The call came in just before noon. Two college girls stood in the campus police station, visibly shaking, trying to explain that their friend never came back to her dorm room. Her name was Stephanie Hummer. She was an 18-year-old freshman at Ohio State University, a straight-A student who’d earned one of the most prestigious caddy scholarships in the country.
She’d been working as a golf caddy since she was a kid, and she played soccer, softball, and violin. She was the kind of person everyone liked. Her parents had visited campus that weekend to watch her younger brother compete in a math competition. Two of her best friends from home came along.
Around midnight, two guys they knew from high school stopped by Stephanie’s dorm room. By 3:00 a. m. , the group decided to walk to a party at the guys’ dorm, about fifteen minutes away.
Halfway there, one of the guys, Thomas, cut his arm open on a sharp metal rod while climbing a fence in the dark. He and his friend sprinted back to their dorm to get it bandaged. The girls decided they’d skip the party, but Stephanie still wanted to go. She walked her friends back to her own dorm, said goodbye, and turned around alone to head to the party.
She never arrived. Her friends woke up the next morning and assumed she’d crashed at someone’s room. But hours passed and she didn’t return. By late morning, they contacted campus police.
Detectives soon learned about a body discovered roughly four miles from campus. A railroad worker had spotted it in the brush around 10:00 a. m. and thought it was a mannequin at first.
The victim was almost completely undressed. Only her socks and shoes remained. Her bra was looped around her neck. There were no personal items nearby.
The area had a rough reputation, a stretch known for drug deals and sex work. Police realized the victim could be Stephanie and called her father. He identified her body at the morgue. The medical examiner ruled it a homicide.
Stephanie had been sexually assaulted and bludgeoned with a heavy object. There were marks on her neck, but they read more like hickeys than strangulation. Time of death was set between 3:00 and 6:00 a. m.
A semen sample was collected from her body, and swabs were taken from her neck for DNA testing. Detectives interviewed Stephanie’s friends, who detailed the events of the night. Then they interviewed Thomas and his roommate. Both said Stephanie never showed up at the party.
Thomas admitted there had been a brief romantic moment between them, claiming they’d kissed on a couch while everyone else was in the next room. He said it hadn’t gone further and he’d simply forgotten to mention it. But when the lab compared Thomas’s DNA to the swabs taken from Stephanie’s neck, the match was full. He was dragged back in for questioning.
Everyone who’d been in the dorm that night swore they’d never seen him and Stephanie kiss. Investigators wondered if he’d met her again on campus after she left her friends. Then the other test results came back. The semen collected from Stephanie’s body belonged to an unknown male who wasn’t in the FBI database.
It wasn’t Thomas. He was crossed off the suspect list. The investigation dragged on. Police canvassed the campus and nearby neighborhoods.
They interviewed countless students. They collected DNA from every male in Thomas’s dorm building. No match. Almost a month in, police arrested a man named Michael for trying to abduct another female student from the same university.
Detectives hoped his DNA would match the crime scene sample. It didn’t. Then a man came forward about his friend, Anton. Days after the murder, Anton had confessed to him that he’d kidnapped and killed Stephanie.
Detectives wired the friend’s phone and listened in as Anton repeated the confession, even mentioning the glow of a large TV tower visible from where the body was found. But when they brought Anton in, he claimed it was a joke, that he’d heard about the murder on the news and was messing with his buddy. His DNA didn’t match the semen. He walked.
The FBI joined the case. Locals had reported seeing a white van cruising their streets on the night of the murder. That lead pointed to a man named Rodney, an ex-con with a history of kidnapping. He worked for a transport company whose office sat right near the body’s discovery site.
The company used white vans. A co-worker told detectives something chilling. Rodney bragged about a game where he’d drive a work van onto campus, pretend to be an undercover cop, and lure female students inside to grope them. His ex-girlfriend said he’d been unstable after their breakup, which happened just before the murder.
A warrant was issued to search the van Rodney used. Inside, they found handcuffs, a flashlight, and a stolen handgun. Rodney was arrested and refused to answer questions. His DNA was taken and sent to the lab.
It didn’t match the semen. The case went cold. For years, Stephanie’s parents pleaded with the public on television. A man in California, arrested for murder and sexual assault, became a suspect because he’d lived near her dorm at the time.
His DNA ruled him out. Several inmates falsely confessed, hoping to land a movie deal or a book contract. None of their DNA matched. Then, in 2005, Ohio changed its law.
DNA was now collected from every convicted felon. Before that, a person could be arrested or even serve time for lesser offenses without their DNA ever entering the system. On January 17, 2006, a new detective on the case received a call. There had been a hit in the FBI database.
A profile matched the semen recovered from Stephanie’s body. It belonged to a Columbus resident named Jonathan Gravely. He lived just a twelve-minute walk from campus. At the time of the murder, he was 24, with two children.
He’d since divorced, remarried, and had two more kids. He had a well-paying job at a local manufacturing plant. His record showed seventeen arrests, mostly for drugs, alcohol, and DUIs. None had been serious enough to force a DNA sample under the old law.
The reason his DNA finally ended up in the system was almost absurdly simple. He skipped a child support payment, and his ex-wife called the police. Two days after the database hit, detectives showed up at Jonathan’s workplace. He agreed to go to the station, but his hands were shaking.
When they told him about the match, he insisted he had nothing to do with the murder. He said he’d met Stephanie at a bar that night. They’d gone somewhere more private and had consensual sex. Detectives didn’t believe him.
Stephanie was 18. The drinking age was 21. She’d been heading to a party with friends she’d known for years, not wandering into a bar full of strangers in the middle of the night. Jonathan changed his story.
He claimed Stephanie had initiated things, then changed her mind and threatened to tell his wife. An argument broke out. He hit her. After that, he said, everything went blank.
Detectives laid out what they believed truly happened. Jonathan spotted Stephanie walking alone toward the party. He owned a white van at the time. He pulled up beside her on a dark, empty street, said something harmless to lower her guard, then struck her in the head and loaded her into the van.
He drove to the isolated spot by the railroad tracks. He sexually assaulted her while she was unconscious. When she regained consciousness and tried to run, he chased her down and beat her until she died. Jonathan wouldn’t admit to the abduction.
But he did acknowledge he killed her. He was arrested. The judge set bail at one billion dollars, a symbolic figure meant to ensure he wouldn’t see freedom before trial. His attorney tried to get the confession thrown out.
His fiancée insisted he was a good man who’d never hurt anyone. Prosecutors announced they would seek the death penalty. That’s when Jonathan took a deal. He’d plead guilty if the death penalty was taken off the table.
In September 2007, he stood in court and addressed Stephanie’s family directly. He offered an apology for their daughter’s death. They didn’t accept a word of it. The judge sentenced him to 25 years to life.
Under that sentence, he became eligible for parole in just 16 years. His first request came in 2023. The parole board turned him down. He’s still behind bars, and he still has a chance of getting out in the not-too-distant future.
Stephanie’s father and her closest friends have said they’ll fight every parole request that ever comes. Her mother died of cancer eight years after the verdict. To honor Stephanie, her hometown opened a small park in her name.
Her family and friends still go there to remember her.
