Second teen-ager found guilty of murder in hanging of Clearfield girl
Jason...@virgin.net
Friday, July 02, 1999
By Tom Gibb, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
CLEARFIELD, Pa. -- It didn't take long yesterday for word to travel down
the two blocks of Market Street that separate the Clearfield County
Courthouse from Steve's Barbershop. And for barber Steve Demchak and his
customers, it was the word they wanted to hear.
Jurors had found Aaron Straw guilty of first-degree murder in the
lynching of a docile 15-year-old girl, and he would be sentenced to
prison for life without parole.
"It's the right verdict," Demchak said as he clipped around the ears of
an 83-year-old regular. "And I think people are glad to see this
business finished."
That finish was swift and unequivocal.
A jury imported from Adams County heard 2 1/2 days of testimony, then
took just 75 minutes to return a verdict. The jurors found Straw, 19,
guilty of all nine counts against him, from first-degree murder to
conspiracy to hindering apprehension. And when they spotted District
Attorney Paul Cherry, who prosecuted the case, as they filed down a
courthouse stairway to a waiting bus, they cheered and applauded him.
"This is the case that gives us a lot of closure," Jodi Dotts, victim
Kimberly Dotts' mother, said outside the courthouse. "It didn't take
Aaron Straw's life, but it'll make his life a living hell."
Straw -- a stray piece of a disintegrated family, mostly aimless and
homeless for the year before the killing -- heard the verdict as he
listened to most of the testimony: silent, ashen-faced and emotionless.
His lone relative in the courtroom -- his maternal stepgrandmother --
slipped out ahead of the crowd, crying.
"Absolutely, I think he's scared," said defense lawyer Cortez Bell III,
who plans an appeal.
The case began on Mother's Day 1998, when Kimberly Dotts, an
eighth-grader with a learning disability, was lynched in a grove 10
miles from here. With yesterday's verdict, the final tally was:
Two people in prison for life. Straw's ex-girlfriend, Jessica Holtmeyer,
now 17, was convicted of first-degree murder in January after Straw
portrayed her in court as a remorseless killer who joined him in hanging
Dotts, then battered the girl with a rock.
Four local teen-agers in detention after admitting to lesser crimes. All
but one is still in custody.
A 25-year-old Clearfield woman, a companion of the teen-agers, serving
five to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to reckless
endangerment and conspiracy to commit aggravated assault.
The wait for the Straw verdict was wrenching for the Dotts family. When
the jury foreman read the first guilty verdict, Dotts' parents, Richard
and Jodi Dotts, surrounded by a dozen supporters, surged forward in
their seats. Someone gasped, "Yes! Yes!" Then, with the restraint
practiced in a year of hearings, they froze at the edge of explosion.
"With this case today, it felt like somebody lifted 1,000 pounds off my
shoulders," said Jodi Dotts' father, New Castle resident Joseph Fuleno,
himself a retired state juvenile detention counselor.
There was satisfaction in other camps, too. Holtmeyer's mother, Brenda
LaRock, heard the verdict, then swept out of the courthouse and across
the street, declaring, "Aaron Straw got what he deserved."
Straw's defense consisted of testimony from Dr. Louis Roh, a Westchester
County, N.Y., medical examiner. Roh told the jurors that Holtmeyer's
battering, not the hanging, killed Dotts.
At a post-trial meeting with Cherry's staffers, the jurors said they
didn't buy Roh's conclusion. They also said Straw hurt his cause when he
turned surly under cross-examination by Cherry.
But for most participants, the tragedy defied answers.
"To this day, I have no idea why this happened," Cherry said. "From the
day I got the call that police found a body right up till today, it
boggles my mind."
"I don't think we'll ever know the whole, true story -- from anyone,"
Bell said.
Outside the courthouse, as interviewers ringed the Dotts family, Straw's
stepgrandmother, Leita Harris, 52, of nearby Olanta, retreated into an
alcove. She said Straw probably helped to hang Dotts, but didn't mean to
kill her.
"I think Jessica sometimes had control over him," she said.
Straw, father of a 2-year-old by a 19-year-old ex-girlfriend, is the
oldest of five children, two of whom were adopted by other families,
Harris said.
At 13, he moved in with Harris and her husband after he left his mother
and her live-in boyfriend. He stayed with the Harrises for five years.
"Aaron came to visit and asked if he could stay," Harris said. "I called
his mother, and when I got to the house, his clothes were packed and
sitting in the driveway."