Early on the morning of June 7, 1998, Judith Johnson, a 58-year-old grandmother in Barberton, Ohio, was beaten, raped and killed, and B.S., her 6-year-old granddaughter who was staying at her house, was beaten, raped and left for dead.
Several hours later, B.S. regained consciousness, called a neighbor and left a message on the answering machine that "someone killed my grandmother." She then walked to another neighbor's house and was driven home. When the police interrogated her, she said that the killer "looked like Uncle Clarence," an apparent reference to Clarence Elkins, Johnson's 35-year-old son-in-law.
On June 8, 1998, the police arrested Elkins. He was charged with one count of aggravated murder, which carried the possibility of a death sentence, one count of attempted murder, three counts of rape, and one count of felonious assault.
On May 12, 1999, Elkins went to trial in Summit County Court of Common Pleas.
Dr. Marvin Platt, the Summit County Medical Examiner, testified that Johnson died between 2:30 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. on June 7, 1998.
Daren Marshall, a social worker at Children’s Hospital Medical Center of Akron, testified that about eight hours after B.S. was brought in, she named Elkins as her attacker.
B.S., by then 7 years old, testified and identified Elkins as the person who attacked her.
Elkins testified and denied committing the crime. He said that he had spent the evening of June 6 and the early morning hours of June 7 in several bars. He said that by 3 a.m., he was in bed at his home in Magnolia, Ohio, about 40 miles from Johnson’s home.
Elkins wept as he recalled being arrested for the crimes. “I couldn’t believe it that they were blaming me,” he said. “I was devastated.”
Elkin’s wife, Melinda, who was Johnson’s daughter, testified that Elkins was home at the time of the crime.
No physical evidence connected Elkins to the crime. Limited DNA testing showed that hairs found on Johnson's body did not come from Elkins.
On June 4, 1999, the jury acquitted Elkins of aggravated murder, but convicted him of the lesser-included offense of murder. He was also convicted of attempted aggravated murder, three counts of rape, and felonious assault. He was sentenced to life in prison.
In September 2000, the Ninth District Ohio Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions and sentence.
Three years after the murder, B.S. changed her account of what had occurred. She said she now remembered that the killer had brown eyes, while Elkins had blue eyes, and she said she had been wrong when she identified Elkins. Based on that recantation, Elkins’s lawyers asked for a new trial.
The prosecution criticized B.S.’s change of heart, asserting that she had been coached by her family. The prosecution also criticized Elkins’s attorneys for having the girl hypnotized, a procedure known to distort memory, especially in children.
On December 9, 2002, Common Pleas Judge John Adams, who presided over Elkins’s trial, denied the petition for a new trial. In a 54-page ruling, Judge Adams said B.S.’s recantation was not credible. “Although the child victim had not changed her story of the attack for almost four years, she only did so after being approached by those people interested in the outcome of the case,” the judge declared.
In 2004, with the help of the Ohio Innocence Project, the prosecution agreed to DNA testing of traces of biological material that had been recovered from Johnson's vagina, from under her fingernails, and from B.S.’s underwear. The tests revealed the same male DNA profile in all three locations, indicating that the same man attacked both victims. The results excluded Elkins.
The prosecutors, however, continued to insist that Elkins was guilty. In July, 2005, Common Pleas Judge Judith Hunter denied a motion for a new trial. The judge ruled that because the original verdict was based on B.S.’s identification rather than on DNA evidence, this new scientific evidence, had it been presented to the jury, would not have changed the outcome.
The defense investigation then focused on the neighbor who had driven B.S. home after the attack and had left the dazed and bloodied 6-year-old on her porch for 30 minutes instead of calling the police immediately.
The investigation showed that the neighbor’s common-law husband at the time was Earl Mann, a violent criminal who had recently been released from prison at the time of the attack. In addition, Mann subsequently had been convicted and imprisoned for raping three girls under the age of 10.
Mann had transferred to the same prison and then to the same cell block as Elkins. Elkins surreptitiously collected some of Mann's DNA by retrieving a cigarette butt that Mann discarded. Elkins mailed it to his attorneys and DNA tests were conducted on saliva on the butt. Mann's DNA profile from the cigarette butt was the same as the DNA profile obtained from the crime scene evidence.
Despite the DNA evidence connecting Mann to the crime scene, the prosecution still refused to agree to Elkins’s release.
Finally, in October 2005, Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro, who had no direct authority over the case, held a press conference to pressure the local prosecutor to dismiss the charges. After another round of DNA testing again confirmed Mann’s involvement, Elkins’s convictions were vacated and dismissed on December 15, 2005. Elkins was released from prison that day.
On June 29, 2007, a grand jury indicted Mann for the rape of B.S. and for the rape and murder of Johnson. In August, 2008, he pled guilty to aggravated murder, attempted murder, aggravated burglary and rape and was sentenced to 55 years to life in prison.
In November 2010, the city of Barberton agreed to settle a lawsuit brought against four police officers involved in the investigation and prosecution of Elkins for $5.25 million. The state of Ohio separately paid Elkins $1,075,000 in compensation.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 08-29-2011
Last Update Date: 05-17-2026
