He Murdered His ‘Best Friend’ So That His Wife Did Not Know That They Were Lovers — Brad McGarry

On May 7, 2017, at 6:15 p.m., the police of the small and quiet city of Bellaire, Ohio, received a shocking call. A desperate woman claimed that she had found with her husband and daughter the lifeless body of a friend in the basement of his house.

When the agents arrived at the place, they found the couple who, together with their daughter, had discovered the body. David Kinney and his wife Cherry had been friends for years with Brad McGarry, the victim. Apparently that afternoon they had gone to Brad’s house to give him a herbicide and found the lifeless man.

The agents found that Brad, 43, was lying on his stomach on the floor on a large pool of blood and at first glance they could see that he had two gunshot wounds to his head.

The couple said that Brad had just ended a relationship with a guy named Scotty who didn’t know his last name. Maybe that had led him to take his own life.

But when the coroner arrived at the scene, he undid this theory. To begin with, the gunshot wounds were in the back of the neck and there was no weapon near the deceased.

Everything in the house was so scrambled that it felt like Brad’s death had been caused by a robbery that had ended badly. But as they delve deeper, the researchers realized that the valuables were inside.

The alleged thief had not taken his video mobile phone or the electronic devices, not to mention that there was money thrown on the floor. Some time later, Detective Ryan Allar said the following:

“While walking through the scene I realized that there were items of great value. Brad McGarry had a 9 mm pistol and was an art collector. By this I mean that their house was a hidden treasure for thieves, and they didn’t take anything. This was the most staged crime scene I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Detective Allar was clear about it, for him the person who had ended Brad’s life prepared the scene to make it look like a robbery. What I could least imagine at that moment was that behind everything there was something much more sinister.

The investigation:

The next step was to interview Brad’s friends and family to try to get a timeline and more information about his life. Thanks to several testimonies, they managed to know the full name of their ex-partner.

It was a man named Scotty Butler so after getting his address they went to his home to talk to him. But to their surprise it was the man’s mother who opened the door for them and what he told them completely ruled out Scotty as a suspect. According to the woman, her son had been in prison for a few weeks for skipping parole.

Desperate due to the lack of clues, the agents decided to check Brad’s neighborhood more than anything in case there were cameras that were recording towards his house. It must be said that here there was luck because a neighbor had a security system that pointed towards Brad’s street so you could see who was entering and leaving the house.

While some of the agents reviewed the images, the others continued to interview friends and family until it was their turn of Schuyler Strawser, Brad’s cousin. This woman said something that completely changed the course of the investigation.

Strawse stated that on the day of events she was with Brad until 1:30 p.m. Her cousin told her that he was leaving because he had stayed with DJ, a married man with whom he had been in relationships for years.

To this he added that the two had had a lot of arguments because Brad wanted DJ to leave his wife.

When the agents pressed for more details about the unknown Strawser said that DJ was actually his friend David Kinney.

As the detectives needed to know more about this relationship and also about David’s location on the day of the events, what they did was talk to him, but not to ask him anything. They simply made him believe that they needed to keep his mobile phone to extract some photos he had taken from the crime scene.

Checking the phone, the agents detected that David had deleted several messages that he exchanged with Brad. Even so, they found evidence that the two friends had a relationship that went beyond friendship.

In addition, the location of the David device confirmed that he was in the house at the time of the murder.

On the other hand, the security images of the neighbor were also very revealing. In them, David was seen arriving at Brad’s house in his wife’s car at 2 a.m. and leaving 40 minutes later.

A few hours later, David was caught in his truck with his family to bring him the herbicide that Brad had borrowed from him, at which point they discovered the body.

With all this information, the police now needed David to confess to the crime.

During the interrogation, David changed his version at least 7 times. At first he said that he was at Brad’s house alone, then he included Brad with an unknown man who was the one who fired the gun.

David, who in theory saw everything, did not go to the police because he was scared, however after the agent’s pressure he provided another version.

David admitted to the agent that Brad and he were in an intimate relationship. According to the latest version he gave on the day of the events, they argued because his friend wanted him to leave his wife. At one point Brad pointed a gun at him and after a struggle David managed to get hold of the revolver and shot him in self-defense. Already on the ground he pressed the trigger again and left the house to get rid of the gun.

However, the autopsy report did not coincide with his version of what happened to the place where Brad had the gunshot wounds.

On May 9, 2017, that is, two days after the crime, David was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. Before the court and in the presence of his lawyer, he pleaded not guilty.

The trial:

The trial against 31-year-old David Kinner began in February 2018. According to the prosecutor’s office, David ended Brad’s life because he was pressuring him to tell his wife about the type of relationship they had.

A few days later David was found guilty of aggravated homicide with a firearm specification and for this he was sentenced to life imprisonment plus an additional 3 years without the possibility of parole.

David is currently serving his sentence at the Belmont Correctional Facility in Ohio.

Sergeant Cruse of the Belmont County Sheriff’s Office told the media:

“It is a tragedy to end the life of a person who obviously loved him and worried only about keeping him a secret. It’s really sad for everyone.”

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