This story has been updated.
Hamilton County Coroner Lakshmi Sammarco Tuesday acknowledged the victim of a high-profile 1994 murder had Hepatitis B. In a statement, Sammarco rescinded a news release she sent out the day prior that said a test in the victim's case file showed she didn't have the disease.
Earlier this month, prosecutors cited a test showing that victim, Rhoda Nathan, had the highly-contagious illness as part of evidence they considered in dismissing charges against her accused killer Elwood Jones. The dismissal came years after Jones won the right to a new trial.
Sammarco said additional documentation shows Nathan did, in fact, have Hepatitis B.
"The printed results state that the blood specimen was Hepatitis B surface antigen positive," Sammarco said in her Tuesday statement. "Considering the correlation of the numbers on the report with our records, it appears that this is the actual Hepatitis B test result for Rhoda Nathan."
After Sammarco's initial statement Monday, both the Hamilton County Prosecutor's office and attorneys for Elwood Jones, the man convicted of the killing and later released, said the coroner was wrong. Both shared a Hepatitis B test showing Nathan did have the illness.
Jones' attorney Dave Hine sent a letter to Sammarco calling her comments "reckless" and accusing her of "inserting herself" into the case. Hine sent the coroner's office both a copy of Nathan's positive hepatitis test and Jones' negative one.
"I would like to thank attorney Dave Hine for providing this information that we did not have in our case file until today," Sammarco said in her Tuesday release.
A jury convicted Elwood Jones in 1996 for the murder of 67-year-old Rhoda Nathan at a hotel in Blue Ash where he worked and where she was a guest. Evidence used to convict Jones included a bacterial infection in an injury on his hand — alleged to be from hitting Nathan in the mouth — and a necklace police said they found in his toolbox similar to one owned by Nathan.
Jones was sentenced to death for the murder and spent 27 years on death row. Hamilton County Judge Wende Cross ordered he get a new trial in 2021 after multiple appeals and the disclosure of new evidence. Jones was released from prison pending a new trial. On Dec. 12, Hamilton County Prosecutor Connie Pillich announced her office wouldn't pursue charges against Jones again.
Pillich said allegations of roughly 4,000 pages of withheld evidence and prosecutorial misconduct played a role in her decision not to retry Jones. She also said the evidence — including claims Nathan had hepatitis B that would have very likely infected Jones when he got the bacterial infection in question — led her office to dismiss the case against him after months of review.
Sammarco's initial statement said the autopsy report's indication Nathan had the disease was likely due to "a transcription error."
"In an effort to corroborate the outside laboratory findings, one of the current pathologists in our office was asked to review the microscopic findings detailed in Ms. Nathan’s autopsy report," Sammarco said in the statement. "No inflammation of the liver associated with hepatitis was indicated. Therefore, the information we have reviewed demonstrates that Ms. Nathan did not have hepatitis B."
The Hamilton County Prosecutor's Office responded Tuesday to Sammarco's initial statement, sending out copies of the Sept. 8, 1994 test purportedly showing Nathan had the disease and another taken days later with a different identifying number showing Jones did not.
“We do not take this matter lightly,” Hamilton County Prosecutor Connie Pillich said in a statement sent with the documents. “A man’s life is at stake. And a victim and her family are still without justice. There is no excuse to get the facts wrong, as happened here. I and my team spent months reviewing this case. I am confident we came to the right conclusion.”
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