Opinion ID: 782526
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Harrison Hazzard

Text: 27 The government presented evidence that, in 1994, Harrison Hazzard lived in the Canton, Ohio, area. Hazzard suffered from cerebral palsy and received SSI benefits. Hazzard's sister, Sherry Beckley, testified that she last spoke to her brother on June 2, 1994. The following day she could not locate him. His apartment manager told her that she had last seen Hazzard on June 3, 1994, in the company of defendant. That was the same day that Hazzard withdrew all of his money from his bank account. 28 The bank teller who saw Hazzard on June 3, 1994, told Postal Inspector Gregory Duerr that Hazzard told her he was withdrawing all of his savings because he had a friend who was going to help him take care of his finances. According to Duerr, defendant admitted to the Canton police that he had taken Hazzard to the bank on June 3, 1994. 29 Duerr testified that on June 8, 1994, five days after Hazzard was last seen, the police found defendant in Hazzard's apartment along with Robert Cassidy. Defendant told the police that he was a friend of Hazzard's and that he had Hazzard's permission to be in the apartment. When Duerr interviewed Cassidy a year or two later, Cassidy told him that defendant raped him in Hazzard's apartment on June 8, 1994, and threatened to put him down like he did the two guys in Florida. Cassidy also told Duerr that the previous day, June 7, 1994, defendant had taken Cassidy to an area south of Canton in Ostenburg Township and forced Cassidy to have sex with him. Human remains were found at this same location on February 23, 1995. In January 2000, those remains were identified as Hazzard's remains. 30 DeLay testified that on one occasion while he was living with defendant in Canton, they were driving by a wooded area and defendant wanted to stop and go into the woods. When DeLay asked why, defendant told him he had killed Hazzard in order to get Hazzard's Social Security checks. 31 Although there is no direct evidence regarding the cause of Hazzard's death, there was sufficient circumstantial evidence to enable the district court to find that Hazzard was murdered and that he was murdered by defendant. As the district court noted, defendant was with Hazzard when he withdrew all his money from the bank on the last day he was seen; defendant had a key to Hazzard's apartment and was found in his apartment within days of Hazzard's disappearance; defendant admitted to DeLay that he killed Hazzard; and Hazzard's body was found in the woods where defendant took Cassidy soon after Hazzard's disappearance and where defendant indicated to DeLay he had killed Hazzard.