Jonathan Witmer-Rich is an Assistant Professor at Cleveland State’s Cleveland Marshall College of Law. He’s been following the discovery of three murdered women near Michael Madison’s apartment, and the charges leveled against the registered sex offender.
Witmer-Rich suspects the grand jury’s indictment won’t be too long in coming:
“It’s not an extremely factually complex white collar crime involving lots of documents or something like that," says Witmer-Rich. "The grand jury’s looking for probable case, to indict on given charges and the evidence of that is pretty straightforward as far as we can tell in this case. The other this is, that even once the grand jury indictment has been returned, it can be amended in the future if some new evidence or charges come to light. So I would expect the grand jury to move within a matter of weeks, probably.”
Witmer-Rich also dismisses comparisons to the Anthony Sowell case from four years ago. He says suggestions that this is a copycat crime is more speculation than anything at this point. He also says serial killings remain rare, and hopefully the Greater Cleveland area has had its spell for now.