Roxanne Buck: Murder of Michelle Johnson in Stow, Ohio

Roxanne Buck is an Ohio woman convicted in October 2014 of murdering her 21-year-old roommate, Michelle Johnson, at a home on Maplepark Drive in Stow, Ohio. A Summit County jury found the then-45-year-old Buck guilty of murder and tampering with evidence after a short trial, and Judge Mary Margaret Rowlands sentenced her to 18 years to life in prison. Buck remains incarcerated at the Ohio Reformatory for Women, and her first parole hearing is scheduled for August 2031.

The Killing of Michelle Johnson

Michelle Johnson lived with her mother, Diana Johnson, in Stow. Diana had taken Buck into the home as her daughter’s roommate, but the arrangement fell apart after Diana discovered Buck was smoking crack cocaine and not paying rent. Diana asked Buck to leave twice inside two months, and Michelle eventually told Buck she had to be out by the end of the month.¹

Diana Johnson left for West Virginia on March 12, 2014. In the early morning hours of March 14, Michelle texted a Stow police officer that she planned to confront Buck about her drug use. Around 7:30 a.m., Michelle let Buck into the house. Her last known activity was a Facebook post at 12:03 p.m.¹

Prosecutors said Buck killed Johnson during that confrontation. The Summit County Medical Examiner attributed the death to sharp force injuries to the neck. Johnson had 32 stab and incised wounds, including injuries to her jugular vein, along with blunt and sharp force trauma to her scalp, torso, arms, and hands.²

How Buck Was Caught

Later that afternoon, Buck went to Akron General Medical Center to be treated for cuts on her hands and told her Burger King manager she needed to miss her shift because of a knife injury. The next morning, neighbors saw her walking Johnson’s dog and shooing the animal away from a shed in the backyard.¹

Unable to reach her daughter for two days, Diana Johnson called Stow police around 5:30 p.m. on March 15 and asked for a welfare check. Officer Jason Bailey found Michelle Johnson’s body in a makeshift shed behind the house, lying face down and covered by a blanket, a towel, and a car tire.²

Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation agents spent more than 12 hours processing the scene. They logged blood in 34 spots on the lower level of the home and signs that someone had tried to clean it up. Kitchen knives were missing from upstairs. Waffle-pattern shoeprints in the mud near the shed could have been made by Buck’s shoes, a forensic analyst later testified.¹²

DNA tied Buck to the scene. A mixture recovered from clippings of Johnson’s fingernails included a minor profile consistent with Buck. Buck’s DNA also turned up on swabs from the washing machine, the wall above the bathroom sink, the garage floor, and a paint can handle, and she was named a possible contributor on a bleach bottle found in the laundry room. Investigators concluded that Johnson was killed inside the lower level of the home, where Buck lived, and then dragged to the shed.²

The Trial and Buck’s Defense

Buck was charged with one count of murder under Ohio Revised Code 2903.02 and one count of third-degree felony tampering with evidence under ORC 2921.12. The case, CR2014030842, was tried before Judge Mary Margaret Rowlands in October 2014.³

Buck testified in her own defense on October 16, 2014. She said she had been out smoking crack cocaine and came home sometime after 1:30 p.m. to find Johnson’s body in the laundry room next to her bedroom. She admitted she cleaned up the blood and dragged the body to the shed, but when her attorney Scott Rilley asked whether she had killed Johnson, she said, “No, I did not.”⁴

Buck told jurors she hid the body instead of calling police because Johnson had been dating a Stow police officer named Brad Whitacre. “I was high and I was scared,” she testified. “She was dating a police officer, and I didn’t want them to have tunnel vision on me.” The defense argued that lead investigator Steven Dunton, then a Stow detective sergeant, had failed to press the officer about his whereabouts.⁴

The jury of nine women and three men deliberated for about three hours on October 17, 2014, and convicted Buck on both counts.⁵

The Sentence

Judge Rowlands sentenced Buck on October 21, 2014. Rilley asked for concurrent sentences, pointing to Buck’s “almost nonexistent criminal record,” a single DUI from a decade earlier. The judge refused. She imposed 15 years to life for murder and three years for tampering with evidence, to run consecutively, and called the evidence tampering “the worse we have ever seen.”⁵

Diana Johnson spoke directly to Buck in the courtroom. “In her own home, Roxanne. In her own home. She couldn’t even be safe in her own home,” she said. “I tried to give you a better life and this is how you repay me, by murdering my baby.” She told the court she would never see her daughter get married, have children, or graduate from the police academy.⁶⁷

Buck declined to speak. Assistant Prosecutor Pete Daly told the court he had listened to Buck’s jail calls after the verdict and heard no remorse.⁶

The Appeal

Buck appealed to the Ohio Ninth District Court of Appeals. In State v. Buck, 2017-Ohio-273, she raised four arguments: that the trial court should have granted a mistrial after the state presented what she called “gruesome and repetitive” autopsy photographs; that the prosecutor committed misconduct in closing argument regarding her admission to tampering; that trial and appellate counsel were ineffective in advising her about her speedy trial waiver; and that a seven-month delay violated her right to a speedy trial, with her waiver not knowing, intelligent, or voluntary.⁸

A unanimous three-judge panel rejected each argument. On the autopsy photographs, the court found them “more probative than prejudicial,” reasoning that the images helped the jury understand medical testimony, showed intent through the number of wounds, and helped tie Buck to the killing through the injuries on her hands. The panel also held that “sufficient evidence” supported the guilty verdicts, citing the shoeprint testimony and the DNA recovered from the home.²⁸

Where Buck Is Now

Buck is incarcerated at the Ohio Reformatory for Women under inmate number W090851. Her aggregate sentence is 15 years to life for murder plus three definite years for tampering with evidence, with an effective sentence date of November 5, 2014. According to Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction records, her earliest parole eligibility date is September 16, 2031, and her first parole board hearing is set for August 2031.³

1
Cleveland.com. Stow Woman Slit Roommate’s Throat, Prosecutors Say
2
Supreme Court of Ohio. State v. Buck, 2017-Ohio-273
3
Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. Offender Details – W090851
4
Akron Beacon Journal. Stow Woman Testifies in Own Defense
5
MyTownNEO. Roxanne Buck Sentenced to Life
6
Cleveland.com. Stow Woman Convicted of Killing Roommate
7
Cleveland19. Woman Sentenced for Murdering Her Roommate
8
Akron Legal News. State v. Buck, 2017-Ohio-273