On February 3, 2005 Cleveland's largest newspaper, The Plain Dealer, published an editorial about John Spirko's case. Click here to read the editorial titled, Lying Isn't A Capital Crime.

On August 9, 1982 at about 8:30 am, the Elgin, Ohio Post Office was robbed of stamps and money orders, and Postmaster Betty Jane Mottinger was abducted.

Elgin, Ohio was a rural town with a population of approximately 50 people. U.S. Postal Inspectors took charge of the case that afternoon and set up a Task Force to solve the crime. The physical evidence recov-ered, a few fingerprints lifted from the safe and sur-rounding area, gave investigators few leads.

The postal inspectors and local Van Wert County police inter-viewed two “eyewitnesses” several times. One of the witnesses was Opal Seibert, a 65 year-old woman who wore heavy rimmed glasses. She said she was drinking coffee on her back porch that morning and that her husband was with her. She stated that she saw Betty drive up in her car at about 8:20 am and park near her house, just as she did each morning. Seibert said Betty got out of her car and started across the street, but then came back to the car to retrieve something. She then walked across the road to the post office, unlocked the door, entered the building, and then closed the door and locked it.

Seibert said that at exactly 8:30 am she saw a man drive up to the post office. He got out of the car and looked all around. Seibert stated that she had never seen the man before.  She said she watched as he stood between the car and the open door with his arm on the car’s roof. She was certain there were no other cars or people in front of the post office. The postal inspectors interviewed Seibert several times and had her describe this man to a sketch artist. She gave the initial description of a lean, clean-shaven man, 6'-4", who had heavy, dark eyebrows and dark hair that was combed straight back. He was wearing a blue long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and he wore glasses.  However, in subsequent interviews her descriptions of the man’s height went from 6'-4", to 6'-2", then 6'-0", and finally, she said he was 5'-8".

Seibert also said she had a clear view of everything in front of the post office. The only traffic was a semi-truck that came from the north at about 8:35 am. Seibert said that as soon as the truck passed, the man who had been standing by his car drove off at a high rate of speed heading south across the railroad tracks.

The other eyewitness was Mark Lewis, a truck driver for the Elgin Grain Company, located behind the post office. When he returned to the grain elevator on the afternoon of August 9th, Lewis was told of Mottinger‘s disappearance and gave a statement. Lewis recalled he left that morning for Toledo at about 8:20 am and noticed a man standing between the car and the open door with his arm on the roof of the car. Lewis said the man wore dark glasses, weighed about 240 pounds, had a potbelly, wore a short sleeve green shirt with orange stripes, and had sandy brown or reddish hair and a light mustache. Lewis said he drove by this guy heading north and only had a quick look at him -- no more then two or three seconds. Lewis could not remember if he stopped his truck to get cigarettes. However, he did say that Betty Jane Mottinger crossed the street in front of him that morning.

It is worth noting that the only similar aspect of Seibert and Lewis’ description of the stranger is that he wore glasses. Both witnesses later underwent hypnosis in an effort to gain more insight into what they saw that morning.

The Task Force’s investigation involved scores of state and federal law enforcement officers, who conducted thousands of interviews spanning 38 states. Six weeks after the crime, Betty Jane Mottinger’s skeletal remains were found in a Hancock County bean field wrapped in a paint-smeared drop cloth. She was fully clothed and had been stabbed more than a dozen times.
 
The postal inspectors intensified their manhunt after Betty’s remains were found. Lewis was shown a photo array and picked out a photo of a man he said looked like the stranger. This man had been paroled from a federal prison for robbing post offices in the general area of Elgin. After a nationwide manhunt, the man was located in Texas. He was later cleared of involvement in Mottinger’s murder by a girlfriend’s alibi.


On July 9, 1982, I was paroled after serving 13 years of a life sentence for a murder in Kentucky. I went to live with my sister and her husband in Swanton, Ohio.

On October 9, 1982, I was arrested for a parole violation related to a barroom brawl with three bikers. The next day I went look-ing for the bikers. One of the biker women said I assaulted her and tried to make her tell me where the bikers lived. I was arrested and charged with a parole violation. I was to be sent back to Kentucky to serve more time.

While in jail, I talked my girlfriend Lu-Ann Smith into bringing me in several hacksaw blades so I could escape. She did. I then tried to escape, but in the process, I injured two deputies. I was caught before I ever made it out of the jail.

I was then sent to the Lucas County jail in Toledo and charged with offenses re-lated to the escape attempt. I was trans-ferred to a high security area with just four cells and cameras watching me 24 hours a day. I learned that my girlfriend had been arrested and charged with aid-ing my escape. I was sick that I had gotten LuAnn into serious trouble, so I began to think of a way to help her.
There was a television in the block, and one day I saw a news story about the Betty Jane Mottinger case. The FBI and postal inspectors were looking for leads concerning her murder. I then had the idea that I could claim I had information about the case, and work out a deal for LuAnn. My problem was I didn’t know anything about the case. So I got all the articles I could find about the Mottinger case and I watched the TV for new develop-ments in the investigation. I then had my brother-in-law call the FBI to tell them I wanted to discuss the Mot-tinger case. Several days later, a postal inspector came to see me. He asked what information I had. I told him I was not going to say anything until I had a deal for all charges to be dropped against LuAnn. He said he could not do that, but that he would pass the information on to his boss.

About a week later, I was taken to Fulton County to answer to the new charges against me. After the hearing, I was taken into a room with seven or eight law enforcement officers, including FBI agents and postal inspectors.
The head of the Task Force was there and he asked me what information I had.  I said I was not going to say anything until I had a deal for my girlfriend’s release, and I also included myself in the deal. He said he couldn’t make a deal, but if my informa-tion was good, he would talk to the people who could. He then asked me what I knew. I told him I saw a mailbag with money orders and change in it while I was at a party with some bikers, and they told me they robbed a post office in Elgin. He asked me if I would meet with a member of his team for additional information while he tried to get a deal for me. I said I would.

In late November, while I was in the Lucas County Jail, I first met with a US Postal Inspector Paul Hartman. During the course of a month or so, I gave him 12 to 15 different stories that I had made up. I made up names like Rooster, the Dope Man, Dirty Dan, Spooky, and Swartz weaving stories involving conspiracies and drugs. I did not sign anything, nor were any of the interviews recorded or witnessed by anyone, although Hartman took notes of what I said. I finally entered into a plea agreement. I agreed to plead guilty to two state charges of assault in return for two sentences of 5-15 years in prison, to be served in a federal prison. I believed my girlfriend would be given probation for her actions in the failed escape. In December 1982, I was transferred to the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas.

When Hartman tried to verify my many stories, he found I had been not been truthful. He interviewed me again and told me he was aware of my lies, but I just fed him new lies. When he came to see me again in January 1983, he threw a mug shot of Delaney Gibson on the table. He said he knew Gibson was the person I was protecting with my lies. He said an eyewitness had made a positive ID of Gibson, placing him in front of the Elgin Post Office the morning Mottinger disappeared. I told him he was nuts to think I was protecting Gibson because I had not seen him in years.

Hartman told me that LuAnn was due for sentencing in March, and unless he had something to take to his boss her deal was off and she would go to prison. I was very upset about that, since all my lies up to that point had been to try to help LuAnn. Thus, I told him, “Yes, I saw Gibson and he told me about this crime.”  I then gave yet another false story about what I knew.

In March 1983, LuAnn was sentenced to 1-to-5 years in prison; I was shocked and very upset about that. I called the postal inspectors and they came to see me. However, this time they brought a tape recorder with them. I told them if they would let LuAnn out of prison, I would tell them what they wanted. They said they didn’t know if they could do that, so I told them to turn off the tape recorder. After the recorder was off, I stated if they couldn’t help LuAnn, I couldn’t help them. They asked me about Gibson. I told them I didn’t know anything about Gibson because I had not seen him in a few years and they left.

In September of 1983, I was flown to the state prison in Colum-bus, Ohio. The next day I was served with a state indictment for aggravated murder and kidnapping. Gibson was indicted as my co-defendant for the same charges. The State’s theory was that Delaney Gibson and I robbed the Elgin Post Office, abducted Betty Jane Mottinger, then killed her and disposed of her body.


Gibson was at large after having escaped from a jail in Kentucky, so I went to trial alone in July 1984. The state’s case tying me to the crime was my statements to Hartman, and two jailhouse snitches that were given sweetheart deals by the prosecution to testify that I confessed to them about Mottinger’s murder. We found out later that one snitch had 85 years knocked off his sentence for testifying to those lies, while the other one had a deal with the prosecutor to be given an early release from prison for his perjurious testimony. Their favorable treatment was the quid pro quo for telling the lies the prosecutor wanted the jury to hear. Both of those snitches later directly or indirectly recanted their testimony.

The State’s two eyewitnesses, Seibert and Lewis, testified about what I described earlier in this article, with two excep-tions: Seibert swore she was 100% certain the man she saw was Gibson, who she described as clean-shaven; Lewis testi-fied he was “70% sure” he saw me! To substantiate Seibert’s identification of Gibson, the prosecution put on evidence that he was in Elgin on the morning of August 9, 1982.

From their opening statement to their closing argument, the prosecution’s case was that Gibson and I kidnapped and mur-dered Betty Jane Mottinger together. Yet there was no physical evidence that identified either Gibson or me as perpetrators of the crime. There was no physical evidence, at either the post office or the site where Mottinger was found, that even sug-gested Gibson or I were involved. Though the victim was stabbed multiple times, searches of my belongings turned up no blood or even trace evidence. Furthermore, none of the finger-prints found in the post office matched either Gibson’s or mine.

Before the trial, my defense filed 26 motions for discovery. In spite of  this, the prosecution and U.S. postal inspectors denied us access to many of the investigation records. Without the potentially exculpatory evidence in those files, I was forced to go to trial and make a defense for myself.

At my trial I tried to show that I could not possibly have committed the crime because on the morning of August 9, 1982, I was 120 miles away sitting in my parole officer’s office in Swanton. Since it was impossible for me to be in two places at the same time that are several hours distant from each other by car, I was obviously innocent.

My parole officer testified that I was in his office on August 9, 1982, and that the interview took anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half. Although he said he could not remember what time of day it was, he did remember that my sister was with me. He recalled he had asked her a couple of questions, that he did not notice anything unusual about her, and she seemed coherent and alert. You’ll see shortly why her alert state of mind when he saw her is important.

My sister testified that she was with me at my parole officers office, and we were there at 9:30 am. She also said there was a slip in the door from the Swanton Post Office when we returned home, informing her of packages at the post office. The packages were my personal belongings that were mailed from the prison in Eddyville, Kentucky. I went to the post office and picked up both packages myself, I signed a slip acknowledging receipt of the packages, and the post office clerk also signed the slip that indicated the date - August 9, 1982, and time - 2:17pm. I took the packages to my sister’s house and discovered that my television set was not in either package, so I called the prison and spoke with a mailroom staff person. The phone bill shows that call was made from my sister’s home to the prison the afternoon of August 9th.

I then took my sister to the doctor. She received a shot of a very powerful narcotic to counter severe migraines attributed to a car accident several years earlier. She had received the same treat-ment many times, and the doctor testified that he would not give the injection to her unless she had someone to drive her home. My sister testified that I drove her home after she was given the shot. She was not “alert” after this appointment, and would not have appeared “alert” to anyone, including my parole officer.

An old girlfriend of mine called me after we returned to my sister’s house, and we spoke for around 20 minutes. The phone records again verify the call, and that it was on the afternoon of August 9th.

However, the jury chose to believe the prosecution story of what happened and the obvious lies I had told investiga-tors to try and help LuAnn: I was convicted on Aug. 22, 1984, and sentenced to die.


After years of fighting, my attorneys finally gained ac-cess to the U.S. Postal investigation documents related to Betty Jane Mottinger’s disappearance and death. It was a “limited review” and done “under seal,” which meant that we could not discuss anything in the records – and I was  not allowed to see them. In those records we found the State and postal inspectors hid evidence from my defense and they knew Gibson was not involved in the crime. On the morning of August 9, 1982, Gibson was in Asheville, North Carolina working on a farm over 500 miles from Elgin, Ohio.

My prosecutors also knew that Gibson was not clean-shaven on August 9th, but that he had a full beard. The state concealed 58 photographs from my defense and the jury that Gibson’s wife had turned over to investigators before my trial. Among them were photos taken of Gibson in North Carolina on August 8th, with a full beard. His presence in North Carolina on August 9th was confirmed by eyewitnesses, including his boss.

The withheld exculpatory evidence proves that my prose-cutors presented a case to the jury they knew was false. The lynchpin of their case was that Gibson was the man seen outside the Elgin Post Office on the morning of August 9, 1982 – when they knew all the while he was over 500 miles away in a different state!

There was also a confession by another man who admitted to the crime. That was never turned over to us. Also with-held from me were witness interviews of other people who were in front of the post office at 8:20 to 8:25 am. One witness in fact had a brown and white Monte Carlo that was parked in front of the post office at 8:25 am that morning. She, and several other people, were at the post office that morning waiting to pick up their mail. They even leaned against the woman’s car waiting for the post office to open.

Another witness was driving his daughter to the doctor's office that morning and saw Mark Lewis park his truck. The witness claimed that Lewis got out of the truck and waved at him that morning, The witness also said that as he drove by the post office he saw Betty Jane Mottinger put her key in the door, and there were no cars in front of the post office.

Investigators made a sketch of the crime scene. However I did not see that sketch until after I had been on death row for 12 years. After comparing that sketch with the testimony of Seibert and Lewis, there is no way - in fact it is impossible - for either of those two alleged eyewitnesses to have seen anything. Their testimony was false. Based on the information provided my attorneys after my trial, there is reason to believe the prosecu-tors knew it was false at the time it was given in the courtroom.
    
The state has argued that I knew details of the crime that were not public knowledge, and that only a person involved in the crime could know those details. They argue that none of these details, the victim‘s purse, her clothing, the way in which the body had been wrapped, was ever made public. That is a bold-faced lie. The fact of the matter is that every so-called detail I told investigators was published in newspa-pers in the days after the crime. We included several newspa-per clippings of those articles as exhibits to our briefs. We proved these details had been made public, yet the courts still choose to ignore the facts. I continue to be denied relief by every court and they have denied the truth for twenty years.


In the 23 years since Betty Jane Mottinger disappeared and was found murdered, the State of Ohio has never made any effort to put Delaney Gibson on trial. Why? Because they know he is innocent, and they know he can prove his inno-cence! Although he had been indicted in the Mottinger case, Ohio never placed a detainer against him during the 17 years he spent in a Kentucky prison for two unrelated murders. Consequently, Gibson was paroled in 1998, returned to prison on a parole violation, and paroled again. He was repeatedly released from prison even though there was an outstanding warrant for his arrest and he was under indictment in Ohio for capital murder with death penalty specifications.

There is something very wrong when Delaney Gibson was freed from prison while under indictment for the same capital crime that I was convicted and sentenced to death for. However, as I’ve explained the reason is simple: the State knew Gibson was innocent of any involvement in Betty Jane Mottinger’s abduc-tion and murder. Yet the prosecution argued to my jury that Gibson and I committed this crime together. My prosecutors did nothing less than present false evidence and a false case to my jury, knowing it was false at the time of my trial.


On May 17, 2004, a three-judge panel in the Federal Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to deny my habeas petition. (Spirko v. Mitchell, 368 F.3d 603 (6th Cir. 05/17/2004))

On the same day, the Van Wert County prosecutor dropped all charges against Delaney Gibson. He is now a free man.

The Sixth Circuit’s majority decision ruling was based on consideration of only one of my appeal issues: my claim that my due process rights were violated by the prosecution’s failure to disclose exculpatory information, information that could have altered the jury’s decision to convict me – which is known as a Brady violation. The Court did not address my claim of actual innocence, or my claims that I was denied due process by the prosecution’s willful presentation of a false case that was based on false evidence.

The two appeals court judges who voted to deny my peti-tion cited my knowledge of facts of the crime as a reason why I was guilty, and thus they didn’t even consider my other issues. They ignored that we proved those “facts” were published in newspapers and were available to anyone who read a newspaper in the days after the crime occurred. Concerned people all over Ohio, in cafes, taverns, court-houses, and other public places, undoubtedly discussed the same facts in the days after the crime that I knew. Our proof conclusively undermined the State’s unsupported claim that those facts were not publicly available.

Judge Ronald Lee Gilman was the dissenter to the Sixth Circuit’s decision. He wrote in part,


Judge Gilman’s dissent was well reasoned. It indicated an understanding of the underlying issues in my case that support my innocence, and the State’s denial of due pro-cess and a fair trial to me.

As I write this, a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court is my last hope to have a court review my case. Filed in January 2005, I am requesting that the Court grant a new trial, or alternatively, an evidentiary hearing in the U.S. District Court. The Court could make its decision about whether it will accept my case for review by late March 2005.

If the Supreme Court denies my petition, then Ohio Gov-ernor Bob Taft will have to grant clemency to avert my execution for a crime I did not commit, and a crime that my prosecutors know I did not commit.

The one or more people who murdered Betty Jane Mot-tinger have not been brought to justice. Yet as I write this I am on track to be killed by the State of Ohio for that crime. If that happens I will not be the only person to suffer an injustice, but so will Betty Jane Mottinger - because my execution will ensure that her killer or killers will never be held responsible for murdering her.