[Music]
it's february 1981
patricia clark is watching a basketball
game with her husband joe
who works for the washington county
sheriff's department
when he gets up to go to the kitchen
patricia hears what sounds like an
explosion
she finds joe collapsed on the floor
from what she thinks is a heart attack
the shocking truth would take 33 years
to uncover
joe clark was well known throughout the
law enforcement community
so it was a big shock
at that point to say that joe had been
shot he had been ambushed in his own
home
you just don't believe it it changed
everybody's outlook and responsibilities
first thing you'll want to do
immediately is secure the crime scene
i started on joe's house
that night
joe's wife heard a pop
from the kitchen
she thought the light bulb just blew
she saw joe on the
floor a little bit of blood she thinks
his head hit the counter
and i looked around
there's a plate glass window in his
kitchen
the window
was gone
[Music]
that's when i see
the pellets
there were pellets from a shotgun
and i was beginning to make sense of
what happened
the person had gone around the back
of joe's house to where the plate glass
window was
the shot came from a shotgun from
outside that window at an upward angle
some of the pellets
struck joe and killed him
on the night of the murder
the officers identified more than 10
witnesses who had seen blue fort pinto
park in the area of the crime scene
every witness stated that it was idling
as they drove by the driver of the car
would put his hand up in a motion
similar to what i'm doing to cover his
face we knew there's no way the guy
could have shot and ran into the vehicle
in that amount of time
we believed that there was two people
involved one in the vehicle and one that
did the shooting
the next day at the crime scene
i found a military combat boot print
also left at the scene was a number four
buck shotgun shell
so basically at the scene there wasn't a
whole lot of physical evidence to
collect
during joe's short career with the
sheriff's office i knew he had a lot of
passion in combating the drug use in
washington county
clark did an interview talking about the
presence of narcotics that was suspected
in the area
he said he was going to be naming names
the following week and arresting people
he was interviewed that friday
the article came out the day he was
killed who said this got to be drug
related
three days after the homicide
i get a call from the dispatch center
somebody got shot at this trailer park
i pull up
i'm the first one there
i found the victim
on the floor he was a drug dealer
another drug related murder
that's too big a coincidence
i separate the drugs from the non-drug
leads
and i talk to members of the drug
community
abusers
dealers
performance
[Music]
an informant gave me the two names
mr washington mr jones
he told me
they shot the drug dealer in the face
i think that washington jones was the
same people responsible for the homicide
of joe clark
washington jones was from the kyogre
county area
we got a whole cuyahoga county sheriff's
office and he said i'm very familiar
with him and i have him in jail right
now that's somewhere on our way
i said you all know why i'm here
i said i want something
you got information i said tell me about
the shooting at the trailer park
he goes
it was just supposed to be a rip-off
ripoff turned into shooting
they also said
that mr bonner had set it all up
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i interviewed bonner i said well you
know i come here talking about joe
he said don't know anything about wish i
could help you
when i asked him what about the drug
dealer got shot
he said i ain't got nothing to do with
it you cannot
charge somebody
solely on the testimony of a
co-conspirator or co-defendant
so if he don't talk
i got nothing on him
and he didn't
i had doubts and thoughts running in my
mind i followed up every lead i could i
wasn't getting anywhere
i can't i can't do it
so i quit and i went on
it was my first homicide
and i didn't solve it
that's not right
and that's what's haunted me
[Music]
sheriff minks asked me if i'd be
interested in
starting up a cold case unit
and i accept it
when we took over the case again it was
over 30 years old
lieutenant clark's house
after he was murdered was occupied by
several families
but the interior walls were never moved
so we asked bci to bring their scan
system in
based on the imaging done at the house
it was believed that the shooter stood
behind a tree within 31 feet of the
house
below
the window where joe was standing
joe was stalked
it was a sniper type murder and we felt
that there was some type of a
a grudge
just getting to the location and staging
himself that takes a lot of nerve
the person who committed the murder knew
what he was doing
it was an excellent shot
after shooting various links of 12-gauge
shotguns
what we were able to determine was the
shotgun we were looking for
was a shotgun used by law enforcement
personnel
what police officers would want to kill
joe clark
the original investigators never
actually looked at another police
officer
but we knew about an incident that
happened back in 1981 with matt bonner
several months before the murder of
clark
mr bonner had been arrested for breaking
and entering
in route back to the sheriff's office mr
bonner continued to maintain his
innocence
and then the deputy took him down to the
bank of the ohio river
he struck him a couple times with his
fist
bonner filed a complaint for abuse
against the deputy
lieutenant clark was involved in
launching the investigation into
a deputy named
mitch ruble
clark made the determination to fire
mitch ruble
and i remember one of the deputies said
that ruble was extremely upset that
night
he does fit the profile in this
investigation
mitch ruble comes from a military
background he served in vietnam mitch
ruble was a gun fanatic
he was driving the sheriff's department
to issue
number four buck
in their shotguns
also through our investigation we found
out that mitch drove a blue pinto but it
was registered in his wife's name
we contacted mitch grubel and asked him
if he'd come to the sheriff's office so
we could interview him
on the night of the murder mitch had an
a-robot
he told us that there was a guy named
todd smith and that he had stayed with
him that night
so of course we wanted to question todd
smith
so me and john went and interviewed him
and we talked to him in my unmarked
patrol car he admitted that mitch had
spent the night there but they said they
didn't go nowhere but we didn't believe
that
we interviewed him for about four hours
only when we offered him police
protection
that he finally
opened up and say i'll tell you the
story
[Music]
todd was at his apartment and mitch
knocked on the door
mitch asked him do you have any shotguns
here at the house
and todd had one that mitch had given
him earlier and he asked for that
shotgun
he gives it to ruble
they get in ruble's blue fort pinto
they go by lieutenant clark's house
ruble gets out of the vehicle
todd sits there and waits
he said he waited there so long and he
was starting to get scared and started
getting frightened
smith goes back to his house a short
time later rubel showed up to smith's
house
at which point ruble starts threatening
him
todd smith provided us enough
information that our belief was that
mitch ruble is likely to shoot him
we're going to do everything in our
power to recover the murder weapons
todd smith told us that
one of mitrubal's military buddies owned
it at that time
we learned that mitch ruble's air force
buddies were having a yearly reunion at
a military museum near columbus ohio
we go out and talk with each of these
military friends
the last door we knocked on he asked if
he had ever purchased a weapon off of
mitchell
and the gentleman stated that he had
the gun was so unique and there's so few
of them out there that we believe we had
the right gun
it was a needle in the ocean that we
found
mitch ruble had been terminated by
lieutenant clark so he has the motive to
kill him
and now we got the murder weapon
so we knew it was time to execute the
arrest of mitch ruble for the murder of
lieutenant joe clark
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