At about 11 a.m. December 5, 1981, police in Toledo, Ohio, were called to the home of 28-year-old Barbara “Bobbie” Russell after her body was discovered by her 6-year-old son. Russell had been raped and strangled during the night.
The police found Russell with an extension cord wrapped around her neck.
Russell’s son told the police that he awoke to a loud noise and saw 25-year-old Danny Brown, who had been dating Russell for several months, enter the front door of the apartment with a key. The boy said that he saw the man swinging “a stick” at his mother while she held a knife. He also said he saw this man take the knife away from his mother. He said he then ran upstairs and hid. He fell asleep. His twin 3-year-old sisters did not wake up during the attack. The next morning, the boy found his mother’s body and went to a neighbor. The neighbor told the police that the boy said, “Danny killed my momma.”
On December 6, 1981, Brown surrendered voluntarily to the police. He was placed in a room with two other men and the boy was led into the room. He identified Brown as the attacker. On December 7, 1981, Brown was charged with aggravated murder.
In September 1982, Brown went to trial in Lucas County Court of Common Pleas.
The boy’s account had wavered along the way. Although he first told police there was one attacker, he later said there were two. But on the witness stand, he said there was only one. Dr. Renate Fazekas, a deputy corner, testified that Russell had died of strangulation after an electrical cord was wrapped around her neck and tightened with a furniture leg used like a tourniquet. Russell had been sexually assaulted with a blunt object that caused internal injuries, Fazekas testified.
The defense called nine witnesses who testified that Brown was elsewhere at the time of the crime. Brown testified and denied committing the crime.
On September 24, 1982, the jury convicted Brown of aggravated murder. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
The Ohio Court of Appeals, Sixth Appellate District, upheld his conviction and sentence in September 1983.
In 1998, Centurion Ministries, a New Jersey-based nonprofit that works to overturn wrongful convictions, began reviewing Brown’s case, teaming up with Jon Richardson, who had been Brown’s trial attorney.
Ultimately, DNA testing was requested and the prosecution agreed to the request.In February 2001, the Ohio State Police DNA laboratory reported that DNA testing had excluded Brown from semen found in the rape kit. Brown subsequently took a polygraph examination and was deemed as truthful when he denied involvement in the crime.
On April 9, 2001, Judge Charles Doneghy vacated Brown’s conviction and granted him a new trial. He was released that day. Less than a week later, the prosecution revealed that the DNA profile identified during the testing had been submitted to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation which maintained a DNA database of convicted offenders in Ohio. The profile was associated with Sherman Preston, who was in prison for a conviction for a similar killing in 1983.
On May 5, 2001, the prosecution dismissed Brown’s case.
Brown filed a wrongful imprisonment suit in 2002. In its opposition to the suit, the prosecution asserted that Brown may have been with Preston at the crime scene, despite the boy’s testimony at Brown’s trial that only one man was present. The lawsuit was dismissed.
Brown filed another lawsuit in March 2015 seeking compensation. That was dismissed in 2018. He filed a third lawsuit, which was dismissed in 2024.
Preston was not charged with the murder.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 08-29-2011
Last Update Date: 07-10-2026
