The Murder of Brad McGarry: Affair, Investigation, and Trial

The Brad McGarry murder was solved within two days of the shooting, when investigators in Belmont County, Ohio learned that the man who reported finding the body — McGarry’s best friend, David Carl Kinney — was also his secret lover. Kinney shot McGarry twice in the head in the basement of his Bellaire home on May 7, 2017, staged the scene to look like a burglary, and returned hours later with his wife and stepdaughter to “discover” the body. A jury convicted him of aggravated murder in February 2018, and he is serving life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Who Brad McGarry Was

Brad Dennis McGarry was 43 years old, a coal mine foreman at Murray Energy, and an openly gay man living in Bellaire, a small Ohio River town of about 4,000 people.¹ Friends described him as “larger than life,” warm, and comfortable in his own skin. He collected antiques, doted on his animals, and remained close to his mother and extended family in Lewisville.²

The Hidden Affair Behind the Friendship

McGarry met David Kinney in a coal mining training class in 2011, and the two became close friends. Their families spent holidays and planned vacations together, and Kinney’s stepchildren called McGarry “uncle.”² Underneath that friendship, McGarry and Kinney were carrying on a years-long sexual relationship that Kinney kept hidden from his wife, Cheri. When Cheri raised suspicions late in 2016, Kinney told her the two men were “nothing but friends.”³

According to lead detective Ryan Allar of the Belmont County Sheriff’s Office, McGarry had grown frustrated with the secrecy and wanted Kinney to leave his wife so they could be a real couple.² That pressure, prosecutors would later argue, is what pushed Kinney to kill him.

What Happened on May 7, 2017

McGarry spent that Sunday morning at a family wedding and brunch. He told his cousins he planned to meet someone he called “DJ” that afternoon for what he described, with a wink, as “a nap.”⁴ He left the gathering early, in what one witness later described as a state of happy excitement, after a phone call or text.⁵

Surveillance cameras along the route told the rest of the story. Kinney’s vehicle headed toward McGarry’s Wagner Avenue home at 1:59 p.m. McGarry pulled in at 2:55 p.m. By 3:11 p.m., Kinney’s vehicle was captured driving away.³ McGarry was shot twice in the head with a .22-caliber firearm. The first bullet caused a non-fatal skull fracture; the second, fatal, was fired into the back of his head. He was found face down in the basement. Drawers had been pulled open and the home disturbed, but obvious valuables remained in place, and McGarry’s own 9mm handgun was still untouched in a nightstand. Investigators concluded the scene had been staged to look like a robbery.²

About three hours after the shooting, Kinney drove back to the house with Cheri and her 13-year-old daughter, saying they were there to drop off a weed trimmer. In the time between, he had gone home and helped his wife dye her hair.³ At 6:15 p.m., Cheri called 911 to report that they had found McGarry’s body. When the first officer arrived, Kinney was carrying a .40-caliber handgun under a concealed carry permit, which the officer took.⁶

How Investigators Zeroed In on Kinney

Because McGarry was openly gay, deputies first considered whether the killing might be a hate crime. That line of inquiry was set aside two days later, when detectives interviewed McGarry’s cousin, Schuyler Strawser. She told them McGarry had confided that a man he called “DJ” was coming over that Sunday afternoon and that their relationship was sexual and romantic. Strawser identified “DJ” as David Kinney through social media.⁴

With that tip, the person who had “found” the body became the chief suspect. Investigators pulled Kinney’s cell phone, which confirmed the affair through text messages and placed him at the home during the window when McGarry was killed.⁴

The Shifting Stories in the Interrogation Room

On May 9, 2017, Chief Detective Ryan Allar brought Kinney in for what began as a witness interview. It stretched roughly four to five hours. Allar later said he used blunt but nonjudgmental language to build rapport around the sensitive subject of Kinney’s same-sex relationship.⁷

Kinney’s account changed five times over the course of the interview:

First, he said he had arrived with his wife and daughter, found the door open, and discovered the body, denying any earlier visit.
Confronted with surveillance footage, he admitted being at the house earlier but denied being there during the shooting.
He then said he was present with McGarry and a stranger, heard a gunshot, and fled.
Next, he blamed an unidentified third party who, he said, had argued with McGarry over missing money, killed him, and threatened Kinney.
Finally, he admitted shooting McGarry himself, claiming self-defense. In this version, an argument broke out over their failing relationship and stolen money, McGarry waved a .22-caliber Derringer at him, and Kinney grabbed the gun and fired twice during a struggle.

Allar used phone records and surveillance footage to break each successive version, telling Kinney at one point that the “hole you’re digging is getting bigger.”⁷ Cheri Kinney also entered the interview room during the recording. When she learned from the detectives that her husband had been having an affair with McGarry, she told him, “I can’t even look at you.”²

Kinney was arrested late that same day and charged with murder with a gun specification.⁸ He told police he had thrown the .22-caliber murder weapon from his car window along Ohio Route 7 near a sewage plant. Searchers never recovered it. A .22-caliber Derringer later found several miles south, on the opposite side of the road, was tested by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation and ruled out as the murder weapon. Police did find .22-caliber ammunition in Kinney’s truck.⁹

Trial, Conviction, and Sentence

The case was tried in Belmont County Common Pleas Court before Judge Frank Fregiato. Chief Assistant Prosecutor Kevin Flanagan argued that the shooting was a premeditated execution, not self-defense. He emphasized that Kinney had arrived at the house nearly an hour before McGarry, that both gunshot wounds struck the back or top of McGarry’s head rather than the front, and that Kinney had sent text messages to McGarry’s phone after the killing in what prosecutors called an effort to cover his tracks.¹⁰ Prosecutors also pointed to Kinney’s calm return to the house hours later with his family.¹¹

Defense attorney Christopher Gagin argued the case rested on speculation, challenged the forensic reconstruction of the scene, and maintained that Kinney’s confession had been coerced during a long, emotionally charged interview in which detectives leveraged the threat of exposing his affair.¹⁰

On February 6, 2018, the jury found Kinney guilty of aggravated murder with a firearm specification.¹⁰ On February 14, 2018, Judge Fregiato sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus an additional three years for the firearm specification.¹²

Kinney apologized at sentencing: “I would like to apologize to the McGarry family for all the hurt and pain that I put you through. I never meant for any of this to happen, and I wish I could take it all back.” Judge Fregiato, imposing the sentence, said, “If this man was able to do an assassin’s job to someone he loved and his best friend, what could he do to his enemy or someone who opposed him?”¹³

Appeals and Where Kinney Is Now

Kinney appealed on ten grounds, including the sufficiency of the evidence for prior calculation and design, the voluntariness of his confession, and the timing of his Miranda warnings. On June 28, 2019, the Seventh District Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction. The panel held that the jury was free to reject Kinney’s self-defense claim, noting that even by his own account, he had fired a final shot into the back of an already incapacitated victim’s head, and that the police interview was non-custodial.¹¹

The Supreme Court of Ohio returned the case to the Seventh District in December 2020 on a narrow question about appellate review of life-without-parole sentences for aggravated murder, in light of State v. Patrick. On remand in March 2021, the Seventh District reconsidered Kinney’s Eighth Amendment challenge and again affirmed the sentence.¹⁴

David Carl Kinney is held at the Southeastern Correctional Institution in Ohio. His admission date is listed as February 16, 2018, and no further appeals are known to have been filed since the 2021 remand ruling.¹⁵

1
NBC4i. Murder of Ohio River Valley Coal Miner Brad McGarry on Dateline
2
Oxygen. David Kinney Kills Best Friend Brad McGarry in His Ohio Home
3
Supreme Court of Ohio. State v. Kinney, 2019-Ohio-2704
4
Oxygen. David Kinney Convicted of Killing Gay Lover Brad McGarry
5
WTRF. Bellaire Murder Trial Continues
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WTOV9. More Details Surface in Bellaire Murder Case
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The Intelligencer. Belmont County Jury Views Video of David Kinney’s Police Interrogation
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The Intelligencer. Arrest Made in Bellaire Murder
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The Intelligencer. No Gun Match in Bellaire Murder Case
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The Intelligencer. Belmont County Jury Convicts Kinney of Aggravated Murder
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Times Leader. Life Sentence Upheld for Kinney
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Times Leader. Kinney Sentenced to Life With No Parole
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WTOV9. Kinney Sentenced to Life in Prison Without Parole for Murder of Brad McGarry
14
Ohio Appeals. State of Ohio v. David Carl Kinney
15
Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. Offender Search – David Carl Kinney