He knew the way even in the dark.
Murder suspect Jacob Ferrero was riding with Columbus police homicide detectives about 2 a.m. yesterday. He directed them east across Franklin County, away from the Far West Side apartment that he shared with Samantha Greenlee, a 22-year-old woman who had told her family she was 3 months’ pregnant with Ferrero’s child.
Just east of Madison Christian Church at 3565 Bixby Rd. in Groveport, Ferrero directed detectives to stop and pull into a gravel drive.
It was the church’s rustic outdoor chapel, just a few wooden benches and an altar clustered within a grove of towering maples.
They walked from there, following Ferrero to some brush beside a cornfield, right to the spot where he had buried Greenlee in a shallow grave 10 days before.
“I guess you don’t forget something like that,” said homicide detective Jay Fulton, who had been driving.
The discovery was a grim end to the search for Greenlee, a woman who relatives said had left her troubled relationship with Ferrero only to return to him with the hope that they might become a family.
“She was trying to get the relationship to work because of the baby,” said Estellia Sheridan, a cousin of Greenlee’s. “She was so happy about the baby.”
Ferrero, who has “every path has a different outcome” tattooed on his chest, is in custody and has been charged with murder and aggravated arson. He is scheduled to appear in Franklin County Municipal Court this morning. His 23rd birthday is on Saturday.
Detectives said in arrest documents that Ferrero killed Greenlee on Oct. 8 at their apartment at 5169 Brambury Circle, near Norton Road and Sullivant Avenue on the West Side.
Police say he beat her with a baseball bat and strangled her. He buried her two days later, on the same day that the couple’s apartment burned, they say.
Ferrero originally told police that a dog had kicked over a candle and started the blaze, which heavily damaged their apartment and several others. Police now say Ferrero started the fire.
Police and fire investigators began to question Ferrero’s story after Greenlee’s mother, concerned that she couldn’t reach her daughter since Oct. 8, went to the apartment on Oct. 14 and realized only then that it had burned. She said in her call to 911 that Greenlee’s car was still parked at the apartment complex.
Homicide detectives and fire investigators questioned Ferrero repeatedly in the following days. He once left town unexpectedly but returned, and began to confess his involvement in the arson and homicide late Tuesday night, police said.
He said he chose the burial site at random, although police said he had worked at a warehouse in the same area.
Estellia Sheridan said Greenlee graduated from the South-Western district’s Westland High School, where she had played volleyball, and worked as a server at several area restaurants. She said Greenlee and Ferrero had been dating for about five months and had been living together.
“I know they got into a lot of fights,” Sheridan said.
She said she helped Greenlee move out of the apartment in September, only to see her move back a week later.
Police records show that both Greenlee and Ferrero had called police on each other several times, including once when she said he had pushed her. But the arguments, retold matter-of-factly in their calls to 911, offer no hint of the extreme violence of which Ferrero is now accused.
Sheridan’s sister, Stacee Sheridan, said Greenlee was free-spirited. She lived for a few years in Alaska, where her father is stationed in the Army, before returning to central Ohio.
“She was always willing to meet new people and just experience new things,” Stacee Sheridan said. But she had the traits of a homebody, too.
“When every holiday started to near, she would ask what’s for dinner, who’s gonna be there, where are we going, what are we doing,” Stacee Sheridan said. “That was her thing.”
Greenlee’s family knew little about Ferrero except that he was a factory worker and had attended Columbus’ West High School, Estellia Sheridan said. They feared the worst early on.
“It was so hard to keep and hold onto that hope, when your gut is telling you something really bad happened,” Stacee Sheridan said.
“She was talking about baby names on Facebook,” she said. “She thought she was in love with him."
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Originally Posted by Gawna
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