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April 7, 2005
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April 7, 2005 |
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Rittenhouse pleads guilty to murder At an emotional hearing in a crowded Greene County courtroom last Wednesday, Michael Rittenhouse publicly admitted for the first time that he killed his former friend and YSHS classmate Tim Lopez in 2002. Rittenhouse, 21, pleaded guilty to charges of murder and gross abuse of a corpse. He was sentenced by Judge J. Timothy Campbell of the Greene County Common Pleas Court to the maximum punishment of 15 years to life in prison and $15,000 for murder and the maximum punishment of one year in prison and $2,500 for gross abuse of a corpse. Rittenhouse was also ordered to pay up to $1 million in restitution to Lopez’s family, a figure that his attorneys will challenge at a hearing in September. Lopez was a senior at Yellow Springs High School when he vanished on Jan. 22, 2002. He was missing for two years before his body was found buried in the backyard of Rittenhouse’s home on Allen Street in February 2004. Rittenhouse, who was in the same class as Lopez at YSHS, was charged with aggravated murder, aggravated robbery and gross abuse of a corpse. Had he been found guilty of the first two charges he could have received the death penalty. Instead, Rittenhouse pleaded guilty during the March 30 hearing to the lesser murder charge after months of negotiations between his Dayton attorneys, John Rion and Jon Paul Rion, and the office of Greene County Prosecutor William Schenck. According to court documents, the reduced charge depended on the consent of Lopez’s parents, Barbara McQuiston and John Lopez. At the hearing Lopez’s loved ones directly addressed Rittenhouse, expressing their grief and rage at Lopez’s death. They requested that Rittenhouse be given the maximum punishment under the reduced charge. “We have all suffered greatly,” McQuiston said. “I have to live with an irreplaceable loss. I have lost my only child, something I have no choice but to take to my grave. My heart will never be whole and I will never fully heal. I will always be haunted by the constant wondering of how someone can carry out such an unconscionable act and of what Tim was feeling as his life was taken away.” After he sentenced Rittenhouse, Campbell said to him, “You have destroyed two families. This is something you have to ponder for the rest of your life.” What happened in January ’02 The Greene County Common Pleas Court began filling up a half hour before last Wednesday’s 2 p.m. plea hearing. About 70 people, including family and friends of both Lopez and Rittenhouse, crowded into the benches and stood at the rear and sides of the room, as members of the media filled the designated area for the press in the jury box. Shortly before 2, Rittenhouse, wearing a dark suit, was led into court by several sheriff’s deputies, who stood around him as he sat at a table with John Rion. The courtroom was silent as Suzanne Schmidt, the Greene County first assistant prosecuting attorney, read a description of what happened on Jan. 22, 2002.
Lopez was sitting in the basement of the Rittenhouse home, possibly playing a video game, when Rittenhouse approached him from behind and struck him several times in the head with a baseball bat, according to Schmidt. Lopez’s skull was crushed and he died at the scene, she said. Rittenhouse then drove Lopez’s car to the Grinnell Mill parking lot and walked home, she said. He placed Lopez’s body in a large plastic container and kept it in the basement until about Feb. 2, when he attempted to burn the body in the garage. However, he was not successful, and sometime soon after, Rittenhouse buried Lopez in a shallow grave in the backyard of the home, which he shared with his mother and brother. When asked by Campbell if this scenario was accurate, Rittenhouse stated that it was. In an interview with members of the media after the hearing, Schenck, the Greene County prosecutor, said that the killing apparently followed a disagreement that day between Rittenhouse and Lopez over the sale of the drug ecstasy, although it is not clear who was buying the drugs and who was selling, nor the amount of money involved. However, Schenck said, the argument that day only exacerbated long-lasting “bad blood” between the two young men. “To characterize this as a drug deal gone bad is too easy,” Schenck said. “The crime had its genesis long before, although the drugs may have brought it out.” Schenck also said that alcohol or drug use was not a factor in the events of Jan. 22. Most important, Schenck said, was Rittenhouse’s deep dislike for Lopez. Schenck also speculated that Rittenhouse may have been jealous of Lopez. “Whatever happened that day was secondary to that there was already a lot of anger, contempt and resentment,” he said. The prosecutors’ investigation turned up an earlier plan between Rittenhouse and a friend to rob Lopez. The two lay in wait outside Lopez’s house in Clifton and placed a tree trunk across the driveway to stop his car, said Schenck. The two men did not go through with the robbery and apparently ran away when Lopez returned home. Schenck said that he doesn’t believe Rittenhouse planned to kill Lopez, but that instead Rittenhouse “snapped” after the unknown events on Jan. 22. “A crime like this cannot be seen as other than a crime of rage,” Schenck said. According to Schmidt, at least one of Rittenhouse’s friends, and possibly two, viewed Lopez’s body after the killing. One of the young men led police to Rittenhouse in February 2004 when he got into trouble in Columbus and offered information about the Yellow Springs murder in exchange for leniency. The prosecutors would not identify the friends. An emotional response Rittenhouse treated Lopez’s body the way someone would treat trash, Barbara McQuiston said during the March 30 hearing. “Tim was not trash,” said McQuiston, who was the first of Lopez’s family members and friends to make a statement. “He was an extraordinary boy who was deeply loved.” A single parent who raised an only child, McQuiston described her relationship with her son as “the closest bond that could be formed between a mother and a son. Since he was born, he has always been my whole world, my life and my greatest joy.” During the two years of his absence, McQuiston said, her health declined and she could not sleep. She feared leaving her home because she wanted to be there if her son showed up, she said. After putting all her financial resources into a search for Lopez, she was forced to return to work, she said, but “I cried every day as I left because I felt in some way that I was abandoning my son.” In her need to search for him, she found herself knocking on the doors of his friends’ homes and asking if she could search for him inside, McQuiston said, adding that she jumped at every phone call in hopes that it might be someone wanting to ransom her son. She finally chose to leave Ohio, McQuiston said. “I had to eventually move because I could not bear the pain I felt coming home to the place we lived and always expecting to see him walk through the door,” she said. In his statement, John Lopez, Tim’s father, recalled that when Tim was much younger he told his father that Rittenhouse was one of his best friends and that he wanted to invite Michael to visit his father with him in California. That visit never took place, said John Lopez, who speculated that if it had perhaps the two boys would have remained friends and the murder might never have happened. Lopez described his son’s loving nature and how, at age 3, Tim began practicing magic. Tim was “the sort of boy who believes in the possibilities of things,” Lopez said. Beth Burt, Tim Lopez’s girlfriend at the time of his murder, described him as her best friend, the person with whom she shared her innermost feelings. She described years of sleepless nights and her anguish at learning of the details of his death. “I am now trying to continue my life and yet I will always have a huge hole in my heart,” Burt said. “I am attempting to live out the dreams Tim and I shared together alone. He should be here with us now, living his life as a son, grandson, nephew, cousin, friend and my true love.” Also making statements were Edward McQuiston, Tim’s grandfather, Connie Pons, his aunt, and Jenny Hudson, a family friend. Gilah Pomeranz, the mother of Michael Rittenhouse, gave an emotional appeal on behalf of her son. Pomeranz prefaced her remarks by saying that “for all the grieving and agony and devastation I feel, I never forget for one moment that there’s another mother who would trade places with me in a heartbeat.” “Michael has a good, kind and generous spirit,” she said, describing the many people who care for him. She also said, “I never forget for an instant the horror that brought us here.” “We all understand that nobody and nothing can undo the tragedy of this situation,” Pomeranz said. “One element of justice is punishment but I also believe that the bigger measure of justice is redemption. It’s what I will pray for the rest of my life.” Also attending the hearing were Rittenhouse’s father, Bill Rittenhouse, his grandmother, Evelyn Pomeranz, and his brother, Nick Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse apologizes Throughout the hearing Rittenhouse sat quietly, most often maintaining eye contact with the Lopez family members who spoke to him. After the families spoke, Rittenhouse was offered a chance to make a statement. “Not a moment goes by that I don’t wish I could change what happened,” Rittenhouse said. “I truly am sorry for the pain I caused.” Rittenhouse said he hoped to do something worthwhile with his life to atone for his actions. “I believe I can show you that his life was not lost in vain,” he said. He said he would like to work with young people, “to make sure they don’t travel the same path he and I traveled.” Rittenhouse will most likely serve his sentence in a state prison in either London or Lebanon, Schenck said after the hearing. Schenck speculated that Rittenhouse would probably end up serving between 15 and 25 years in prison. He is eligible for parole after 15 years, Schenck said. In an interview Tuesday, Jon Paul Rion stated that Rittenhouse chose to plead guilty to murder in order to avoid the possibility of receiving the death sentence. “It’s quite a reality to stare in the face,” Rion said. Rion also stated that Rittenhouse’s choice to plead guilty means that Rittenhouse will not have the chance to tell his side of the story of the Jan. 22 events. A hearing on the restitution figure of $1 million, which Rittenhouse is challenging, will take place on Sept. 30 at 10 a.m. ‘ “I don’t know why the judge picked that number. It’s something impossible to be paid,” Rion said. “It’s as much symbolic as anything else.” Last Wednesday Schenck said he had been deeply involved in the case, which has taken a year to investigate. Asked to respond to the hearing, he said, “There is no right answer here. The devastation to the defendant and family and to Michael and family — there’s no winner. It’s always lose/lose.” “I feel we got justice,” Schenck said. “But what is substantial justice? There is no justice. One child is dead and the other is behind bars.” |
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