COLUMBUS, Ohio — A man who was shot dead last month as authorities attempted to serve him an indictment on federal gun charges has been identified as the killer of an 18-year-old Ohio woman in a case that had gone unsolved for 43 years, police announced Monday.
Mansfield Police Chief Jason Bammann said the cold case of Debra Lee Miller, a local waitress beaten to death with an oven grate in her apartment on April 29, 1981, was reopened in 2021 to account for advances in DNA technology and forensic investigative techniques.
''They examined the case as if it had happened yesterday, through an entirely new lens,'' Bammann said at a news conference. ''Their findings were staggering.''
The chief said a ''firm DNA profile'' of James Vanest, at the time Miller's 26-year-old upstairs neighbor, emerged from evidence left from the room. Vanest had been questioned but never identified as a suspect during the initial investigation, which became mired in allegations of potential police misconduct.
Miller was one of several people from the Mansfield area whose suspicious deaths in the 1980s were examined for possible links to Mansfield police officers.
A special investigation ordered by the mayor concluded in 1989 that there was no evidence linking any officers with the deaths, but the report raised questions about sexual involvement between police officers and homicide victim Miller and about the way police investigated some homicides. The report noted that Miller wrote in her diary that she was sexually involved with several Mansfield police officers.
The local police chief retired in January 1990, after subsequent complaints arose over alleged irregularities in the investigation of the death of the ex-wife of a Mansfield patrolman.
Miller's case was reopened several times during the ensuing years. This time, Richland County Prosecutor Jodie Schumacher said the DNA evidence against Vanest was strong enough that her office was preparing a case against him for the killing to take to a grand jury.
