the right decision.
“I told our staff we convicted him once, we can convict him again,” Gielink said.