Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation celebrates 100 years

RICHFIELD — The state legislature passed a law in 1921 that created the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation. It was strictly a record-keeping agency at the time and was housed at the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus. Inmates would perform much of the work, including organizing the fingerprint records. Things have changed quite a bit since its humble beginning. It became part of the Ohio Attorney General's Office in 1963 and gained more responsibilities. Today, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said BCI has become a "powerhouse of forensic science." There are three full-service laboratories/evidence sites in the state in Bowling Green, London and Richfield. Law-enforcement agencies in Medina County rely on the Richfield site to analyze drugs they have seized. But there is much more to BCI, which has become the state's official crime lab. One of BCI's most notorious cases was Samuel Legg III, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and neurosyphilis and is involuntarily committed to a mental institution. Although Legg's identity was unknown to the BCI, the bureau had been after him for years. DNA records had linked the same man to three murders: the 1992 killing of Sharon Kedzierski at an Austintown truck stop, the 1996 killing of Victoria Collins at a Wood County truck stop and the similar murder the next year of Julie A. Konkol in Illinois. A familial DNA test and the Criminal Intelligence Unit's dogged work led to Legg's arrest in 2019, initially on charges related to a 1997 rape of a 17-year-old girl at a truck stop in Westfield Township. With the help of the BCI, Medina County Prosecutor Forrest Thompson arrested Legg, but things have been complicated by his mental state. Yost said Wednesday via a video conference that Legg's brother was in the system, but he wasn't. Thompson and his investigative team tracked him down with the use of familial DNA in Arizona. The attorney general said it was "cutting-edge BCI technology" that helped balance the scales of justice in the Legg case. Yost called Legg a "monster," who is now in custody and is not expected to "ever walk free again." Barb Hoover, chemistry supervisor for the Richfield site, said her office has experienced some delays in getting drug tests to law enforcement agencies. In 2019, she said state legislature made a law "that changed how we tested marijuana." The instruments lab at the Richfield site tests for how much THC is in each sample of marijuana it receives. Hoover said if the sample has less than 0.3 percent THC, it's considered hemp, which is legal. If there's more than 0.3 percent, it's illegal. "It forced us to do that testing," she said. Her entire instruments laboratory team had to be retrained in quantitative analysis. COVID-19 has also affected the turnaround times. In the past, it would take about 45 days to get test results back to police. Now, it's around 90 days, Hoover said. "The staff had to learn a new system," she said. "We had to validate all processes. It's time consuming." Hoover said BCI does work for law-enforcement agencies in Northeast Ohio, including Medina County. Between 90 and 100 people work out of the Richfield office, including about 75 people in the labs. Yost congratulated the BCI on "100 years of excellence in service for local law enforcement." It's original mission was as a database of Ohio's criminal records. "With expertise and impartialness, BCI operates as a team and a team player — providing forensic, identification and investigatory resources to local law enforcement across Ohio each moment of every day," he said. BCI is known for its role as Ohio's central repository for criminal records, its cutting-edge forensic criminal laboratory and as a provider of specialized investigative services to local law enforcement. For more information about BCI, visit OhioAttorneyGeneral.gov/BCI. Contact reporter Bob Finnan at (330) 721-4049 or rfinnan@medina-gazette.com.