STOW, OH (WOIO) –
A 16-year-old high school student arrested in connection with a Craigslist killing has been charged with one count of attempted murder and one count of complicity to attempted murder.
Brogan Rafferty is a student at Stow-Munroe Falls High School, and remains in police custody.
A 52-year-old man is also in police custody, but hasn’t been charged in the crime. He is in jail on prostitution charges.
This, after a Florida job seeker turned up dead and a South Carolina man was shot.
The Noble County Sheriff’s Department tells 19 Action News that they received a call on November 6th from a resident that a man had been shot. Officials responded to scene and interviewed the shooting victim who said he was shot while responding to a job advertisement on Craigslist.
The man was shot in the right arm. He told police that the advertisement was a job offer for a male to care for cattle on a 688 acre property. The victim, whom police will not identify, says he met up with Rafferty and another man, in Marietta, OH and followed them to Caldwell, OH where he parked his car and rode along with the two suspects to Don Warner Road in Stock Township.
The victim was told the road was closed due to a landslide and that they needed to walk a distance through a heavily wooded area. The victim and one of the men exited the vehicle and began walking when the victim heard what he thought was a gun being cocked. He turned and found a gun pointed at his head.
The victim deflected the gun and ran. As he was running from the gunman, he was shot in the arm. The gunman continued to shoot as the victim ran. The victim successfully hid in the woods for the next seven hours before making his way to a house to get help. Authorities tell 19 Action News the victim walked two miles before feeling safe enough to ask for help.
The next report in connection with the Craigslist ad happened on November 11th when the Noble County Sheriff’s Office received information from a woman in Boston, MA that her twin brother from Florida was missing. The report was that the woman’s brother had answered an AD from Craigslist and felt very sure it was the same listing that the first victim had answered. The man was last scene on Oct. 22nd in Parkersburg, WV.
A missing persons report was filed at that time.
Armed with the new information, the Noble County Sheriff’s Dept. returned to the scene at Don Warner Road and discovered what appeared to be a hand dug shallow grave. The grave was empty however, it did give credibility to the theory that the gunman had planned to kill and bury their first victim but failed, and it that was possible that there could be a second victim.
Members of the Noble County Sheriff’s Department, FBI and BCI Specialist Agents along with cadaver sniffing dogs returned to the crime scene on Don Warner Road on Monday, Nov. 14th. Once on scene, the body of a white male was found buried in a shallow grave. The grave site was in close proximity to the location where the first victim had been shot.
The Noble County Sheriff Department tells 19 Action News that body was transferred to the Licking County Coroner’s Office where an autopsy was performed on Thursday.
No word on the victims’ identities at this time.
Article Courtesy of WOIO 19 Action News
