Donna Wesselman had no reason to worry about her mother. She was very active and probably was shopping at Kroger on Ohio 63, or visiting friends at Mount Pleasant Retirement Community in Monroe, her daughter thought. She always stayed close to home and rarely drove on the interstate.
Jim Wesselman told his wife that he had business the next day in Middletown so he’d stop and check on his mother-in-law. That morning, about 7:30, Wesselman called her mother and got no answer. Still, she wasn’t concerned. Her mother probably was out walking.
When Jim Wesselman got to his mother-in-law’s, he noticed her red Cadillac wasn’t in the driveway so he called his wife. Then she notified Mount Pleasant and met an employee at her mother’s home because she didn’t have a key.
When Donna Wesselman walked into her mother’s cottage, the morning newspaper from several days earlier was sitting on the table. The place didn’t look right.
“Something was odd. Things in the house were odd and that told me my mother wouldn’t do this,” said Wesselman, who refused to divulge any details.
That was Oct. 30, 2012.
Three days later, her mother’s body was found stuffed in the trunk of her abandoned car in the parking lot of Woodridge Apartments in Middletown, 5.6 miles from her Monroe home. Last week, the Butler County Grand Jury indicted Daniel French, 56, of Berea, Ky., for allegedly killing Howe. French is facing charges of aggravated murder with death penalty specifications, aggravated burglary and robbery, abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence.
French worked at Mount Pleasant from 2003 until he resigned his position on Dec. 14, 2011, according to the retirement facility. Wesselman said she has never seen French or heard his name until Monroe police named him a suspect in her mother’s murder.
On Wednesday, when she was notified of the indictment, Wesselman said she felt “utter relief. It was like running a marathon and then it’s over. I feel so light. I was so tired. My eyes were tired. My head was tired. All of this has beat me, but yesterday (Wednesday) was the day I’ve been waiting for. I don’t have to wait any more. Now I know his name and he’s behind bars.”
Wesselman said while Monroe Detective Gregg Myers has been in constant contact with her and her family, she still has questions surrounding her mother’s death. She wonders why French targeted her mother, why he placed her body in the trunk and why he left the car in Middletown. For two years she has replayed the events of her mother’s death over in her head.
“We racked our brains about everything,” she said. “Why? Why? Why?”
One thing is certain: the death of Barbara Howe has ripped apart her once close-knit family that includes three daughters: Nancy Fruechtenicht, 66, of Atlanta; Barbie Laspina, 62, of Middletown, Wesselman, 58, and five grandchildren. Wesselman described her mother as the “glue” that kept the family together, but in the two years since her death, the family has drifted.
“We lost her in such a horrible, horrible way,” Wesselman said while sitting in her office at Adecco where she’s a branch manager for the workplace company. “When you go through a crisis like this, it sometimes pulls you together. This one blew us apart. We all dealt with it differently. It drove us apart. That’s very sad. Our family unit never will be the same.”
Wesselman tapped her fingers on her desk, then added: “If she was able to watch us today, that would tear her apart, but that’s the way it is.”
Initially, she said, in the days and weeks after her mother’s death, there was speculation that somehow a family member was connected to Howe’s death. People thought the murderer had somehow used a relative to get close to Barbara Howe. But as Wesselman and her two sisters were told more details by Monroe detectives, they understood the suspect wasn’t a relative, she said.
Butler County Prosecutor Michael Gmoser called the crime one of the most heinous he has seen in his career.
“The shear brutality and diabolical nature of this case really is unparalleled in the history of this county,” Gmoser said. “In my 40-some years of being an attorney here I’ve never seen anything as horrific as this, in the planning and the diabolical nature. It really is an unusual case.”
Since her mother’s body was found 26 months ago, Wesselman has been in the cottage only once. That happened last January when a pipe burst during an extremely cold spell and flooded the residence. Wesselman said all of her mother’s possessions were put in three categories: Storage unit, Goodwill or trash. They separated everything in eight hours, all while being watched by Monroe police.
Wesselman took two of her mother’s possessions: a vintage food strainer and a battery-operated card shuffle that she gave her niece, now 33. She wanted the strainer because her mother used it to make the “world’s best apple sauce,” she said.
Howe’s husband, Bill, owner and operator of Howe Motors Chevrolet in Middletown, died in 1998. He was 74 and suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. After his death, Barbara Howe lived alone in the same home at the the corner of Eaton and Sherman avenues in Middletown, until she was convinced to move to Mount Pleasant.
Her daughters wanted her to live somewhere safer, Wesselman said.
Now Donna Wesselman wonders if her mother still lived in Middletown, if she’d be alive today.
The daughters are left with fond memories of their mother. The Howe household was something right out of a black-and-white 1950 TV show. The father worked, the mother stayed home, and every night at six o’clock, everyone ate dinner together.
“She was such a beautiful woman,” Wesselman said about her mother. “She was an elegant woman, a very kind woman.”
Then Wesselman paused for a few seconds searching her office for just the right words.
“She didn’t deserve this in any way,” she said. “She didn’t cause it. She didn’t put herself in an ‘at risk’ situation.”
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