That same day the detectives asked Ford
to come to their headquarters in Lebanon,
the seat of Warren County. They grilled him
for hours about the oddities and inconsis-
tencies in his statements, particularly the
fact that he never once called Haas’ cell
phone after the day his friend vanished. The
investigators told Ford they were certain
this was because he knew Haas was already
dead. But Ford countered that he’d seen
Haas remove the batteries from his phone,
as a way to avoid being tracked by satellites,
so there would have been no point in calling
him. (Haas used one phone for voice calls,
one for the internet, and one as a PDA.)
The detectives tried to wheedle a con-
fession from Ford by assuring him they’d
understand if some calamity had occurred by
accident—say, a heroin overdose that led to a
hasty effort to dispose of Haas’ body. “Ithink
you’re a good person, and I think you ended
up in a really bad situation that there was
no good answer to,” one of the interrogators
said. “You tried to solve the situation as best
you could, because you’re a problem-solver,
you’re an entrepreneur.” But Ford could
not be shaken from his denials, even when
informed that a cadaver dog had perked up
upon coming into contact with his Saturn.
After a polygraph exam during which he
was flagged for one instance of deception,
Ford was allowed to go back to Columbus.
But the detectives quickly prepared a search
warrant for his phone data and a subpoena
for his bank records. The suspected crime
was listed as murder.
Though they had zeroed in on a person
of interest, the investigators still could only
guess at how Haas had died: The Warren
County Coroner’s Office had been unable to
establish a cause of death, due to the body’s
paucity of soft tissue. On November 8, Haas’
skeleton was transported to the Human
Identification Center at the University of
Indianapolis. Krista Latham, the forensic
anthropologist who runs the center, metic-
ulously cleaned the bones, using a combi-
nation of water and enzymatic detergents.
She was able to identify a significant wound
that appeared to have occurred around the
time of Haas’ death: a fracture at the top of
the left femur, near where the leg connects
to the pelvis. The femur is the largest bone
in the body, and breaking it usually requires
a tremendous amount of force—like getting
hit by a car or falling from a great height.T
HOUGH THE Warren County
detectives had expressed con-
fidence in their hunch about
Charles Ford, the mechanic
was vindicated by his phone
and bank records. Verizon’s
location data confirmed that
Ford had explored the roads near the BP sta-
tion on the afternoon of August 31. And his
debit card statement listed an $11.21 pur-
chase at a Burger King in Springboro, the
last place Ford said he’d looked for Jerold
Haas. There was zero evidence that he’d
driven seven miles south to Clarksville to
dump a body.
Now back at square one, the detectives
sent out a press release asking members of
the public to report “anything suspicious in
the area” where Haas had disappeared. A
local TV station and the Dayton Daily News
picked up the appeal, and tips came trick-
ling in.
The most credible potential witnesses
were all residents of a cul-de-sac called