Dayton man was suspect in Cleveland kidnapping case

On April 2, 2004, the day Gina DeJesus disappeared, Gerry Griffith Jr. said he was lost in Cleveland and stopped to ask a young woman for directions.

Days later a security guard at a nearby school would tell Cleveland police that he suspected Griffith had been trying to lure the girl into his car.

A warrant, later determined to be improperly issued by a prosecutor, was issued for Griffith’s arrest on a charge of attempted abduction and officers converged on his house in Dayton as part of the search for DeJesus.

“I was shocked because I had seen it on the news while I was up there,” Griffith said.

According to appellate court documents Cleveland and Dayton police officers, “lured Griffith back to his house by calling him at his place of work in Dayton and falsely telling him his home had been burglarized.”

They interrogated him and he eventually consented to a search of his residence to prove he didn’t have the girl.

Three guns and some crack cocaine were found, but no evidence of an abduction. Gina DeJesus was 200 miles away.

“In 30 days I went from being an employed citizen at Good Samaritan, to a child abductor, then it turned into a drug dealer,” Griffith said. He’s been convicted of theft and possession of cocaine in the past and is currently under indictment for possession of cocaine, marijuana and heroin.

A U.S. District Court judge denied Griffith’s motion to suppress the evidence from the search and he pleaded guilty to a weapons charge. He served nearly three years in federal prison before the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision.

After nearly 10 years of whispers and jokes about the abduction, Griffith said the events of the past four months have been bittersweet. Especially as he continues to fight for compensation for the years he spent in prison.

“Even when I came home, people looked at me differently,” he said.

When the story of the Cleveland kidnap victims’ escape first broke on May 6, Griffith said he felt blessed. “When they said another girl, Gina DeJesus, has been freed, I just sat up and cried,” he said. “Now they know I never had her.”