Credit: Montgomery County Jail
Credit: Montgomery County Jail
Patricia Peck, 62, of Clayton was reported missing Feb. 25, 2007, when she did not show up for work at the hair salon she co-owned in Butler Twp. The previous day, she left work to see her son, according to the Montgomery County Prosecutor’s Office.
Her body was found March 8, 2007, in the back seat of her SUV in a back parking lot at the now-razed hotel at 3300 Terminal Drive in the city of Dayton.
“Her body had signs of blunt force trauma to her face and torso. There was a plastic bag that had been wrapped around her face,” an affidavit filed in Dayton Municipal Court stated.
The coroner’s office determined the cause of death to be strangulation, and the victim’s son was a suspect early in the investigation, the prosecutor’s office said.
Young previously told police he had last seen her after she dropped him off at his apartment the night of Feb. 24, 2007, according to the affidavit.
In 2023, evidence was submitted to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation for review, which found DNA from an unknown male on the pants and socks worn by Peck at the time of her killing.
A search warrant was obtained in August 2023 for Young’s DNA, which police said was found to be a match.
During a June 13 interview with Dayton police, Young admitted he had worked at the Dayton Airport Inn for more than three years. He also reportedly admitted to police that Peck had gone inside his apartment on the night of Feb. 24, 2007, and not just dropped him off, which he had never admitted before, the affidavit stated.
Police back in 2007 said Young was the last person to see his mother alive, but he told the Dayton Daily News that he had nothing to do with her death. He said the night before she went missing, they went to a grocery store and then a Wendy’s drive-thru before his mother dropped him off at his Huber Heights apartment.
“I figured she just went home. I didn’t think anything was even wrong,” Young told this newspaper.
Previous Stories:
March 12, 2007: Beautician’s son speaks about mother’s death
March 10, 2007: Missing Clayton woman found dead In SUV
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