May 26, 2005

By Robert Mihalek

Yellow Springs Police Chief John Grote said last week that the Police Department has identified a “person of interest” in its investigation of the slaying of Timothy Harris.

Grote would not identify this person, and he would not say whether the person is a suspect in the December 2004 murder or whether police have talked with this individual.

He declined to answer other questions about the person, including whether he or she lives in Yellow Springs and how long police have identified the individual as a “person of interest.”

Grote said that he could not answer questions about this individual because Harris’s death continues to be under investigation.

Harris was 45 when he was found murdered in his home on Pleasant Street on the afternoon of Dec. 16, 2004. In February, William F. Schenck, the Greene County prosecuting attorney, said investigators think that Harris had been dead for at least 48 hours before his body was discovered.

Schenck has said that Harris died of multiple blunt force injuries to the front of his head, and that the fatal blows were delivered by a blunt object.

In March, police found Harris’s car, a 1987 Toyota Corolla, which had been missing since the time of his murder, at a scrap yard in Xenia. During an interview Friday, Grote said investigators at the Bureau of Criminal Investigation and Identification, a state agency based in London, continue to analyze Harris’s car for evidence.

He said that “things were taken out of the car” by investigators, but would not elaborate on what was found in the car.

Grote also would not discuss how the car arrived at the scrap yard or who brought it there.

The police chief said that evidence is also being analyzed at two other labs, the Miami Valley Crime Lab and a lab in Richmond, Calif., where in February Yellow Springs police and the Greene County prosecuting attorney’s office sent potential DNA evidence for testing.

Grote indicated that it is not unusual for evidence, including DNA evidence, to take a long time to be analyzed. “DNA takes quite a bit of time” to process, he said, adding, “We don’t want to rush anything.”

Noting that some people have expressed concern that the Harris case is getting cold, Grote said he wanted to assure people that “this case is very much in the forefront” of department activity. “We’re actively working in it,” he said, and regularly communicating with the various labs that are processing evidence for the Police Department.

“This case is going forward. We’re being very systematic with everything we do,” he said. “We get leads all the time that we’re following up on.”

Grote said that he is “pleased” with the progress investigators are making on the case. “I think things are going very well,” he said.