24. Testing and Theories

Previously On Ice Cold Case

There was a term used to call 'em sometimes misdemeanor homicides, just one drug dealer killing another. 

It doesn’t matter if that person’s black, white, green, yellow, whatever. I look at it the same, okay.

You know, we're cold cases and shit, like. They're cold for a reason. The detective work. 

You feel me? Like, like I said, man, 97 percent of that town work for the federal government.

The street code. Anybody that violates that code of ethics, if he was in the streets and shit and you turn snitch, they don't give a fuck about you. You just a rat.

And tell you this, in my career, this case here is one I want to solve. I want to find the man who murdered your dad.

Part 0: From Guessing to Proving

There’s a point in every investigation when theories stop being enough. You’ve mapped it out, you’ve talked to everyone who’ll still take your call, you’ve read every report until your eyes blur… but eventually, you hit a wall. And the only thing that breaks that wall? Proof. Not opinions. Not memories warped by time. But evidence – the kind that doesn’t change no matter who’s telling the story.

We all know I have a lot of theories about this case – an annoying number of theories. Will my theories hold up? Will they survive against the evidence, the facts, the science? In chemistry, you put compounds under heat to see what burns, what bonds, what holds. In criminal investigations, it’s the same thing — except the compounds are bullet casings, fingerprints, fibers, and DNA.

That’s where I am now. After all these years of chasing theories, it’s time to put them to the test and finally go from guessing to proving. If you would like to finally listen in, Belmont County, this is like the cliff notes episode for you.

Part 1: DNA to Test

All this time, I’ve gone over what evidence I think the police have and what theories would make sense based on the information I’ve already gathered. But a whole bunch of secondhand memories from people recalling the events of twenty years prior only gets me so far. What I really need to close my dad’s case is physical evidence. 

Physical evidence is what holds up in court, what survives cross-examination, what moves a case from rumor to resolution. You can’t deny physical evidence. You can doubt a witness and poke holes in their credibility. You can question a timeline. But you can’t argue with DNA. And yet, I don’t even know if there is any. That’s the most frustrating part. For everything I’ve been told, the one thing that’s always remained secret is what evidence Belmont County actually has.

For everything I don’t know, there are some things that I do know. For example, I know what the police think – whether or not I agree with it. I know what they’ve done thus far – whether or not I agree with it. But the one thing I don’t know is what they have.

That makes things complicated because in a perfect world, they are running tests on bullet casings, testing bullet casings against guns, examining hair samples, finger prints, shoe prints. The names being tossed around in this case are career criminals, no stranger to the law. And even if there is someone involved who I haven’t mentioned, given the context of the situation and what my dad’s history was, it’s highly likely the gun that killed my dad was used by someone who has committed other crimes. Matching the bullet casings should be an obvious step.

I also know that this isn’t a perfect world and doing the obvious thing isn’t a strong suit of the Belmont County Sheriff’s Department. There are still pieces of the puzzle that are missing.

When Lt. Doug Cruse expressed interest in testing the physical evidence, he never mentioned what exactly they had. But at least they seem to have some willingness to do so. The Lede News article I mentioned in episode 22 also implies that they are focusing on cold cases, even more so now that Detective Allar is in the national spotlight for solving the recent double murder of Thomas and Angela Stussion.

In September 2021, firefighters responded to a house fire on Trail’s End Drive in Belmont County. When the smoke cleared, they found the bodies of Thomas Strussion, 52, and his wife, Angela, 48. At first, it looked like a tragic accident. But pretty quickly, investigators realized: this wasn’t an accident at all. This was a double homicide.

Thomas was a familiar face in the community. He owned the Salsa Joe’s restaurants across Belmont County and in Elm Grove, West Virginia. Angela worked with him, and the two were well-known locally.

But here’s the thing that really stands out to me: Belmont County didn’t let this case fade away. Detectives with the Belmont County Sheriff’s Office, including Chief Detective Ryan Allar, worked this case relentlessly. They didn’t just take initial statements and move on – they tracked phone records, cell-tower pings, credit-card transactions. They did multiple interviews across state lines, even worked with the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program to push out information nationally. And it worked.

After more than three years of work, in February 2025, law enforcement announced a massive development: A man named Andrew Isaac Griffin, a former business partner of Thomas Strussion, had been arrested in Hawaii. He was extradited back to Ohio and charged with two counts of aggravated murder and aggravated arson.

The motive is still being pieced together, but according to prosecutors, there were deep financial disputes between Griffin and Thomas tied to their restaurant business.

And the story doesn’t stop there. In June 2025, another man from Oklahoma, Dalton Ray, was convicted of obstruction of justice related to the same case. Prosecutors said he helped conceal or destroy evidence connected to the Strussions’ murders. That’s the kind of ripple effect you get when investigators actually pull on every thread.

This case reminds me that solved doesn’t always mean simple. It can take years, travel across state lines, involve tech, data, collaboration. And it shows that when there’s real willpower, and a community that refuses to forget,  justice can be achieved, even if it’s slow. Belmont County might not have the same resources as Columbus or Cleveland. But in this case, they didn’t let that be an excuse. They stayed on it. They proved persistence works.

The trial for Andrew Griffin is set for March 2026 in the Belmont County Common Pleas Court.

Now Detective Allar is adamant that the focus in their office should be on the county’s older cases. But that renewed attention doesn’t quite feel like the momentum I was hoping for. Mainly because out of a few back and forths with a detective, not much has happened. And the theories I’ve floated on this show and to Lt. Cruse won’t get my dad’s case across the finish line – physical evidence will.

Even though he didn’t tell me what evidence they have, there was an indication that if anything is available for testing they will be able to move forward with that. However, what really interested Lt. Cruse was the possibility that I could facilitate the funding for the testing of evidence. And don’t get me wrong, I know police budgets are often spread thin, especially in smaller communities. But it still stings to hear the change in interest when I yet again offer to take some of the Belmont County Sheriff's Offices’ responsibility and carry it on my back. DNA testing costs anywhere from $2,000 to $4,000 per sample. 

Lt. Doug Cruse asked me to send over what information I have. I’m more interested in what they have and through the information I’ve gathered over the last six years of investigating, I’ve narrowed down my theories and refined my list of questions that need to be answered. Here’s what I think needs a closer look. I’ve broken it down into five sections and will explain why each could hold a key to giving me and my family answers. This is exactly what I sent to the Sheriff’s Office – my own blueprint for what they should already be doing.

Part 2: Bullet Casings

Fingerprints are the low hanging fruits, in my opinion. It’s the thing you obviously collect when you arrive at the scene of a suspected homicide, and in this case, a very clear homicide. The fact that we’re two decades out and still asking if any were even taken from the crime scene is beyond frustrating. Those involved are all likely prior offenders which makes the case even stronger for collecting fingerprints. They should all be in the system already. It would be very easy to identify them. 

The bullet casings are how investigators connect a gun to a crime, and then usually how they connect that gun to the owner to trace a possible suspect. Now, if you’re like me, you may not be familiar with how all of this works. Arizona State University published a study on gun evidence. The report explains that “When bullets are fired from a criminal's gun, ejected cartridge cases can scatter around the shooter. And unless that person is fastidious enough to gather those cases, they serve as a valuable tool in solving a crime. Microscopic markings on ejected cartridge cases that match the gun used in a crime can usually provide enough conclusive evidence to land a suspect in the slammer.”

It’s really unclear if the police collected the bullet casings because even though they say they have given me everything they can, that never included a list of evidence. And if they did have the bullet casings and were just sitting on them, that might be worse than not having them at all. These could have been connected to any crime committed over the last two decades, but no one seems to be checking. 

Family members, including my sister, have mentioned an instance of a bullet casing being found nearly a week after my dad’s murder – literally just in the living room on the rug. If true, that is, to put it nicely, a huge oversight. The reports also point out a huge error. In some paperwork it says my dad was shot by a shotgun, but the autopsy says they can’t determine the caliber and in conversations with every detective and official from Belmont County says handgun. Even that basic fact isn’t consistent. What I need to know now is what ballistics reports were run and if I can get more information on exactly what kind of gun killed my dad.

Given how small this town is and how insular these key players are, if I had the ballistics and fingerprints, this should be a matter of a quick game of Guess Who?

I offered to pay for testing. For some reason, I have more connections to DNA testing facilities country-wide than the actual people responsible for investigating crimes. Do I have the money? Not exactly. But I would make it happen to test DNA, evidence, any samples that should have been tested years ago. When I talked with Lt. Doug Cruse, he actually used the word “re-test” to insinuate that they had tested something before.

So we’re working on that and resubmitting some things to the lab, because you know, technologies have changed, but we have to get permission from the lab to do that.
What do you have that like? Do you – what physical evidence would you be testing?
Whatever they took at the initial time of the crime, just, just whatever they’re willing to accept.

But what did they test? Where are those records? What came of that? And why isn’t that written anywhere?

There’s a recent, and very popular, example of ballistics providing answers in a cold case. And this isn’t abstract – there’s precedent for how powerful one single shell casing can be. More than three decades after one of Austin’s most horrific crimes, the 1991 Yogurt Shop Murders, the case finally started to crack. Not because of a new confession or a mystery witness, but because of a single bullet casing that investigators kept going back to.

On December 6th, 1991, four teenage girls – Jennifer and Sarah Harbison, Eliza Thomas, and Amy Ayers – were found shot inside a yogurt shop that had been set on fire. The scene was not ideal for any detective. The heat from the fire melted evidence, water from the sprinklers flooded what was left of the scene, and early investigators had no clear suspect.

Over the years, four local men were charged, two were convicted, but then exonerated. Their confessions didn’t hold up, and there was no physical proof tying them to the crime. For decades, the case went cold.

But one small piece of evidence had survived the flames: a .380-caliber shell casing. It sat in storage, largely overlooked… until investigators decided to give it another chance, and this time with the tools of modern forensics.

That casing was fed into the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network, or NIBIN – a massive database that compares the microscopic markings left behind by gun barrels, like a fingerprint for bullets.

And that’s when everything changed.

The database pinged a match – the exact same ballistic pattern showed up in another case: a 1998 murder in Kentucky linked to a man named Robert Eugene Brashers. Brashers was a violent drifter and serial offender who died by suicide in 1999 after a police standoff.

Once his name came up, investigators went back to the Yogurt Shop evidence and tested what little DNA remained using modern Y-STR testing, which tracks male genetic material through paternal lines. It matched Brashers. And just like that, one of Texas’s coldest cases wasn’t ice cold anymore.

That single shell casing – the one that survived the fire, the floods, and three decades of failed leads – gave families, friends, and investigators the answers they had been searching for for decades. Through ballistics, they found a gun. Through that gun, they found the killer.

After 34 years, Austin police publicly named Robert Eugene Brashers as the man responsible for the Yogurt Shop Murders – crediting “advanced DNA testing and re-examination of ballistics evidence” for the breakthrough.

It’s a chilling reminder that even when the trail goes cold, evidence can’t be argued with. With the right technology, it’s simply a matter of time before you have answers. But those answers are contingent on the initial work of police, investigators, and detectives in those crucial first moments. If they don’t collect evidence, the chances of solving the case are basically nonexistent. Luckily in my dad’s case, there were so many opportunities to collect evidence… there are things besides ballistics that the Belmont County Sheriff’s Department could work with.

Part 3: Sneakers and Shoe Strings

The police files briefly mention a shoe print on the door (SFX: door kicking in) where it was kicked in. I don’t know much about the shoe print, but I heard from other people that I talked to about it as well. It was a Nike shoe print, size 10, marked on the door from where it was kicked in. Kim Smith also said that she saw red Nike shoes with black socks on one of the men. But Omar may also have a shoe size that matches the description.

Do you know what size shoe Omar wears? Because the shoe print on the door is a size 10.
A 10? Probably about his size because that's what size I wear.

This could match Spoon, the mysterious person of interest, who wore sneakers with red laces according to a source I interviewed on the condition of keeping her anonymous. 

I seen the shoes, but you know what I mean? You just second guessed yourself, you know, you don't really wanna believe it.

This person has never seen the police report, but red laces and red shoes could be an easy confusion, especially since so much time lapsed. The only thing they couldn’t remember was what size shoe Spoon was.

So I remember hearing something about, um, some red shoes, strings. I didn't know if you mentioned that on your podcast or anything, but I had, I think it was on the news about some red shoestrings, uh, accent and dirty fingernails. Yeah. Do you recall that?
Yeah. Yep.
Okay. So, so maybe like a couple, couple weeks later. No, no. I take that back The next day, spoon had red shoestrings.

So we have this shoeprint, and we know police haven’t done anything with it – at least not yet. But there are still tools at the disposal of the police. Here’s our FBI friend, Paul Wiergartner, talking about the FBI’s shoe database – yeah, that’s right, there’s an entire database just for shoes.

And then whatever testing can be done, certainly if there's a picture of a, you know, a footprint on them, on a, on the, the door that should be, um, photographed and, and see if you, you know, you can kind of, if it's supposedly a Nike size 10, you can contact manufacturer. I know the FBI maintains a shoe database, shoe database. Um, you know, they might even be able to tell you what model of a Nike it was. I don't know. Um, but it might be able to tell you, you know, it's an air Jordan such and such. Um, and then the other thing is, is, you know, in your dad situation, you're talking about two crime scenes because right next door there was allegedly a home invasion by the same people. So you, you have to treat that like a crime scene too, and do the same thing.

I also know, based on the police report, that a pair of Daryl Smith’s Adidas sneakers were collected as evidence when he was arrested. Given that he was released without a conviction, it is likely these shoes weren’t kept in evidence. But it’s not clear if these sneakers were ever tested or compared against anything else. I don’t know what happened to them after they were collected or why they were collected in the first place. There could there have been blood or some type of DNA that could have verified that Daryl was present at the scene. 

And then the question that would inevitably be brought up by any defense attorney. How could you trust the memory of what kind of shoe someone was wearing over twenty years ago? Experts would argue that any recollection from memory should be corroborated by physical evidence. But that’s not the only kind of evidence that can be used to reinforce someone’s potential innocence or guilt.

Part 4: The Rubbing Alcohol

Chemical tests are another possible avenue to solving this case. There are many reports of rubbing alcohol being poured on Omar, Kim, and Pearl during the home invasion. Then, according to Omar one of the men said he was going to light them on fire. Police reported that there was a strong smell of rubbing alcohol on Omar, Pearl, and Kim when the police arrived on the scene – at least 45 minutes after the alcohol was poured on them.

This raised a lot of red flags for me. I’d love to know how they were smelling the rubbing alcohol after that long. It doesn’t have a strong enough scent to last for nearly an hour. Rubbing alcohol evaporates fast. Even if less time had lapsed, it still seems strange that it would be a strong enough scent for everyone to comment on it. 

Then there’s the obvious question: Where did the rubbing alcohol come from? There must have been a Diddy-Baby-Oil quantity of rubbing alcohol for it to cover three people, enough that these guys could threaten to use it to start a fire and enough for it to leave a lingering smell. If you go off of how much rubbing alcohol an average household has in the cabinets, you’re looking at a small bottle completely full at most. And if you’re like my childhood household, which I checked when I was back in West Virginia, there’s the same half full bottle that’s been there since the dawn of time. That wouldn’t be enough to substantiate any of the claims in the incident report. A bottle under the sink is not enough to soak three people, and no witness testimony mentioned a large bag full of rubbing alcohol being lugged around during the home invasion.

In the police report, it says that a Giant Eagle brand empty bottle of alcohol was collected, but it is not specified if this was drinking alcohol or rubbing alcohol, nor is it specified what size the bottle was. This would be another piece of evidence that could be tested now – is it possible anything on the bottle, like touch DNA, could have been preserved after all this time?

It’s not entirely productive, but I also can’t help but wonder what could have been done with the evidence 20 years ago. At the time, it might have been worth trying to see if any of the named suspects had recently purchased the rubbing alcohol or if it came from the Foston home. These seem like such obvious things to look into, and my only experience in investigating is this podcast and hundreds of hours watching Law and Order: SVU.

It’s just such a chilling detail: three people tied up on the floor with cable cords and shoe strings, being kicked and threatened, doused in some sort of alcohol and threatened with being burned alive. It’s violent and traumatizing – total chaos. But the kind of trauma that sticks with you. Details you wouldn’t expect to remember end up haunting you for the rest of your life. I wish the three people in the house that morning were willing to get more into these little details, because they could change the outcome of this investigation very quickly. If the intruders brought the rubbing alcohol to the scene, that indicates that this was planned. But without having details, it’s impossible to know.

Part 5: The Timeline

I’ve spent the better part of the last few years wondering which parts of Omar’s story are true, and which parts are just a distraction. A lot of my questions center on what really happened when he ran to the brake shop to call the police. He says these guys were shooting at him, and that is why he ran away – but the police found no shell casings in the pathway, and Pearl, Kim, and Alyssa all report only hearing a single gunshot, the one that killed my dad. 

Then he says he runs to the brake shop to call the police, three minutes after Alyssa called. But Omar says he started running before my dad was shot – and Alyssa called 911 about 90 seconds after that. So this gives Omar, according to his own retelling, five minutes to get to the brake shop to call 9-1-1. When he gets there, he’s in black boxer shorts, no shirt. When the police arrive, he’s wearing blue shorts and a t-shirt. That feels less like panic and more like a cover up. For what? I still don’t know.

Those minutes matter. They might mean he saw something he’s never admitted — or did something he’s never owned up to.

What I want to know now, and what I think can be determined, is how long does it actually take to run to the brake shop for the average person? This is a very Sherlock Holmes investigation technique, but it could be tested. Have a few people run and get an average estimate of how long it would take to get there. I’ll even run it myself. If I can get a general idea of how long it takes to run that distance, it can help us confirm or eliminate this part of Omar’s story. 

Because, if it didn’t take that long to get to the brake shop, then what are the alternative reasons for that gap between the calls to police? What could Omar have done with an extra 90 seconds or even an extra two minutes? Could it place him at the house still when the single gunshot was fired? If so, does that mean he witnessed much more than he’s admitted up until now?

The image might be a bit silly – a few investigators running in the summer heat this distance, using iPhone stopwatches to record times – but it could also provide the edge to confront Omar over 20 years later. 

These are questions that would be great to ask Omar now, that might produce real leads for the investigation. But right now, I’m still waiting to hear if the new investigator assigned to the case has done more than leave a business card at Omar’s trailer.

Part 6: Obvious Choice

So here we are. There’s a roadmap laid out and ready to go that’s clear enough that even a new detective looking at this case for the first time could follow it. Evidence that, if it exists and if they still have it, could be tested. Questions that could be answered not by unreliable witnesses or traumatized daughters, but by the grooves etched into shell casings, by trace DNA, by science that doesn’t care who likes who or who’s protecting who.

All the pieces are sitting there – if they were collected, if they were preserved – waiting for someone to care enough to run them through a lab. Waiting for someone in Belmont County to decide that this case matters as much as the ones that make headlines.

Everything I’ve done so far has been equal parts hard work and coincidence – connecting dots that shouldn’t have been left scattered in the first place. And as much as people like to say cold cases are about timing or luck, the truth is, testing evidence isn’t about luck at all. It’s about choice – a choice to reopen a file, a choice to send that sample out, a choice to do what should have been done twenty years ago.

The question is: will Belmont County actually do their job?

Next Time on Ice Cold Case

Credits:

Thanks for listening to Ice Cold Case a Yes! Podcast
Recorded in Los Angeles at Spotify Studios
This episode was written, hosted, produced, and edited by Madison McGhee
Produced, copy edited, and additional research by Opheli Garcia Lawler
Sound engineering and sound design by Sian McMullen
Graphic design by AJ Christianson

All outside sources are linked in the show notes.

A video version of this episode is available on our YouTube Channel and a transcript is available at ice cold case dot com
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