Staff photo / Ed Runyan Attorney Jeffrey Haupt of Alliance, left, sits with Robert L. Moore, 52, of Alliance, during a hearing Wednesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. Moore is charged with aggravated murder and murder in the 2009 disappearance and presumed death of Glenna J. White, 17, of Smith Township. Moore’s trial is set to begin Monday.

YOUNGSTOWN — Mahoning County Common Pleas Judge Maureen Sweeney ruled that prosecutors can present evidence that Glenna J. White, 17, of Smith Township, woke up individuals in a home on Alden Avenue in Alliance late June 2, 2009, to tell them that Robert L. Moore had touched her inappropriately or tried to rape her.

But the judge stated she will not rule on whether evidence regarding a car fire about a week later can be admitted into evidence “until the court is provided with further information as to how (prosecutors) intend to show its relevance.”

Sweeney issued the ruling Wednesday after a hearing on the two issues.

Moore, 52, of Alliance, is scheduled to go to trial Monday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court on charges of aggravated murder and murder in White’s disappearance and presumed death. White’s body was never found.

Prosecutors have said that after White made her remarks, Moore “demanded to take (White) home, left with her in Deanna Shreve’s car, and was gone for over an hour, returning without her.”

Shreve was Moore’s girlfriend at the time. White was the girlfriend of Shreve’s son at the time, prosecutors have said.

Sweeney ruled previously that Moore’s 1993 Stark County sentence of 10 to-25 years in prison on involuntary manslaughter in the death of Virginia Lecorchick, 22, can be introduced at the trial.

Lecorchick’s body was found by swimmers in Berlin Lake on July 10, 1993, near Willow Point in Lexington Township, Stark County.

In Sweeney’s ruling Wednesday, she said White’s remarks about an alleged sexual assault are being offered to show motive for the homicide and because it is possibly “part of a course of conduct.”

CAR FIRE

As for the car, prosecutors want to offer evidence regarding a fire that damaged the car Moore is alleged to have left Shreve’s home in the night White disappeared. The fire took place about a week after White’s disappearance.

But Moore’s attorney, Jeffrey Haupt of Alliance, argued during the hearing no evidence indicates Moore started the fire involving the car.

He said the fire department that investigated “did not find anything to say that there was accelerants used. They did not find anything to say someone had caused that.”

He said other people drove the car between the time Moore drove it and the fire, and that the owners of the car had been having trouble with the car radio before the fire.

The White case was stagnant for years, but it was reopened in March 2020 after an investigator with the Portage County Sheriff’s Office received a tip while working on an unrelated matter.

The White investigation began because of another cold case the Portage County Sheriff’s office was investigating. It was the August 1994 murder of 17-year-old Katheryne Menendez. She disappeared from Alliance, and her body was found near the Berlin Reservoir at the edge of Portage County.

“In June of 2020, I received some information through a tip about Glenna Jean White,” said investigator Ed Kennedy. Kennedy contacted the U.S. Marshals Service, and a team was assembled to investigate.

erunyan@vindy.com