Criminal Intent

This story originally appeared in the November 2010 issue of Akron Life. 

A man wants his brother dead – and his gun-for-hire is a disgruntled employee the brother fired. A prominent member of society hides salacious acts at an apartment rented under his alias. A search for illegal guns at pawn shops leads police to a judge abusing his seat on the bench – and ultimately uncovers a countywide scandal of misconduct involving several officials.

Like every city, Akron has some dark corners to its past. And while most scandals come and go (replaced by new scandals), some are just too scandalous to forget…

The Murder of Dean Milo

When police found Dean Milo on Aug. 11, 1980, he’d been shot twice in the back of the neck – a blank telegram laid near his body.

Constantine “Dean” Milo was the son of Katina and Sotir, two Albanian immigrants who moved to Akron in the 1940s and built up a cosmetic business they started in their basement. Dean worked in the family business with his siblings Fred and Sophie, and by 1969, he was effectively running the small business for his parents.

By 1971 and under Dean’s direction, the company was grossing $46 million annually. The actual ownership of the company remained with his parents until 1975, when they passed it along to their three children. Though profits were to be divided equally, Dean became president and controlled the day-to-day operations. Fred and Sophie were made vice presidents.

On the surface, it wasn’t a bad deal for everyone concerned, but as the years passed, Dean moved Fred and Sophie to less critical posts and later, fired them for pouring thousands of dollars into another family-owned company. Although they continued to receive their six-digit incomes and still owned 66 percent of the common shares, they were no longer hands-on members of the company– and the rift was complete.

Soon after Dean made several overtures to Fred to buy his and Sophie’s shares in the spring of1980, Dean was found dead. And with no leads, cops were at a standstill, and the case started to go cold.

Growing impatient, Dean’s wife hired private investigator Bill Dear, who soon discovered Dean had a lot of enemies, many in his own family – including his mother. In fact, Dan Moldea – author of “TheHunting of Cain,” a book on the Milo murder – believes that Dean’s mother not only contributed to the animosity, but may have even encouraged it.

“In my opinion, it was the mother that sort of egged this thing on,” he says. “The father went along for the ride.”

Dean had established a lengthy list of enemies that began with his immediate family. With all this in mind, and after a few hot tips and a long trail of questioning, Dear tracked down Tom Mitchell, a Vietnam veteran who told officials that, although he didn’t kill Dean, he was offered money to – by Terry Lea King, a go-go dancer and friend of Dean’s brother, Fred. After Mitchell’s arrest, he led police to King and a man named Barry Boyd, Fred’s attorney.

After his arrest, Boyd admitted involvement. He explained that in the spring of 1979, Fred asked him to kill his brother, but he refused and recruited King. King, however, was unsuccessful at lining up a hit man.

With no takers, Fred turned to a disgruntled former employee named Tony Ridle (who’d been fired by Dean) and recruited vending-machine company owners Frank Piccirilli and Harry Knott to arrange the hit. Ridle eventually confessed his involvement and incriminated Fred. Fred was arrested in December 1980, but since most of the evidence against him was circumstantial, investigators needed to find the triggerman.

Detectives got their break when they were made aware of David Harden, a small-time thug fromKentucky who’d bragged about murdering a Northern business executive. Harden had been recruited by John Harris, a Phoenix biker-gang member who owed money to Piccirilli and Knott.

During his police interview, Harden learned that he had received a tiny fraction of the $22,000 paid out for the murder. Angry, he cooperated with police and revealed everything he knew about the crime.

Harden pleaded guilty in the 1982 trial, claiming Harris offered him $600 to kill Dean. Harden testified that he and Harris called Dean from a bowling alley to confirm he was home. After Harden rang the doorbell, Dean went to the window and asked who it was. Harden claimed to have a telegram for him. When Dean opened the door, Harden pushed him down and shot him twice.

With Harden’s testimony, Fred was found guilty and sentenced to 15 years to life. He died in prison in 1998 from a heart attack at age 53.

In a succession of trials lasting a year and a half, 11 conspirators were found guilty and sentenced to prison. The number of convictions related to the crime marked a record for the Bath TownshipPolice Department and the end of the town’s biggest murder investigation in memory.

The Perverted Acts Of James Bell

In 1972, Summit County officials got a call from an apartment complex resident, saying his neighbor’s door had been left open and a light was on. It was snowing. As police searched the apartment and checked behind a closet door, they discovered floodlights, drop cloths and pictures.Hundreds of pictures, in fact – all showing a nude middle-aged man and underage girls.

Socially prominent James Dickinson Bell II was an Akron native. He and his wife lived in an 18-room mansion near Merriman Road and Memorial Parkway and enjoyed a good life and a high standing in the community. As the son of a rubber factory worker, Bell had become chairman of the multimillion-dollar manufacturing firm Portage Machine Co. By the time he was 35.

This is the Jim Bell he wanted people to know. But officials had discovered his alias, Jim Pepper, who lived in the apartment.

Now retired, Larry Momchilov at the time worked for the Summit County Sheriff’s Office. The onetime he spoke with Bell, he had to ask: Why’d you do it? “He answered me frankly,” says Momchilov.“He said, ‘You know, I’m so rich. I had so much money I could get any woman I wanted, but then it got to the point [where] it was boring and I wanted a new adventure.’ ”

Bell threw frequent (and wild) parties at one of his many apartments – where he often photographed naked women. In the beginning, these women were over 18. But when that got “old,”Bell moved on to something more adventurous.

Momchilov says Bell used a prostitute to find a young girl, whom he paid for her time. And the young girl then found other young girls to come with her. But the money he paid these girls wasn’t much.

“They may [have gotten] anywhere from 5 to 40 bucks, maybe,” says Momchilov. “He’d offer more money for taking off their clothes, then more to get in bed with him, but it wasn’t much. One time he took a girl to Kmart and bought her a shirt for $1.50.”

One of the most disturbing aspects is the way Bell fooled so many mothers into letting him spend time with their children. For example, he’d attend programs for single mothers and act like a father figure – and later, he’d use these girls to produce child pornography. All along, Bell was married and had two little girls at home.

Officials found more than 27 girls who’d been abused by Bell. “We had a huge amount of evidence against him,” Momchilov says. “It was unbelievable.”

Bell was sentenced to four to 25 years in prison for child molestation but only served several years.His influential friends orchestrated his release in 1981. So many people had written letters that the parole board was convinced Bell was cured. But Momchilov knew it wasn’t over. “I was shocked,” he says. “I knew Jim Bell wouldn’t quit.”

Bell knew he was going to have to make some changes if he was going to blend back into society.There were no sex-offender registries at the time, so he moved to Florida and reinvented himself.Bell and his wife lived in the prestigious Rio Vista neighborhood in Fort Lauderdale, and it“appeared” he was making a fresh start. But in 1998, police received a tip that Bell and a woman in her late 20s, Tina Marie Oakley – who worked as a babysitter for various families – were taking children to motel rooms. There, Bell would sexually assault them while she took photos. In return,Bell paid her mortgage and made her car payments.

One abused girl began talking about her molestation to everyone, including a school counselor, who contacted Children’s Services. They in turn called the Fort Lauderdale police – who began closely watching Bell. They got the evidence they needed in October that same year, when they caught Bellnude in the La Quinta Inn with two young teens.

“They arrested him,” says Momchilov, “and dragged him down into the street naked while everyone watched.”

Having accumulated the photographs of dozens of children he’d molested, police knew what Belland Oakley had done. Bell insisted the girls were lying – and he stuck to that story even after two of his victims from Ohio walked into the Florida courtroom to testify against him.

Momchilov had, with some struggle, convinced two girls who’d been involved with Bell in Akron to testify in Florida, along with him. Also testifying was an 8- year-old girl who’d been brought to Bell at a Florida hotel by a prostitute. “She had red hair in pigtails and was holding a teddy bear,” says Momchilov. “It really hit me – what the heck was going on down here?”

Bell was found guilty, and Oakley was sentenced to 15 years. Justice was finally served – or so they thought. But in 2008, Momchilov got a phone call, informing him that some of Bell’s friends thought the judge had made mistakes and wanted Bell retried. Apparently, officials had worked out a deal, which would’ve let him out in 2012. Bell didn’t live long enough. He died in prison in May 2008 of throat cancer.

“The pervs move on, but the victims really suffer. They suffer for years,” says Momchilov. “[This case is] a good example that we don’t always know who does these things. It could be anyone.”

Crooked Judge James Barbuto And County Corruption

When Detective Helmut Klemm and Sgt. Edward Duvall Jr. Began looking in Akron-area pawn shops for illegal weapons that were to have been destroyed but were ending up back on the street, they also ran across some scandalous rumors about a judge.

Today Tim Smith teaches at Kent State University, but in the ‘70s, he was reporting for the AkronBeacon Journal. And he remembers the political power Jim Barbuto had even then. Barbuto was amajor player in local government and politics, a well-connected Democrat in a time when the party dominated Summit County government. But Barbuto had great ambitions: a judgeship.

He succeeded. He was elected as a Summit County probate judge in 1979. “I think he wanted the respect that went along with being a judge,” Smith says. “Jim came from a harsh background, and my impression was that he was always trying to gain respectability.”

Even early on, Barbuto’s reputation was tainted: He was known as a lady’s man. In the afternoon, according to Smith, Barbuto would take women to a hotel downtown, just a couple blocks from the courthouse. But some thought it was more sinister than adultery.

“There’s not much for a probate judge to do, so Barbuto got appointed to criminal cases because he had the time,” says Smith. “There were allegations he was using his position on the bench to collect sexual favors.”

These rumors of favored trials made their way to Klemm and Duvall. Unfortunately, they felt Theo riginal prosecutor on the case was a Barbuto protégé. And after failing to attain a different prosecutor for the trial, they contacted Geraldo Rivera, a reporter at the time for the national TVnews program “20/20.” On national TV, Rivera not only exposed Barbuto as a crooked judge, but played up his preference for being spanked while wearing women’s underwear.

Not long after, Barbuto was indicted on 26 counts but was convicted of only two felony charges –intimidation and gross sexual imposition. Barbuto would spend just 78 days incarcerated before being excused for “health reasons.” Though the scandal had cost him his law license, marriage and most of his friends, he still went on to run two different area restaurants after his release.

Barbuto was just one of several officials convicted. Then-retired Akron Police Capt. Clyde Longacre pleaded guilty for illegally taking 17 guns that were confiscated, but not destroyed. Coroner’s investigator James Crano pleaded guilty to dereliction of duty as a result of handling of firearms in the coroner’s office. Summit County SheriffAnthony Cardarelli pleaded guilty to reduced charges of dereliction of duty and obstruction of official business, and was also indicted on gun-related charges.

Smith says County Auditor John Poda also “got caught with his hand in the cookie jar” taking bribes, but that had nothing to do with Barbuto. Neither did a county coroner who got caught stealing from corpses. Still, with the exposure of such rampant corruption, many people had serious doubts about the integrity of their Summit County officials which, according to Smith, may have contributed to the county’s decision to switch to a charter form of government soon after.

Writer Kathie Zipp is a former intern of Akron Life & Leisure magazine. She graduated from KentState in 2010 with a Bachelor of Science degree in news with a magazine concentration.