Unsolved Mysteries

The last thing I want is for Lester Eubanks to die a free man.

He murdered my sister.

The Bible says...

you take a life, you...

give your life.

To go from death row

to the shopping mall,

and then allow him to escape...

is unfathomable.

I want him caught.

Well, I've been here since I was three.

It was a great place to live.

Like any small town, just everybody knew everybody.

Mansfield was a very safe place.

I never remember feeling, um, scared or afraid or...

of something happening to me.

Never.

Mary Ellen was a...

She was a... uh, you know, just a typical little girl.

Riding bikes and...

hopscotch and...

you know, playing with dolls.

Oh, she had a lot of friends.

She was just a... giggly girl.

That's all I remember her doing,

just giggling with her friends.

There was seven of us.

We all had things that we had to do in the home.

The boys, trash and mopping the floor.

And the girls did, like, the dishes,

and washing, and folding clothes, and, um...

and all that.

That's how she came about doing the laundry that night.

Mary Ellen and Brenda had washed all the clothes,

and, um...

they ended up with wet clothes because the dryer broke.

So, they had to get a taxi

to go to take the wet clothes to the laundromat.

Mom felt comfortable sending them there at that time of night

because my grandmother lived right next door to the laundromat,

and they knew they could go there if anything happened.

They got there, and they were... was drying the clothes

and they run out of change.

And, uh, Mary Ellen went to the other laundromat

to get change.

Take five minutes to walk that distance.

And then, when she didn't come back...

Brenda went to my grandmother's

and told her that Mary Ellen had went to get change

and she wasn't back yet.

And my grandmother told her to stay there and she'd go...

and, uh...

see if she could find her.

On her way down there, she saw the police.

And she eventually saw

that it was Mary Ellen there...

and what had happened to her.

Mary Ellen had been, uh, shot.

The police were able to determine

what caliber of gun that, uh...

she was shot with.

So, they started going to all the gun stores

and hardware stores that sold guns in, uh... Mansfield.

They ended up at the Diamond Hardware up on South Diamond Street,

and they asked to see the books.

They see a weapon that fit the description of the gun

that was used to shoot Mary Ellen.

And it was purchased by Lester Eubanks.

And then they start really beating the bushes,

talking to informants,

and some informant said he saw Lester Eubanks

in that area earlier in the night,

before the crime occurred.

Lester Eubanks.

He was just a guy that walked down the street,

I never knew who he was.

But I just always thought he was weird,

and appeared to be a loner.

Always had these nunchucks with him,

those karate sticks.

That's what he'd do with them, walk up and down the street.

Lester Eubanks grew up in Mansfield.

He's a sharp-looking man.

He is well-liked.

Easily...

um, can fit into anywhere.

But he was also what we would consider to...

to label a sexual predator, today.

Lester Eubanks.

He had been arrested two times in the past

for sex offenses.

And at the time of the homicide,

he was out on bond for a rape attempt.

This... this guy shouldn't have even been out.

Sunday morning,

officers, uh, picked him up, took him to the police station.

They conducted an interview of him.

He confessed.

And...

we had the right man.

His confession was pretty detailed...

in explaining what he did to this little girl.

That night, Lester Eubanks was just hanging in the area.

He sees an opportunity.

He sees this beautiful little girl walk past him.

He grabs her, pulls her behind the house.

She starts to scream.

Shoots her twice.

Um, her screaming stops.

Eubanks left the scene,

went around the corner to his apartment.

Got dressed to go downtown and go dancing.

And on his way downtown,

come back by the scene of the crime,

and Mary Ellen was, uh...

writhing in ag... agony.

She was still alive after being shot,

wanting help,

so he helped her.

"I picked up a brick in the alley

and I went back to where this little girl..."

I can't even read any more.

He went back.

He admitted to it.

He's a monster.

He's a monster.

It's disgusting.

Sometime during that morning,

the detectives came

and told us why they were there and...

I... Just total shock and...

couldn't believe it.

My mother was hysterical, crying, and...

my sister Brenda was, uh...

She was in shock for a long time.

Yeah, I think it affected her...

up until the time she died.

I can't imagine having to deal with that.

This monster takes her entire family's world

and just crushes it,

and changes their future.

I went to the trial daily because I wanted him to know

that she had a lot of people that cared about her and loved her,

and what he had taken from, you know, the world.

I just wanted him to know we cared.

He testified.

He... wanted to get up there

and I think that's really the... uh, a trait of a narcissist.

He didn't seem to show any remorse at all,

other than the fact that he was caught.

Upon his confession in the courtroom,

he was convicted by a jury of his peers. He was sentenced to death.

He was sent to the death row

in the Ohio prison system.

Everybody was happy.

It was wrapped up in a bow.

For a while.

The Ohio Penitentiary was located in downtown Columbus.

And that is where Lester Eubanks was confined

on his conviction from, uh, Richland County.

I knew Lester Eubanks.

I didn't go around him.

I wasn't afraid of him, just that I didn't like him.

I didn't know what he was there for except murder.

Lester was... a tall guy.

Very cocky.

Very opinionated.

Lester was, was... had an attitude.

Was a lot of people he didn't like, a lot of things he didn't like.

He was basically a loner.

Painting or writing, or doing whatever he done, you know?

Eubanks was allowed to have, um, paintbrushes and canvases.

That was not unusual for any prisoner

on death row in the '60s and '70s,

to be able to utilize whatever skills they had.

They were able to eat their time doing something constructive.

Three separate times, his execution was pushed back

for unknown reasons.

And then finally, it was pushed because, 1972,

the death penalty was abolished.

The United States Supreme Court in 1972 found

that the death penalty was administered

in an arbitrary and capricious method.

So, Eubanks, along with, uh, other Ohio death row prisoners,

had to have their sentence set aside

and it reverted to a life sentence.

I was angry. I was angry.

And... shocked and...

um... confused.

But if we can't do anything about some things, you have to...

let it go.

Um, that's what we did.

We went on with our lives,

knowing that he was in prison.