Couple Convicted of Burying Remains of Relative
Most of the answers surrounding the 2023 discovery of skeletal remains on Leopold Lane in Ohio County were provided Monday in Ohio County Circuit Court.
That’s when two former Wheeling residents were convicted and sentenced Monday for concealing the deceased human remains of a relative they discovered dead in their home on Leopold Lane in the Elm Grove neighborhood in Wheeling.
Christopher and Sarah Riley, both 39 years old and residents of the Dayton area, both pled guilty to felony concealment of a deceased human body in Ohio County Circuit Court on Monday with Judge David Sims presiding.
“Both Christopher and Sarah Riley entered guilty pleas to the felony, and they each requested a pre-sentence investigation report,” explained Ohio County Prosecutor Shawn Turak following Monday’s proceedings. “So, the sentencing hearing won’t be held until after that, so that will be in the next two to four weeks.
A number of residences are located in the area where the remains were found, including the trailer home with the brown roofing where the death reportedly occurred. (Image: Google Earth)
“They are facing one to five years in prison,” she said. “And the State is recommending one to five years in prison because I think the crime is unconscionable.”
A representative of the Whitehall Ohio Police Department informed the Ohio County Sheriff’s Office on January 2, 2023, that Andrew Downs, a person reported missing to their department on July 2, 2021, had died and was buried behind a residence at 316 Leopold Lane.
Downs was reported missing in the Whitehall area soon after he left to travel to the Northern Panhandle, but his remains were not found until Jan. 5, 2023, when deputies and county and state medical teams excavated the buried skeletal remains behind the residence at 316 Leopold Lane.
The Sheriff’s Office then obtained felony warrants for the Rileys, and the couple turned themselves in to authorities on Sept. 29. The victim’s identification was made possible with the help of multiple agencies, including the West Virginia Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Marshall University, and the University of Tennessee, according to information released in early November by Ohio County Sheriff Nelson Croft.
Ohio County Prosecutor Shawn Turak has recommended to the Court a sentence of one to five years for the felony offense.
The skeletal remains were located by Tyler County and Ohio County officials, and the death, Turak said, was likely linked to drug use.
“I understand that people get scared and panicked, but there are so many ways that people can report an overdose death without implicating themselves,” Turak said. “Instead, there were so many resources that were expended to get where we are now. That just blows my mind.
“It could have been avoided if they had reported it when they found it. It must have been fear,” she said. “The work performance by law enforcement and by everyone else involved was very, very impressive.”
Ohio County Detective Doug Ernest took a number of photos of the area where the human skeletal remains were found buried in a shallow grave. (Photo provided by the Ohio County Sheriff's Office)
Broken Silence
But why?
According to the timeline, the Rileys had moved out of the Leopold Lane rental home after burying Downs and left the area, but then, two years later, the husband and wife approached police in Ohio.
“I wasn’t with the Sheriff’s Office at the time when the office received a phone call from the police department in Westerville, Ohio,” Croft reported. “They had two people who came forward to say they did a bad thing in Wheeling, West Virginia. They told officers the guilt was getting to them.
“They told the police officers that they found their friend dead, and they buried him. They said they panicked and that they had been in some trouble, so they buried him behind the house,” he said. “So, Westerville called our agency, and Major Doug Earnest was the lead investigator on this, and he did just a great job as he does on everything.”
The Ohio County Sheriff's Office is located on 16th Street in downtown Wheeling.
A number of law enforcement officials and members of the state Medical Examiner’s Office and the Tyler County Search and Rescue Team converged on an area of Ohio County that sits high above Big Wheeling Creek Road. The excavation took place in a thin wooded area, and first responders parked several emergency response vehicles in driveways along Sheller Lane.
The remains were finally identified on November 3rd, and the Rileys were charged immediately.
“They basically did an archaeological dig,” Croft explained. “They recovered a full set of remains, and a lot of work went into the identification of the remains. That’s why the charges weren’t filed for a little while, but we had to wait.
“The grave wasn’t incredibly deep, and there was some garbage that was piled up on top of the area. That kind of hid it,” Croft explained. “I really do believe that if they didn’t admit to this and just stayed quiet, the remains would have never been found, and the case would have gone away. But they did what they did for their reasons, and I’m not sure we’ll ever know.”
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