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Friday, Oct 12, 2012 4:30 PM UTC

Ohio outlines case vs. teen in Craigslist killings

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Topics: From the Wires,

AKRON, Ohio (AP) — A 17-year-old charged in a deadly scheme to lure victims with phony Craigslist jobs was a willing student of violent crime who played a key role in the killings of men who were desperate to find work, a prosecutor said to open the boy’s trial Friday.

Brogan Rafferty chose to participate in the deaths of three men and wounding of a third, even if he wasn’t the triggerman, prosecutor Emily Pelphrey told jurors as she outlined the case against him. Rafferty kept his head down and took notes as the alleged plot was detailed for the jury.

Pelphrey showed the jury timelines for each victim and said they had been desperate to improve their lives or find “the light at the end of the tunnel.” With each victim, a photo of their graves was shown on a big TV screen.

Rafferty was a willing partner, according to Pelphrey. The defendant was a quick student of the alleged plot and “a student of violent crime,” she told jurors.

“He made the choices he wanted to make,” she said.

Defense attorney John Alexander told jurors Rafferty was afraid that the plot’s alleged mastermind, Richard Beasley, would kill him and his relatives if he didn’t cooperate and keep silent. He says Rafferty never participated voluntarily.

As for the alleged plot to lure job seekers, Alexander said, Rafferty “had no idea any of this was going on.”

The first killing came without warning for Rafferty at a southeast Ohio farm where a man had been offered a job, according to Alexander. He said Beasley warned Rafferty to keep quiet by reminding him that he knew where Rafferty’s mother and sister lived.

That was an implied threat to cooperate and keep quiet, Alexander said. “He would kill them if Brogan says anything,” Alexander told jurors.

Beasley has pleaded not guilty and will be tried separately.

The body of David Pauley, 51, of Norfolk, Va., was found on Noble County property owned by a coal company and often leased to hunters.

Timothy Kern, 47, of Massillon, was found in a shallow grave near an Akron-area shopping mall. He had been shot in the head.

The body of Ralph Geiger, 55, of Akron, was found in Noble County, dead of a gunshot wound to the head.

A South Carolina man, Scott Davis, escaped after being shot in the arm by hiding in woods until it got dark. He was expected to testify at Rafferty’s trial.

Beasley was a Texas parolee who returned to Ohio in 2004 after serving time on a burglary conviction. He was awaiting trial on prostitution and drug charges when authorities took him into custody.

Police have said a halfway house he ran in Akron was a front for prostitution. Authorities said he was a mentor for Rafferty and had befriended him.

Thomas J. Sheeran

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