A jury found Daniel French guilty of aggravated murder after hours of deliberation Thursday afternoon.
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Donna Wesselman, Howe’s daughter, and Pat Marshall, Howe’s sister, shook their heads and looked down as the verdict was read aloud in Butler County Common Pleas Judge Charles Pater’s courtroom. Wesselman wiped tears from her eyes.
“This was hardly the conduct of somebody who had freaked”, Gmoser said. “I needed the truth to come out, and it did”. She said there was “no real feeling of elation” in the verdict. As for French himself, he had no reaction, only looking straight ahead.
When French was arrested in 2014, he confessed to the crime, but said Howe’s death was an accident.
The 57-year-old man’s defense was that he was only trying to rob 87-year-old Barbara Howe the night he pretended to be a maintenance worker to get into Howe’s retirement community home. Cook told the jury in her closing argument they failed to do this. Gmoser says to be successful, French had to have a scam and he uses it to take advantage of Howe’s sense of security. Cook declined to comment after the verdict.
Cook said if French planned to do this, it was “the worst plan I’ve ever heard in my entire life”.
“It didn’t happen the way the prosecutor wants to make it sounds”, Cooke said. He had also faced lesser charges of murder and reckless homicide.
“(French) didn’t drive from Kentucky to Monroe, Ohio, with the goal to commit a murder”, Cook said.
French pleaded guilty earlier to aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery, tampering with evidence and corpse abuse. Sentencing is scheduled for Wednesday at 9 a.m. French could face the death penalty.
French was charged with aggravated murder, which meant prosecutors had to prove he killed Howe “purposefully” and “with prior calculation”. French killed Barbara Howe in 2012. When it didn’t work- he said French went to another plan which led to her death.
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“Danny told the truth”, Cook said.
