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Widmer juror speaks out

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Updated 10:52 AM Thursday, April 9, 2009

By Denise G. Callahan

Staff Writer

Ray Diss, juror number 12 in the Ryan Widmer murder trial, said choosing a guilty verdict was a tough decision, but one the jury felt was the correct decision.

The jury found Widmer, 28, guilty Thursday, April 2, in Warren County Common Pleas Court of murdering his 24-year-old bride Sarah Widmer in their home in Hamilton Twp. last August. The jury deliberated for 22 hours over two days after hearing testimony for eight days, starting March 23.

Diss, a Hamilton Twp. resident, said he worked for Ford as an EMT before retiring in June 2008. He ran life squad in Maineville for more than 20 years.

A day after the verdict, Diss, 63, spoke to the Pulse-Journal Friday, April 3, about how the jury came to its decision.

Q: How did the jury reach the verdict?

Diss: It was very stressful, but a lot of things on the 911 tape didn’t add up and no water anywhere didn’t add up. We didn’t believe you could fall asleep and drown because the gag reflex would wake you up. It was testified to that that would happen. The lack of oxygen would wake you up. A lot of things, water in your face would wake you up. He (Widmer) said his wife was face down in the tub under the faucet, still in the water. I’m sorry, I don’t care how flustered you are or excited or anything, if your loved one is underwater you’re going to get her out. The fact that two-and-a-half minutes after he supposedly took her out of the water, the Warren County sheriff arrived and was starting CPR and all that. The body was dry, there was no evidence of water anywhere except for the bloody foaming discharge coming out of the mouth. The hair was damp and the body was dry immediately thereafter. The squad station they responded from is very close. The paramedics were there right on the heels of the county policeman. They had to put the electrodes for the cardiac monitor on her back. You can’t put electrodes on moisture. I think the reasoning is they won’t stick. Any CPR class tells you that you can’t have them around water. You can’t even have sweat. When they log rolled her to put the pads on, one of the police sergeants asked, do you need a towel and the medic said no the body is dry. The body was dry three or four minutes after she came out of bathtub supposedly. My own opinion, when they were trying to intubate her, the head kept pulling forward. When rigor mortis sets in that would be an indication that it hadn’t been just a few minutes since she died. She had some bruises on her neck and her head and the bruising had to happen when she was alive.

Q: What did the bruising mean to the jury?

Diss: You don’t bruise after your dead, your heart has to be beating to make a bruise. There is a difference between a bruise and a puddle of blood. They tried to start an IV and the vein leaked blood into areas and that showed this giant bruise on the outside that when from her left neck to her chest which masked bruises from before. During the autopsy, it showed that was just a collection of blood. It really wasn’t a bruise. If you start an IV in a vein, whether the heart’s beating or not, the vein still has blood in it and it drains out what’s in the pipe. It would make it look like bruise. Both of her arms were like that because they tried to do IVs on her arms, and were due to resuscitative efforts on the patient. So if we didn’t believe that was when he took her out of the tub when he said, over the 911 tape, I’m pulling her from the tub, I have her on a flat surface. None of that happened. That was all orchestrated. There was no disruption in the bathroom, no bottles sitting there and all that stuff. The only water they could find in the bathroom was a little bit in the stopper. That would indicate there had been water in the tub, so she probably drowned in that tub, but she didn’t drown when he said she did.

Q: Did you come to some theory about how he did it?

Diss: Well, there was a bruise on the front of her neck. It could have been a hand and a separate bruise for the thumb. She had a bruise on the back of her neck, and she had some bruises on her head on the right side toward the rear. Either way, it didn’t add up because there wasn’t any water anywhere. She could have been in the tub and she could have fallen asleep. The part about her being in the tub and under faucet, that’s not the part of the tub you sit in. Nobody sits in the tub with a faucet in their back; it’s uncomfortable.

Q: Was the jury deadlocked at any time?

Diss: That’s what took such a long time. We all changed our minds different ways, at different times. We went over the testimony repeatedly for the defense and the prosecution. We found so many holes in the defense’s stuff; we felt he helped. He (Widmer) said he had only four beers and he had a beer tap in the refrigerator and chances are when his beer got down low and he was watching a Bengals game, he probably refilled it. Normally when a person admits they’ve had four beers, they’ve had more. That’s just human to do that. We felt it wasn’t premeditated and he does love her, or did. All these people were probably right; they had a loving marriage, but something happened, they had a squabble, probably over money.

Q: Did you find something in the financial records?

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