Houser
Photo courtesy of Van Wert Police Department
VAN WERT — Van Wert County Common Pleas Judge Martin Burchfield authorized $2,000 Tuesday so a Rockford man’s attorney can retain a forensic consultant to assist in determining a Van Wert resident’s time of death when she was murdered in 2023.
In his motion requesting the funding on Sept. 25, Ryan Houser’s attorney Kenneth Rexford said the state thinks Barbara Ganger was murdered at 8 p.m. Sept. 3, 2023. Her body was not discovered until 10 p.m. Sept. 4, 2023, and the autopsy was conducted at 8 a.m. Sept. 5, 2023. This motion relates to a previous motion filed by Rexford stating Houser is going to present evidence that he was in or near Rockford Sept. 4 to prove his innocence.
“The official autopsy was hampered by the refrigeration, such that time of death would have been difficult to assess, apparently,” Rexford wrote. “The only real clues at that time were the lack of signs of decomposition and the weak rigor mortis. Research by the undersigned suggests to the undersigned that these clues were possible after 36 hours but nonetheless suggest a more likely scenario of a death at roughly 8 a.m. on September 4, 2023.
“The death examiner’s report strangely lacks any reference to normal death scene data, including no indication of what the ambient room temperature was, what the body temperature was, or whether livor mortis was fixed or not,” Rexford continued. “Field notes have been requested in discovery, not yet received. Notably, the Lucas County autopsy was done without any data or analysis provided by the local death examiner.
“… Time of death data should be collected in any case where a person is found clearly murdered but timing is not obvious. It seems that the death examiner, unless the report is incomplete, did not take basic measurements, as set forth above, and did not send her findings to Lucas County. It appears that Lucas County did not even ask for the Van Wert analysis. Instead, the entire focus of the death examination and then autopsy was on cause of death, a rather obvious thing to assess when you see a bullet hole through the eye and a second into the heart.”
The funding was requested because Houser, 38, and his family can’t afford it. Rexford presented three possible candidates ,and Pathology and Toxicology Forensic Consultant Dr. John Hunsaker was the most reasonably priced.
Also recently in Houser’s case, Allen County Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey Reed, who is serving as a visiting judge, overruled a motion to suppress Houser’s cloud storage on his cell phone.
Another pretrial has been set for Nov. 22.
Ganger was Houser’s girlfriend. He was indicted on aggravated murder, murder, tampering with evidence and having weapons while under disability.
Reach Charlotte Caldwell at 567-242-0451.
