On a summer evening in Columbus, Ohio, Peggy Ann Lerch, a 24-year-old white female, and her husband, Christopher, spent their final hours with a man they considered a friend. It was August 14, 1982, and the couple was at the apartment of William Dean Wickline Jr. The night was a blur of heavy drinking and cocaine use, an indulgence that would curdle into a horrific argument over a $6,000 drug debt Christopher allegedly owed to Wickline.
This dispute would be the catalyst for a double murder of shocking brutality, leaving a family to wonder what became of their loved ones, whose bodies have never been found.
The evening's descent into violence was recounted in court by Wickline's then-girlfriend, Theresa Kemp, who became the prosecution's key witness. According to Kemp's testimony, the argument over money escalated, and Wickline lured Christopher upstairs. 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, oblivious to her husband's murder. To eliminate the only other witness, Wickline decided Peggy had to die. He strangled the unconscious woman with a rope, ordering Kemp to hold her legs down during the act.
What followed was a macabre effort to erase all evidence of the crime. Wickline, who had learned butchery skills in a prison slaughterhouse, earned the nickname "The Butcher" for his gruesome method of disposing of his victims. He dismembered the bodies of both Peggy and Christopher in his bathtub. He then placed their remains into trash bags and, with a friend's help, scattered them in various dumpsters across the city of Columbus. Despite extensive searches, no part of Peggy or Christopher Lerch has ever been recovered. The only physical evidence investigators found at Wickline's apartment was blood in the bathtub and human tissue on a folding saw.
For two years, the couple was simply considered missing. A missing persons report was filed on August 25, 1982, but the case remained cold until police received information from informants that led them to Theresa Kemp. Her detailed confession broke the case open, and in December 1984, Wickline was indicted for the murders. He was already a career criminal with a record for burglary, grand theft, and drug violations across multiple states. At the time of his indictment for the Lerch murders, he was also charged with the 1979 decapitation murder of Charles Morgan Marsh in West Virginia, a charge that was later dropped after his death sentence in Ohio.
In 1985, William Dean Wickline Jr. waived his right to a jury and was tried by a three-judge panel in Franklin County. He was found guilty of two counts of aggravated murder. The judges sentenced him to life in prison for the murder of Christopher Lerch and handed down a death sentence for the murder of Peggy Ann Lerch. The death sentence was given for Peggy's murder because it was committed to cover up another crime—her husband's slaying. Wickline maintained his innocence, claiming Kemp had fabricated the story.
For nearly two decades, Wickline sat on death row, exhausting numerous state and federal appeals. In March 2004, Governor Bob Taft denied his final request for clemency, stating, "Mr. Wickline has failed to accept responsibility or express any remorse for these terrible crimes." On March 30, 2004, William Dean Wickline Jr., age 52, was executed by lethal injection at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. His final words were, "May tomorrow see the courts shaped by more wisdom and less politics." While the legal case is closed, for the family of Peggy and Christopher Lerch, the absence of their remains means a final resting place, and a measure of peace, remains tragically out of reach.
