Murder of Krista Harrison

After Harrison's body was found, a $10,000 reward was placed for information about the abductor, which showed composite sketches of the perpetrator. No one was arrested until two years later. In 1984, 44-year-old Robert Anthony Buell, employed by the state of Ohio, kidnapped a 28-year-old woman while she was working as a manager at an Ohio gas station in Damascus, Ohio. The woman's head was shaved, she was shocked with a severed electrical cord, beaten and was bound to Buell's bed and raped. She was able to escape, twelve hours later, fearing for her life, and ran to a nearby house and notified police after her attacker had left to go to work. Such a man had previously preyed on Ohio women, who were usually in their late twenties to forties.

Buell pleaded no contest to the abduction and rape of the adult victim, yet he denied any involvement with Krista's murder. He was found guilty after being tried and sentenced to death in 1984; he was executed by lethal injection in 2002. He denied involvement and was never charged with the death of Tina Harmon, although dog hairs belonging to the remains of one found buried at his residence matched. In 2010, DNA from the crime scene of Tina's murder was compared to Buell's and found to be a match, therefore indicating that he was involved in her rape and most likely, her murder. Another victim who was murdered in 1983, Debora Kaye Smith, 10, had wax on her body that was from the same kind of candles that Buell owned. Her body was found over a month after her death, abandoned at the side of the Tuscarawas River.

The murder of Krista Lea Harrison occurred on July 17, 1982, in Marshallville, Ohio. The case remained unsolved for two years, until Robert Anthony Buell was convicted of her murder in 1984. In the year 2000, Harrison's case appeared on the fifth season of the American television show Forensic Files in an episode titled "Material Evidence."

Police then compared the orange carpet fibers found on Harrison's body to the ones in Buell's van, which was the same color as the one seen in 1982. The rear-view windows were of a different shape, although it was later revealed that they had been replaced. It was later concluded that the fibers on Harrison's body and the carpet in the van were a likely match and records from Sears indicated that Buell had purchased the same type of car seat that was once contained in the bag and box used to conceal the body. Paint found on the jeans near the dump site matched that on the outside of Buell's residence as well. The jeans themselves were similar to other pairs that he owned. Spray paint in his garage was also matched to some that was present on the box. A fingerprint on plastic concealing Harrison's body did not match Buell’s fingerprints.