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Murder suspect will not face trial

Victim’s daughter calls Samuel Legg III ‘personification of evil’

From left, Michael Kuring and his wife, Katherine Kedzierski Kuring, the daughter of slain Sharon Kedzierski, embrace after a hearing Wednesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court as as her friends — Denise Underberg and Jennifer Settle — stand by.

YOUNGSTOWN — Time ran out for Samuel Legg III to be restored to competency to stand trial for the murder of Sharon Kedzierski of Florida, whose body was found behind a former truck stop in Austintown in 1992.

Judge John Durkin of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court ruled Wednesday following a hearing that Legg must be confined to a state mental-health hospital and remain under the supervision of the judge indefinitely.

Legg’s mental health will be evaluated in six months and then every two years. The evaluations will guide the judge in determining whether Legg, a former truck driver, should remain hospitalized. Legg could remain hospitalized for the rest of his life.

Based on earlier evaluations, Durkin found Legg incompetent to stand trial in June 2019 and ordered that Legg be sent to Twin Valley Behavioral Healthcare in Columbus.

Authorities had a year to “restore” Legg’s mental health sufficiently to stand trial, but that did not happen, Durkin said.

Legg, 51, who in lived Ohio and Arizona, sat through the hearing listening to the judge and testimony from Austintown detective Robert Whited without reacting.

20 YEARS

Authorities could not identify the badly beaten body of Kedzierski, 43, in 1992, but did so 20 years later using DNA. Her death was from blunt-force trauma to the head, face and chest, a coroner ruled.

DNA also identified Legg as a suspect after an Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation analyst took a new look at unmatched DNA samples in 2017.

Legg was later linked to the 1997 rape of a girl in Medina County, the 1997 murder of a woman in Western Illinois and the 1996 murder of a woman in Wood County near Toledo. Those jurisdictions have pending cases against Legg.

Assistant Mahoning County Prosecutor Mike Yacovone said the other jurisdictions appeared to be waiting to see the outcome of the Mahoning County case to determine what their next step may be.

He doesn’t know if any of those jurisdictions will go forward with prosecution of their cases, he said.

Part of the purpose of the hearing was to hear from Whited on the history of the case and evidence he and detective Greg McGlynn of the Austintown Police Department gathered. The truck stop was near state Route 46.

Under questioning by defense attorney Mark Lavelle, Whited testified that the trucking company Legg drove for regularly traveled through Austintown on east-west runs, though they did not find evidence other than DNA tying Legg to the truck stop where the body was found in April 1992.

VICTIM IMPACT

Kedzierski’s oldest daughter, Katherine Kedzierski Kuring, was allowed to give a victim impact statement at the hearing, emotionally unloading on Legg as she read from prepared remarks that expressed the pain and frustration she experienced.

Kedzierski Kuring did not know for 22 years whether her mother was alive or dead after she disappeared around 1989, just after she and Kedzierski Kuring’s father got divorced.

Kedzierski Kuring and her sister, Christine, hired a private investigator and tried many other methods of trying to locate their mother.

“Emotionally over the years I would oscillate between missing my mom and desperately worrying for her safety and feeling unloved and unworthy for a mother to reach out to her daughter,” she said.

“I would interrogate myself for an answer as to why any mother would not need to find her child. Why isn’t she trying to find me? I streamed through every memory to find an offense I may have committed against her to warrant her abandonment,” she said.

“In my grandfather’s final years, he shared from his reclining chair, “If I could just get in the car and drive, I would look for her,” she said.

“‘I know, Pop Pop,’ and he would often call me Sharon when I walked into the room. He died in 1997 unaware of his daughter’s whereabouts,” Kedzierski Kuring said.

She and her sister declined to tell people about their mother’s absence. “After all, no one will look at you the same way again should you tell them your mom is missing,” she said.

She gave the practiced response, “I have been without my mom for years,” she said.

“Since my mother’s body was, at last, identified in 2013, I have wanted to confront the monster that took her life,” she said, looking at Legg.

“My mother had done nothing to deserve such violence, hatred and desecration to her body,” she said. “Sam Legg is a creature of the worst kind. I am bewildered how my beloved God created this personification of evil.

“As a Christian, my grace compels me to say, ‘May God have mercy on your soul,’ but then the greatest part of me tells you to rot in hell.”

She added, “I wish you many long, emotional tortured years in the cage of your mind, haunted every minute by your victims’ pleas for mercy, as you extinguished their lives.”

She said that “While you sink into the hopeless abyss of pain, I will channel my grief into positive endeavors and life activities to enhance the lives I touch.”

Murder suspect will not face trial

Victim’s daughter calls Samuel Legg III ‘personification of evil’

From left, Michael Kuring and his wife, Katherine Kedzierski Kuring, the daughter of slain Sharon Kedzierski, embrace after a hearing Wednesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court as as her friends — Denise Underberg and Jennifer Settle — stand by.

YOUNGSTOWN — Time ran out for Samuel Legg III to be restored to competency to stand trial for the murder of Sharon Kedzierski of Florida, whose body was found behind a former truck stop in Austintown in 1992.

Judge John Durkin of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court ruled Wednesday following a hearing that Legg must be confined to a state mental-health hospital and remain under the supervision of the judge indefinitely.

Legg’s mental health will be evaluated in six months and then every two years. The evaluations will guide the judge in determining whether Legg, a former truck driver, should remain hospitalized. Legg could remain hospitalized for the rest of his life.

Based on earlier evaluations, Durkin found Legg incompetent to stand trial in June 2019 and ordered that Legg be sent to Twin Valley Behavioral Healthcare in Columbus.

Authorities had a year to “restore” Legg’s mental health sufficiently to stand trial, but that did not happen, Durkin said.

Legg, 51, who in lived Ohio and Arizona, sat through the hearing listening to the judge and testimony from Austintown detective Robert Whited without reacting.

20 YEARS

Authorities could not identify the badly beaten body of Kedzierski, 43, in 1992, but did so 20 years later using DNA. Her death was from blunt-force trauma to the head, face and chest, a coroner ruled.

DNA also identified Legg as a suspect after an Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation analyst took a new look at unmatched DNA samples in 2017.

Legg was later linked to the 1997 rape of a girl in Medina County, the 1997 murder of a woman in Western Illinois and the 1996 murder of a woman in Wood County near Toledo. Those jurisdictions have pending cases against Legg.

Assistant Mahoning County Prosecutor Mike Yacovone said the other jurisdictions appeared to be waiting to see the outcome of the Mahoning County case to determine what their next step may be.

He doesn’t know if any of those jurisdictions will go forward with prosecution of their cases, he said.

Part of the purpose of the hearing was to hear from Whited on the history of the case and evidence he and detective Greg McGlynn of the Austintown Police Department gathered. The truck stop was near state Route 46.

Under questioning by defense attorney Mark Lavelle, Whited testified that the trucking company Legg drove for regularly traveled through Austintown on east-west runs, though they did not find evidence other than DNA tying Legg to the truck stop where the body was found in April 1992.

VICTIM IMPACT

Kedzierski’s oldest daughter, Katherine Kedzierski Kuring, was allowed to give a victim impact statement at the hearing, emotionally unloading on Legg as she read from prepared remarks that expressed the pain and frustration she experienced.

Kedzierski Kuring did not know for 22 years whether her mother was alive or dead after she disappeared around 1989, just after she and Kedzierski Kuring’s father got divorced.

Kedzierski Kuring and her sister, Christine, hired a private investigator and tried many other methods of trying to locate their mother.

“Emotionally over the years I would oscillate between missing my mom and desperately worrying for her safety and feeling unloved and unworthy for a mother to reach out to her daughter,” she said.

“I would interrogate myself for an answer as to why any mother would not need to find her child. Why isn’t she trying to find me? I streamed through every memory to find an offense I may have committed against her to warrant her abandonment,” she said.

“In my grandfather’s final years, he shared from his reclining chair, “If I could just get in the car and drive, I would look for her,” she said.

“‘I know, Pop Pop,’ and he would often call me Sharon when I walked into the room. He died in 1997 unaware of his daughter’s whereabouts,” Kedzierski Kuring said.

She and her sister declined to tell people about their mother’s absence. “After all, no one will look at you the same way again should you tell them your mom is missing,” she said.

She gave the practiced response, “I have been without my mom for years,” she said.

“Since my mother’s body was, at last, identified in 2013, I have wanted to confront the monster that took her life,” she said, looking at Legg.

“My mother had done nothing to deserve such violence, hatred and desecration to her body,” she said. “Sam Legg is a creature of the worst kind. I am bewildered how my beloved God created this personification of evil.

“As a Christian, my grace compels me to say, ‘May God have mercy on your soul,’ but then the greatest part of me tells you to rot in hell.”

She added, “I wish you many long, emotional tortured years in the cage of your mind, haunted every minute by your victims’ pleas for mercy, as you extinguished their lives.”

She said that “While you sink into the hopeless abyss of pain, I will channel my grief into positive endeavors and life activities to enhance the lives I touch.”

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