MARIETTA – The fate of accused murderer Mitchell Ruble was placed in the hands of the 12 men and women serving on the jury after the state and the defense delivered closing statements in Washington County Common Pleas Court Monday.

Ruble, a former Washington County Sheriff’s sergeant who was fired in 1979, is accused of shooting and killing sheriff’s office Lt. Ray “Joe” Clark through the window of his Dodd Run Road home on Feb. 7, 1981.

Witness testimony began Oct. 7 and took two weeks, and now, the jury is expected to reach a verdict on the aggravated murder charge this week.

In closing statements, which took nearly four hours, Ohio Attorney General prosecutors told a story of an investigation spanning three decades that despite flaws, consistently pointed back to Ruble.

“Either this man is guilty beyond a doubt or he’s the unluckiest man in the world,” said Ohio Attorney General prosecutor Daniel Breyer.

The defense, in contrast, concluded that the state’s case was based on flawed investigating, a lack of concrete evidence and unreliable witness testimony.

“Investigators should have had truth as the object, and instead it became the obstacle,” said defense attorney James Burdon.

Prosecutors claimed in closing that even without their key witness, Bob Smithberger, their case was still solid.

“What you’ve heard is incontrovertible facts,” said Ohio Attorney General Prosecutor Joel King. “Of all the people that could have done it, he had to be in Washington County, he had to be driving a blue Pinto car, he had to be with another person, he had to have a fascination with a No. 4 Buck (shot), he had to have a motivation. That man sitting there is Mitchell Ruble.”

King went on to note several key points in the case: that initial interviews with Ruble were flawed because he was questioned by deputies that were either friends of his or fairly inexperienced; that evidence showed that the killer was wearing a military-style boot that Ruble would have been wearing that day; that several witnesses placed a blue Ford Pinto near the scene; and that several of Ruble’s friends had listened to his disgruntled feelings and threats against Clark.

“Clark took what was most near and dear to Mitch’s heart,” said King, referring to the 1979 investigation that led to Ruble’s termination from the sheriff’s office. “After the firing, he didn’t move on and shrug it off. He harbored it.”

Ruble and Smithberger served at the sheriff’s office and had become friends while working together before Ruble was terminated from the sheriff’s office in 1979. Both resided just miles apart from each other in Lowell at the time.

After more than three decades of telling law enforcement that neither he nor Ruble was involved in the murder, Smithberger finally gave a timeline of events that placed him as the “getaway car” driver and Ruble as the killer, testifying in court that Ruble told him everything the next day, and threatened him more than once to keep quiet.

“Mr. Smithberger needed some motivation to move on, out from under that cloud of fear,” King said, noting that Smithberger finally began to talk after he was offered protection from Ruble. “It took 34 years for Bob to be placed before you. It was exclusively motivation out of fear.”

King noted the shotgun used in the murder was never identified and that a certain shotgun recovered from a man who said he had gotten it from Ruble years ago was ruled to be “not exempted” by analysts.

In the defense’s closing statement, Burdon said that there were a number of things mentioned in the statement’s argument that were not true.

“Why is it that two years after the fact, that he would kill a person who did not fire him?” Burdon asked. “Ruble volunteered to answer questions. He knew he could have an attorney.”

Burdon said that steps to create a more thorough investigation were not taken, even steps he claimed “you didn’t need to be an investigator to know how to do.”

“For 62 minutes that scene remained unprotected,” Burdon said, noting that people were milling around Clark’s home while emergency personnel and deputies were at the hospital. “There could be evidence tampered with or lost because there was no one to secure the scene.”

Burdon noted that Ruble confirmed that it was then-Washington County Sheriff Richard Ellis who fired him, not Clark, and also called into question the interview with Gary Beagle, the suspect Ruble was accused of beating while handcuffed that resulted in his termination.

“Beagle was first interviewed in 1996, 15 years after the incident,” Burdon said.

Burdon said other witnesses for the state, like Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation agent Henry Pataky, could not be considered an expert in footprint or tire print identification. He said the state sent a boot impression to the FBI, but that the state never presented the results during its own testimony because the FBI expert concluded the boot could not be confirmed to be a military-issued boot.

“They also said they always knew Mitch Ruble’s Ford Pinto was there that night,” Burdon said. “Why didn’t they take a tire impression of it?”

Of the witnesses who all testified they saw a blue car, some claimed it was a Pinto and one said it was light blue, not dark blue. Burdon asked why no one ever showed witnesses a picture of Ruble’s car, and why no one ever showed witnesses a picture of Smithberger after they all described seeing a man in the driver’s seat.

“Why didn’t they do it? Because his appearance at the time was inconsistent with their theory, that’s why you didn’t hear about it,” Burdon said. “They morphed it into a statement that (witnesses) were uniform in their description and that the car was a blue Pinto, which is irreconcilably false.”

The defense also refuted the state’s claim that Smithberger is a weak, impressionable man and a reliable witness, as they only stopped the seven-hour interview with him last year once Smithberger finally “agreed to their own theory” after he was offered protection and compensation.

“If he’s the weak man they’re attempting to portray him as, why wouldn’t he succumb to the threats of the deputies that there were that night interviewing him?” Burdon asked. “They had nearly 35 years of evidence, and it wasn’t enough to charge anybody, and now with Smithberger, it was enough.”

In a re-direct, Breyer said Smithberger was never, at any point, offered compensation, and that he was only offered protection, which the sheriff’s office has delivered for the past year.

“There’s no way Bob could have come up with this unless it’s true,” Breyer said.

Breyer asked why Ruble had never gone home to his wife and infant child that night when his house was just a few miles from Smithberger’s. He reiterated that though the investigation had not been perfect and witness testimony had not been exactly identical each time, that the evidence still overwhelmingly pointed to Ruble.

“For 35 years the Clark family has waited while justice has eluded them,” Breyer said. “The time is now, the place is here to provide that long, belated justice to the Clark family.”

At the conclusion of closing statements, jurors were given instructions and were sent to begin deliberating with more than 50 pieces of evidence to look over and discuss.

They will be determining whether Ruble is guilty or not guilty of aggravated murder. If found guilty, he faces life in prison.