The Rhoda Nathan murder is a 1994 Ohio killing that put a hotel worker named Elwood Jones on death row for 27 years before Hamilton County prosecutors dismissed all charges against him in December 2025, concluding the wrong man had been convicted. No one else has ever been charged, and the case is officially unsolved.
What Happened at the Embassy Suites
Rhoda Nathan was a 67-year-old retired widow from Toms River, New Jersey. Over Labor Day weekend 1994, she traveled to the Cincinnati suburbs for the bar mitzvah of a grandson of her childhood friend Elaine Shub. Rooms were tight, so Nathan shared Room 237 at the Embassy Suites in Blue Ash with Shub and Shub’s boyfriend, Joe Kaplan.1ForensicFilesNow. Rhoda Nathan
On the morning of September 3, 1994, Shub and Kaplan went down to breakfast. While Nathan was alone in the room, an intruder came in and beat her to death. She suffered a shattered jaw, broken ribs, and facial swelling severe enough that her funeral was held with a closed casket.1ForensicFilesNow. Rhoda Nathan
The Case Against Elwood Jones
Elwood Jones, who worked at the Embassy Suites, quickly became the primary suspect. In 1996 a jury convicted him of aggravated murder, robbery, and burglary, and he was sentenced to death.2CBS News. Case Dismissed Against Former Death Row Inmate in Ohio
Two pieces of physical evidence anchored the prosecution’s case. A Blue Ash police officer, Michael Bray, testified that he had found a gold pendant belonging to Nathan inside a toolbox in the trunk of Jones’s car. And Jones had an infection on his hand containing a bacterium that the state’s expert told the jury was found almost exclusively in dental plaque, which supported the theory that Jones had punched Nathan hard enough in the mouth to knock out a tooth and injure his own hand.3AccusedPodcast.com. Season 4
The prosecution was led by Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters, who later became an Ohio Supreme Court justice. For years afterward, Deters publicly called Jones “a monster who would kill again if released from prison.”4Cincinnati Enquirer. Ohio Supreme Court Weighing Appeal in Elwood Jones Case
Why the Case Fell Apart
Jones’s post-conviction attorneys, David Hine and Jay Clark, eventually uncovered more than 4,000 pages of investigative material that prosecutors had never turned over to the defense before trial.5FOX19. Ex-Death Row Inmate Elwood Jones Takes First Step to Sue for Wrongful Imprisonment6Vorys. Hine Interviewed on Wrongful Conviction Podcast Three problems in particular hollowed out the state’s case.
A Tip About Another Suspect
Among the withheld material was a tip about a man named Earl Reed, who lived roughly a mile from the Embassy Suites and had a history of domestic violence complaints. Delores Suggs, who had been incarcerated with Reed’s wife Linda at the Hamilton County Jail, said Linda Reed told her that Earl had confessed to killing Nathan and had “framed a black man for it.” Suggs said she contacted Blue Ash police after her release and was told the case was closed; the department had no record of the call. Records relating to Linda Reed were later found to be missing from the Blue Ash Police file. Earl Reed is deceased.7Local 12. Ohio Man on Death Row Wants Another Shot at Justice8Ignite Peace. Elwood Jones Updated Case Summary
Problems With the Pendant
The pendant had been presented to the jury as a one-of-a-kind piece belonging to Nathan. Nathan’s family members had actually told police the pendant was not custom-made, and that the original engagement ring the family believed had been used to create it was still in the family’s possession. Prosecutors did not disclose that to the defense.9Death Penalty Information Center. Ohio Prosecutors Dismiss Case Against Elwood Jones
The discovery of the pendant was also disputed. Officer Bray said he found it in Jones’s toolbox, but other officers had already searched the car without finding it, and a witness named Jimmy Johnson testified he had worked on Jones’s car and looked through the same toolbox the day after the murder and seen no pendant. Prosecutors had withheld documents showing Bray was not the first officer to search the car.10First District Court of Appeals of Ohio. State v. Jones, C-23056411Cincinnati Enquirer. Appeals Court Won’t Allow Disputed Evidence at Elwood Jones Retrial
The Hepatitis B Results
The most damaging revelation was medical. Testing by the coroner’s office on September 8, 1994, confirmed Nathan was positive for hepatitis B surface antigen. Testing on September 16, 1994, showed Jones was negative. If Jones had truly punched Nathan in the mouth hard enough to open a wound on his own hand, medical experts said, he would almost certainly have contracted the virus. A reviewing judge later called the state’s theory “scientifically implausible.” That evidence, too, was withheld from the defense.12WLWT. Hamilton County Elwood Jones Rhoda Nathan Hepatitis B Results9Death Penalty Information Center. Ohio Prosecutors Dismiss Case Against Elwood Jones
Jones’s team also challenged the trial testimony about the bacterium on his hand. Dr. Steven Dale Burdette testified that Eikenella corrodens was not as rare as the state’s expert had claimed and was not found almost exclusively in dental plaque. Jones could have contracted it by putting his own mouth on the wound.13Ohio Supreme Court. State v. Jones, 2025-Ohio-5389
New Trial, Then Dismissal
On December 20, 2022, Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Wende Cross granted Jones a new trial. She found that prosecutors had violated Jones’s constitutional rights under Brady v. Maryland by suppressing exculpatory evidence, and that new scientific evidence further undermined the conviction. Cross wrote that the state’s conduct “reinforced a win-at-all-cost mentality that undermines the pursuit of justice.”9Death Penalty Information Center. Ohio Prosecutors Dismiss Case Against Elwood Jones Jones was released on bond in January 2023.
A separate ruling closed off the state’s ability to rehabilitate its old evidence. Officer Bray had died in 2018, and because prosecutors had never turned over the material the defense needed to cross-examine him about the pendant, the trial court excluded his testimony from any retrial. The First District Court of Appeals affirmed that ruling 2-1 in August 2025, holding that Jones’s Sixth Amendment right to confront the witness could no longer be satisfied.11Cincinnati Enquirer. Appeals Court Won’t Allow Disputed Evidence at Elwood Jones Retrial
On December 12, 2025, Hamilton County Prosecutor Connie Pillich, who had taken office that January, dismissed all charges against Jones with prejudice, meaning he can never be retried for the killing. “I am not convinced that Mr. Jones killed Rhoda Nathan,” Pillich said, citing a lack of physical evidence linking him to the murder, weak follow-up on tips pointing to other suspects, modern medical testing that excluded him, and her office’s prior failure to disclose investigative materials.14Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office. Hamilton County Prosecutor Connie Pillich Dismisses 1995 Capital Murder Case She said publicly that “the wrong man was locked up and the person who committed this horrific act walked.”15FOX19. Hamilton County Prosecutor Drops Murder Charges Against Death Row Inmate
Jones’s exoneration made him the 202nd person exonerated from death row in the United States since 1973 and the 12th in Ohio.16Death Penalty Information Center. The Death Penalty in 2025 – Innocence
A Brief Reversal From the Coroner
Days after the dismissal, Hamilton County Coroner Dr. Lakshmi Sammarco announced that a lab report in her office’s file showed Nathan had not actually been positive for hepatitis B, a claim that briefly reopened the reasoning for freeing Jones. It quickly fell apart. Pillich’s office and Jones’s attorneys established that Sammarco had misread the records and mistakenly attributed Jones’s own negative result to Nathan; the specimen date on the report she cited was more than a week after the autopsy. Sammarco later acknowledged the error after receiving a microbiology report whose numbers matched her office’s own autopsy and death records, confirming Nathan was hepatitis B positive.17WCPO. Elwood Jones’s Attorney Calls on Coroner to Issue Full Retraction12WLWT. Hamilton County Elwood Jones Rhoda Nathan Hepatitis B Results
The Family’s View
Not everyone accepted the outcome. Rhoda Nathan’s son Valentine Nathan said he remained convinced Jones was guilty, pointing to the pendant, Jones’s access to the hotel, and the wound on his hand. He called Jones’s release “disgusting” and the decision not to retry the case “unacceptable” and “horrible,” and rejected the defense’s arguments about the hepatitis evidence and the jailhouse account of Earl Reed’s alleged confession.15FOX19. Hamilton County Prosecutor Drops Murder Charges Against Death Row Inmate
What Comes Next
On January 13, 2026, Jones, then 73, filed a complaint in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court asking to be declared a “wrongfully imprisoned individual.” Under Ohio law that declaration is a required step before seeking compensation from the state through the Ohio Court of Claims.18Cincinnati Enquirer. Elwood Jones Suing State to Be Declared Wrongfully Imprisoned Person
Pillich also announced a new Conviction Integrity Unit in her office to review claims of wrongful conviction in Hamilton County, funded at $300,000 by the county Board of Commissioners. “Had such a unit existed years ago, this decision may have been reached much sooner,” she said.2CBS News. Case Dismissed Against Former Death Row Inmate in Ohio19WVXU. Hamilton County Prosecutor Conviction Integrity Unit Director
No one else has ever been charged in the killing of Rhoda Nathan. More than 30 years after her death, the case remains officially unsolved.