On a summer evening in Columbus, Ohio, a young married couple, Christopher and Peggy Ann Lerch, disappeared without a trace. It was August 14, 1982, and for two years, their absence was a painful mystery for their families. Christopher, a 28-year-old white male, and his 25-year-old wife Peggy, lived in Blendon Township, just north of the city. They were last seen at the apartment of a man they considered a friend, William Dean Wickline Jr., but the night would end in a brutal act of violence
that would not come to light until years later.
The truth of what happened to the Lerches was locked away until police received a tip that led them to Wickline’s former girlfriend, Teresa Kemp. In 1984, Kemp provided a horrifying, detailed account of the couple's final hours. She told investigators that she, Wickline, and the Lerches had spent the night drinking heavily and using cocaine at Wickline's apartment. An argument erupted between Christopher Lerch and Wickline over a $6,000 drug debt that Wickline claimed he was owed.
According to Kemp’s testimony, Wickline lured Christopher upstairs on the pretense of needing help. A short time later, Wickline came back down alone. When Kemp went to check on Christopher, she found him dead in the bathtub with his throat slit. Wickline then turned his attention to Peggy, who had fallen asleep. To eliminate her as a witness, Wickline strangled her with a rope as she lay unconscious. Kemp testified that Wickline ordered her to hold Peggy’s legs during the murder.
The aftermath was as gruesome as the murders themselves. Wickline, who had learned butchery skills while working in a prison slaughterhouse, lived up to the monstrous nickname he would later earn: "The Butcher." He dismembered the bodies of both Christopher and Peggy in his bathtub. He then placed their remains in bags and, with the help of a friend, discarded them in various trash dumpsters across the Columbus area. Despite extensive searches, the bodies of Christopher and Peggy Lerch have never been found.
The investigation culminated in the 1985 trial of William Dean Wickline Jr. Based largely on the testimony of Teresa Kemp, who was not charged for her role, a three-judge panel found Wickline guilty of two counts of aggravated murder. Though no physical remains of the victims were recovered, police did find traces of blood in Wickline's bathtub and human tissue on a folding saw he owned. For the murder of Christopher Lerch, Wickline was sentenced to life in prison. For killing Peggy Lerch to cover up the first murder, he was sentenced to death.
Wickline was a career criminal with a history of offenses including breaking and entering, grand theft, and drug violations. He was also indicted for the 1979 decapitation murder of Charles Morgan Marsh in West Virginia, though he was never tried for that crime due to his death sentence in Ohio. Wickline maintained his innocence in the Lerch murders, claiming Kemp had fabricated the story. He spent nearly two decades on death row, exhausting all his appeals.
On March 30, 2004, William Dean Wickline Jr., age 52, was executed by lethal injection at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. Governor Bob Taft denied his request for clemency, stating, "Mr. Wickline is guilty of the brutal murder and dismemberment of Christopher and Peggy Lerch... (He) has failed to accept responsibility or express any remorse for these terrible crimes." Wickline's final words were, "May tomorrow see the courts shaped by more wisdom and less politics." The execution brought a legal end to the case, but for the families of Christopher and Peggy Lerch, the pain remains, compounded by the fact that their loved ones were never laid to rest.
