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former Washington County sheriff’s deputy is in jail, charged in the 1981 Ohio cold case killing of a fellow deputy.
Mitchell Ruble, 63, of Lowell, Ohio, was arrested Tuesday and is in the Washington County Jail on a charge of aggravated murder in the death of Deputy Lt. Ray “Joe” Clark.
Clark was found shot to death at his home on Dodd’s Run Road in Marietta in February 1981, according to the release. He was off duty at the time and was killed when a single shotgun blast was fired through his kitchen window.
“The Clark homicide has been the number-one priority of the sheriff’s office since Feb. 7, 1981,” according to a separate news release from the sheriff’s office. “The intensity of the investigation increased when the Cold Case Squad was formed in January 2011.”
Ruble “has long been a suspect in this case,” Sheriff Larry R. Mincks Sr. said.
Ruble was a deputy with the sheriff’s office until he was terminated by Clark in 1979. He was terminated due to “inappropriate conduct while on duty,” according to the attorney general’s office.
“We do believe that revenge was the motive for this crime,” Mincks stated.
The attorney general’s Special Prosecutions Section will be prosecuting the case at the request of the Washington County Prosecutor’s Office. The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation’s Special Investigations Unit, Criminal Intelligence Unit and Crime Laboratory assisted with the investigation.
Agencies/Canadajournal
