It’s not exactly what Smith had in mind. He’s been part of a multi-agency, multistate task force that has been keeping tabs on George for about 18 months. Personally, Smith has been dogging George for years because he considers him the prime suspect in the 1982 murder of Tammy King of Price Hill, whose body was found in Butler County’s Reily Twp.
“I want to see him answer for her death,” Smith said. He hoped George, who has served 22 years in prison for two homicides, one in Michigan and one in Butler County, would next be behind bars for King’s death.
But Smith is a patient man. As a cold case investigator, he has to be. In his office surrounded by portraits of victims whose murders are unsolved, he lives his motto, “never forget, never give up.”
Smith arrested George on July 16, at the Parkway Inn on Ohio 4 in Monroe. Months before, Smith took DNA evidence from George and told him it was just a matter of time until he went back to Michigan to stand trial for the murder of 36-year-old Gwendolyn Perry.
“He said, ‘Take your best swing.’ ” Smith said.
When he entered George’s motel room before the “mouse” was handcuffed without incident, Smith told him: “We are here to take our best swing.”
'He is nothing but a serial killer’
Nolan Ray George, a twice-convicted killer and now a suspect in the deaths of three women, has always been a ladies man. A charmer of women, some of whom he had a relationship with, two he even married, but most he viewed as disposable, according to the detective who has been on his case for years.
Butler County sheriff’s Detective Frank Smith said the 67-year-old, London, Ky. native likes people to think he is a “country bumpkin.” But, Smith said, “He is nothing but a serial killer.”
The detective believes George has charmed women all his life as he moved from Kentucky to Michigan and throughout Ohio. He used them to take care of him and for his own satisfaction, Smith said.
“I believe he thinks women are expendable, unless he thinks they can support him financially or give him something he needs,” Smith said.
George’s record
George was convicted of killing Francis Brown, 23, in Lake Orion, Mich., and Cindy Garland Rose, 22, of Butler County. Brown was found strangled with her own underwear in 1968. He served 12 years for the slaying.
Rose, 22, died of exposure after being left in a field after being suffocated with her panty hose in 1982. George served 10 years on a manslaughter charge.
He has been out of prison on those charges since 1992.
In addition to Perry, George is a suspect in the strangulation death of Tammy King, 26, of Price Hill, who was found dead in Reily Twp. in 1982; that of Della Mae Miller, 24, of Covington, Ohio, who was found strangled in 1967; and an unidentified woman in northern Ohio.
Smith, 60, said now that George’s DNA has been entered into an international database, it’s possible there will be other unsolved homicides to add to the list.
After getting into trouble a couple months ago when he threatened the manager of an apartment complex in Amelia, where George had been living for months with a woman, he moved to Hamilton, taking up residence with his son on Vine Street. Eventually he began seeing a woman in Price Hill, leading the task force detectives to keep a close watch on his actions.
George moved to hotels in Butler County, eventually settling in at the Parkway Inn on Ohio 4 in Monroe. There he began romancing a 36-year-old woman with children.
“He is smooth, well groomed and carries himself with the utmost confidence, even now,” Smith said, noting his pattern of cozying up to women hasn’t mellowed with his age.
Paths crossed with Sheriff Jones
One woman who had a brush with George in the late 1980s and was not charmed is Becky Jones, wife of Butler County Sheriff Richard K. Jones.
“He made my skin crawl,” Becky Jones said last week.
The incident occurred before Jones was sheriff. He was working at Lebanon Correctional Institution where George was an inmate. The Jones family lived on the grounds of the prison that is surrounded by farmland.
George was somehow able to get honor trusty status allowing him to hop on a mower and tend the fields around the prison.
One summer day, he knocked on the door of the Jones residence.
“He asked if he could pick one of the tomatoes we had growing, I told him yes,” Becky Jones said, but noted she was holding the collars of her two large dog as she talked to him.
“He was very polite. Didn’t do anything threatening,” Becky Jones said. “There was something about him that wasn’t right. He gave me the creeps. And I was around a lot of inmates, so that is saying something.”
It was later determined that the inmate was George and should not have been given the honor status because of his crime.
George is fighting extradition to Michigan, a state where he escaped from prison while serving his first sentence. He ran to Chicago where he was caught months later.
That means George will stay in Butler County until paperwork is exchanged between the states’ governors and he is transported to Michigan. It could take 30 to 90 days.
“I know as long as he is contained here the public is safe,” Smith said. He doesn’t believe George stopped killing after his release from prison in 1992.
Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2168 or lpack@coxohio.com.
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