A Tale of Murder - Part 1

This is a true murder story and the victim in the story was my cousin whose name was Richard "Dick" Lowther and lived in Rootstown, Ohio. 

Dick was a first cousin of mine and the son of Arthur and Hazel Lowther, Arthur being the brother of my mother.  I have many memories of the times during the growing up years when my parents and uncle Art and aunt Hazel were all alive us cuzzin's would be able to get together.  Most of these times involved meals either in Kent, Ohio at my aunt and uncles house or at our farmhouse in Uniontown which was about 20 miles south of Kent.  This wasn't a real often gathering but maybe once a month or so.  This was back in the days when the whole family would gather around the dining table to eat together and enjoy whatever topics of discussion came up.  Aunt Hazel was an excellent cook and my mother was a great cook so wherever it was it was a great meal.  We lived on a farm and my mother could whip up a meal for two people or twenty people at the drop of a hat covering the table with dishes of food mostly from the garden and farm.  Joan always jokes that you couldn't see the table for the food and that is no joke. The culture of our two families was quite different. We were "country folks" and they were "city folks".

My grandparents (Lowther) lived in the south half of a farmhouse that my parents owned across Portage Line Road from our house.  My brother and his family lived in the north half of the house so I spent a lot time over around there.  My cousins and aunt and uncle would come often to see the grandparents there.

Growing up on the farm I only had one friend that lived relatively close by and the general area had not turned into housing developments yet.  It was pretty much scattered small farms and in those post war times a lot of the owners had gone to working in the rubber shops.  My father said that they were not real farmers since they did not earn their living farming but were just city farmers.  In some ways I think that my parents liked it that there were not a lot of kids around to influence me during my "growing up" years.  So when the occasion came to go to Kent to visit my cousins there it was somewhat of an experience for me.  They lived in the city of Kent and had a lot of other friends of their age in the neighborhood and going there was always a mind expanding experience with me being the naive country cousin.

Usually about once a summer mom and dad would let me stay at my cousins house for a weekend  and vice versa they would come and stay at the farm for a few days.  Dick was a couple years older than I was so he had a drivers license before I did although I started driving tractors and trucks on the farm starting around eight years old (another story).  Dick's sister Diane was about my age so it was always fun to go there and meet the neighborhood kids and run around in the "big" city.  One memorable summer day Dick and some of his buddies decided to go to Twin Lakes where someone they knew had an abandoned property and they went swimming. I was never sure whether they had permission to do this or not but they talked me into going along.  I couldn't swim but there was a nice sand beach there and a short ways out there was a wooden platform fastened.  They said that the water was not too deep and I would be able to walk out to the platform.  Going out wasn't too bad keeping my head above water but coming back I must have been at a different place as I missed my footing and amongst flailing of arms one of the other guys pulled me to shore and after gasping for breath and spitting out water that I had swallowed I was fine.  I think that it was somewhat of a life saving experience overall.  I never told my parents about that experience as it was one of those things that you don't tell parents about it or it would mean no more opportunities of that kind.

When the cousins came to the farm it was a different experience for them also.  It would be times of playing in the hay mow and jumping down into a pile of hay, going back to the creek on the farm and fishing and doing the kinds of things that I thought was fun.  It was probably somewhat boring but nevertheless "different" for them.  Dad always could think of some kind of work for us to do so that would keep us out of mischief.  One day when Dick was probably around nineteen and I had my drivers license he showed up with a '57 Chevy with glass packs.  He let me drive it and boy was that cool.

Over the years as we all grew older we went our separate ways and seeing Dick was maybe just a once a year thing at a reunion or anniversary gathering or chance meeting at the Portage County Fair.  Sometimes he would just stop by to see what was happening.  Dick had a family and eventually was separated and the last number of years lived by himself in Rootstown.  He was well known in the area belonging to a number of social organizations such as Parents Without Partners, Ravenna Moose, Kent Masonic Lodge, Kent Canadian Club, Kent Coin Club, and United Methodist Church of Kent.  Dick was an avid coin collector and had a collection worth quite a bit of money.  He also reportedly had a collection of guns.

This background leads up to the happenings of early in the morning of July 2, 2009 when a woman came to Dick's door saying that her car had broken down nearby and needed help.