Businessman indicted in ’85 murder

Thirty- two years after Sharla Spangler walked out of the Gahanna go-go bar where she worked and was found dead in a Northeast Side parking lot, a 63- yearold Knox County man has been charged in her murder.

Douglas E. Krumlauf of Summer Lane near Mount Vernon was indicted Friday by a Franklin County grand jury on one count of aggravated murder and one count of murder, both with gun specifications.

Krumlauf’s fingerprints were collected after a domestic- violence arrest in 2015 and entered into a computer database, which matched them with fingerprints collected at the scene where Spangler’s body was found, said Prosecutor Ron O’Brien.

Spangler, 24, was a dancer at the Gold Fox Lounge on West Johnstown Road. She was last seen alive by coworkers when she left work about 2: 30 a. m. on Jan. 30, 1985. Her body was discovered the next day, dumped beneath a parked North American Van Lines trailer in the snow-covered parking lot of an abandoned gas station at Dublin- Granville and Hamilton roads.

She had been shot in the head, the coroner’s office reported.

O’Brien said Krumlauf’s fingerprints matched two found at the scene: one on the trailer and one on a roll of duct tape near the body. Duct tape also was on Spangler’s left wrist, he said.

Krumlauf has known for months that he was under investigation in the case, said his lawyer, Sam Shamansky.

“He’s going to enter notguilty pleas and defend the case at his earliest opportunity,” Shamansky said.

Krumlauf hasn’t been taken into custody because he is at OhioHealth Riverside Methodist Hospital with an undisclosed illness, O’Brien said. He is under police guard at the hospital.

He was interviewed by Columbus police and told them that he had never been to the parking lot and “had no reason to have had duct tape in that area,” O’Brien said.

Investigators have been unable to establish any relationship between the victim and Krumlauf, he said.

Krumlauf owns Tileman Inc., according to a LinkedIn profile, and lives in a house valued at $405,000 by the Knox County auditor.

“He’s certainly a responsible, successful, nose- to- the- grindstone businessman and citizen,” Shamansky said.

On the day that Spangler’s body was discovered, her car was still in the parking lot of the go- go bar, where it had been left with the engine running until it ran out of gas. Employees of the bar said she had gone outside to warm up the vehicle, came back inside for a few minutes, then left again out the back door.

Her purse was found inside her car.

Columbus police detectives said at the time that Spangler’s body was fully clothed and there was no evidence of robbery or sexual assault.

The Dispatch reported at the time that Spangler was on the prosecution’s witness list for a federal grand jury investigation of a man described as a “longtime kingpin of several central Ohio strip clubs.”

“As far as we know,” O’Brien said Monday, Spangler’s death “is not at all connected to that.”