BOWLING GREEN - Wood County Common Pleas Judge Reeve Kelsey yesterday issued a new order regarding the classification of convicted murderer John Umbel as a sexual predator.
While the judge did not alter Umbel's classification, he omitted two references contained in a previous decision that inaccurately stated that Umbel chopped his victim's body into pieces after he molested and strangled him in 1992.
The victim, 3-year-old Alex Leimgruber, was not cut into pieces, and Assistant Wood County Prosecutor Paul Dobson filed a motion Monday asking the court to amend the ruling to address that inaccuracy.
In his new order, Judge Kelsey included a partial transcript of testimony given by John Helm, an investigator with the prosecutor's office, at Umbel's Aug. 28 sex offender classification hearing.
Mr. Helm testified that after killing Alex, Umbel told investigators he "had wrapped him initially in two small trash bags…" He also stated that the body "was found in the trash bags, two smaller ones and a larger one."
In an interview yesterday, Judge Kelsey said he inferred from that testimony that the victim's body was in pieces.
"One body put in three bags. Three body parts put in three bags," Judge Kelsey said. "You can draw either inference from it, and we drew the wrong inference."
Judge Kelsey, who is running unopposed for re-election in November, was not on the bench in 1993 when Umbel went on trial. A three-judge panel convicted Umbel of aggravated murder, kidnapping, rape, and felonious sexual penetration. Sentenced to three consecutive life terms plus 10 to 25 years, Umbel will not be eligible for parole until 2049.
The court was required to hold a sex-offender classification hearing for Umbel, as it must do for all inmates in Ohio prisons sentenced by the court for sex crimes prior to the passage of Ohio's sex-offender registration law.
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