YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (WKBN) — The owner of an Alliance home where a missing 17-year-old girl was last seen in 2009 testified Wednesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court that it did not appear the girl had been assaulted by the man on trial for killing her.
Testifying under cross-examination by attorney Jeffrey Haupt, the witness said Glenna Jean White told her that Robert Moore, 51, did not rape her and that White did not want to go home.
White was in the witness’ home on June 2 and June 3, 2009, drinking with a group of friends and Moore was present. She was never seen alive again.
Moore was indicted in December on a murder charge despite the fact authorities never found White’s body. Testimony in the case began Tuesday after a jury was selected Monday.
The prosecution theory of the case is that White claimed that she was raped by Moore and that Moore took her home in the homeowner’s car. When he returned to the house, he was covered in blood and mud and White was never seen again.
The homeowner testified under direct examination from Assistant Prosecutor Michael Yacovone that she had gone to bed because she needed to work early the next day and another teen in the house woke her up to tell her White had been raped.
Haupt had asked earlier that Judge Sweeney not allow jurors to hear that remark, saying it was hearsay evidence, but Judge Sweeney ruled against him.
The homeowner testified Moore denied acting inappropriately and that White did not want to leave.
“She looked fine to me,” the homeowner testified so she went back to bed.
Later that evening or in the early morning, she woke up again to go to the bathroom and found Moore and the other teen there. Moore had gravel on his pants and told the homeowner he was jumped by several men at a nearby bar and got in a fight.
“Did he look beat up to you?” Yacovone asked her.
“Not really,” the homeowner replied.
The homeowner also said when investigators served a search warrant at her home in August 2010, they took a mat from in front of her door and carpet strips from her bathroom to be tested for evidence. Prosecutors did not reveal the results of those tests.
The search warrant was served after a girl who had been in the house saw a flier in 2010 saying that White was missing. She did not know White was missing so she informed law enforcement.
Under cross-examination from Haupt, the homeowner testified if she thought White had been abused, she would have called police. If White had been upset, she would have taken her home.
The homeowner also told Haupt she did not notice any blood on Moore when he was in the bathroom, and she saw no blood in her car, which prosecutors said Moore used to drive White home.
The car caught fire a week later and prosecutors claim Moore set the fire to destroy evidence, but the homeowner testified there was never any blood in her car and that Moore tried to put the fire out because a car belonging to his sister was parked close by and in danger of catching fire.
The case was reopened after investigators from the Portage County Drug Task Force received a tip.