Summary:

Joe Byrne and Brewer were fraternity brothers who socialized, along with their wives, occasionally after college. The Byrnes then lived in the Cincinnati area.

Brewer lured Joe's 21 year old wife Sherry to a Sharonville motel on the pretense that she would meet Brewer and his wife there to buy stereo speakers.

Brewer came to the motel without his wife, kidnapped Sherry Byrne and raped her at the motel, then forced her into his trunk. Brewer stabbed her 15 times, slit her throat, and hanged her using his necktie.

Four days later, Brewer confessed and led officers to her body in a rented storage unit in Franklin.

Citations:

State v. Brewer, Ohio App. 2 Dist.1 (WL 339940 Jun 14, 1996) (PCR)
State v. Brewer, Ohio App. 2 Dist.1 (WL 527740 Sep 28, 1994) (PCR)
State v. Brewer, 48 Ohio St.3d 501 (1990), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 881 (1991). (Direct Appeal)
State v. Brewer, 549 N.E.2d 491 (Ohio 1990). (Direct Appeal)

Final Meal:

Deep-fried chicken, baked potato with butter, macaroni and cheese, corn, dinner rolls, a slice of apple pie and root beer.

Final Words:

"Just that I'd like to say to the system in Ohio, as far as the death row inmates are concerned, there are some that are innocent. I’m not one of them. But there are plenty that are innocent. I hope the state recognizes that. That’s all I have to say."

ClarkProsecutor.org

Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction

Inmate #: 187234

Inmate: Brewer, David M.

DOB: 4/22/59

County of Conviction: Greene

Date of Murder: 3/21/85

Received at DOC: 10/17/85 - MANSFIELD CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION

ProDeathPenalty.com

Joe Byrne, whose wife, Sherry, was abducted, raped and killed on March 21, 1985, said he believes the state should execute people faster. "It's a joke,'' Byrne said. "There should be due process, but at some point, the line needs to be drawn. We've gone way past that.''

His wife's killer, David Brewer, has been on Death Row since admitting to and being convicted of her murder. Now remarried and an executive with a New Jersey manufacturing company, Byrne monitors the court battle to execute Brewer. If Brewer is put to death -- and Byrne doubts it will happen -- he said he wants to watch. "People say I should get away from the case, but I just can't do it,'' he said. "For two years, I did not want to live.''

The Byrnes had been married just eight months and were living in the Cincinnati suburb of Springdale when Brewer, a family friend, lured Sherry Byrne to a hotel. There he raped her, threw her into the trunk of his car and drove around southwest Ohio most of the day.

In an isolated area near Beavercreek, Brewer stabbed Sherry Byrne, slit her throat and hanged her using his necktie. He was arrested five days later. Police found her body in a rented storage unit in Franklin. "She had no chance,'' Byrne said. "She tried so hard to save her life.'' Now Byrne wants Brewer to die -- as much to defeat his public defender attorneys as to avenge his wife's death. "The lawyers have to be stopped,'' he said. "That's my revenge.''

UPDATE: The Ohio Supreme Court on Friday set an April 29 execution date for David Brewer, the former Washington Twp. man who almost exactly 18 years ago raped and killed his college fraternity brother’s bride, Vandalia Butler High School graduate Sherry Byrne.

The 21-year-old victim, kidnapped and trapped in the trunk of Brewer’s car, wrote “Help me please” in lipstick on a piece of paper and shoved it outside the trunk, where it was read by other motorists as Brewer drove through Beavercreek. No help came, and Brewer killed her on a secluded lane off Factory Road on March 21, 1985.

Brewer, who will turn 44 a week before his execution date, has exhausted all appeals. His attorney, assistant Ohio public defender Joseph Wilhelm, said no last-minute appeals will be filed, but Brewer will ask Gov. Bob Taft to commute his death sentence to life imprisonment. A clemency hearing before the Ohio Parole Board has not yet been scheduled.

Even though Taft has yet to grant clemency to a condemned prisoner, Wilhelm said, “we would hope he would give it serious consideration. I think there’s a human being there worth saving. David’s pretty unique among people who are facing the death penalty, in that he led a pretty clean life before he committed one terrible act,” adding Brewer has been an exemplary inmate since his 1985 conviction by a three-judge panel. “Mercy weighs in his favor.”

Joe Byrne, Sherry’s widower, disagrees. Asked for his reaction to the Supreme Court's action, he said, “Well, it’s about time. This should’ve happened, in my opinion, eight or 10 years ago,” Byrne said. “But thanks to our wonderful system, lawyers can delay it for years and years with bogus arguments and whatever their imagination can come up with.”

Byrne, who lives in central New Jersey, said he plans to be a witness at his one-time friend’s lethal injection at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility at Lucasville. Brewer is on Death Row at Mansfield Correctional Institution. “I’m going to go because I feel like I have to, to represent Sherry,” Byrne said, “because through the whole process she’s been cast aside as sort of a faceless victim.”

Joe Byrne and Brewer were fraternity brothers who socialized, along with their wives, occasionally after college. The Byrnes then lived in the Cincinnati area. Brewer lured Sherry Byrne to a Sharonville motel on the pretense that she would meet Brewer and his wife there to buy stereo speakers.

Brewer came to the motel without his wife, kidnapped Sherry Byrne and raped her at the motel, then forced her into his trunk. After he stabbed and strangled her, Brewer put her body in a storage locker in Franklin.

Brewer would be the seventh convicted murderer to be put to death in Ohio since 1999, when executions resumed after a 36-year hiatus. Most recently, Richard Fox was executed Feb. 12 for the murder of a Bowling Green woman.

There are 205 men on Ohio’s Death Row. Joe Byrne said he doesn’t know how he’ll feel as he watches his former friend Brewer die. “I don’t know how I’m going to react when I get there,” he said. “The word ‘closure’ is way overrated. But he inflicted a lot of pain on a lot of people beyond myself. I don’t view it as a sad event.”

UPDATE: In March 1985, Sherry and Joe Byrne were planning their future. Sherry, 21, and Joe, 25, had married a few months earlier. She was working as a part-time cosmetics saleswoman, and Joe had a job with a prominent financial company. They bought a house in Springdale.

They were trying to have a baby. Then in a brutal and gruesome act, Joe's friend and fraternity brother, David Brewer, lured Sherry from her home on a ruse, then abducted, raped and killed her. "As time goes on, it's less about how much I miss her," says Joe Byrne, now 43 and living in Bridgewater, N.J. Now, "I'm sad that she was robbed of her life, and can't enjoy the fruits of my work." Brewer was convicted of Sherry Byrne's kidnapping and murder. The state of Ohio will execute him on Tuesday; Gov. Bob Taft on Friday declined to grant clemency.

There's never been any question that Brewer killed Sherry on March 21, 1985. But his attorneys say death is not the right punishment for a 43-year-old man who led an upstanding life before and after the crime. "Our argument is that his whole life should be taken into account," says Ohio Assistant Public Defender Joseph Wilhelm. "That should outweigh the worst thing he ever did." Sherry's family says death is exactly the right punishment.

David Brewer didn't just take Sherry's life when he strangled her with a necktie, stabbed her 15 times and slit her throat. He ruined the lives of everyone close to her. Her mother, Myrtle Kaylor, had to be hospitalized. Grief overwhelming all other emotions, she and Sherry's stepfather, Lylburn Kaylor, soon divorced. Joe, too, said he was in and out of psychiatric care after his wife's death. Now, "An unexplainable ease has come over me," Joe Byrne says. "I think he needs to die, mostly because I don't think he and his attorneys should be rewarded for all the lies they have perpetuated over the years. "Dave has never accepted responsibility for what he did," he says.

That March day, Brewer, an appliance store manager who lived in suburban Dayton, Ohio, called Sherry Byrne and invited her to come meet him and his wife at a Sharonville hotel. But when she arrived with her puppy, Beau, she found Brewer alone there. After assaulting her, he forced her into the trunk of his car, then drove her around for hours before killing her that evening on a secluded road in Greene County. The puppy was let loose. Four days later, Brewer confessed and led officers to her body. He was convicted that fall and sentenced to death.

Joe Byrne describes his wife as a beautiful person who was always smiling. He theorizes that Brewer misinterpreted her friendly nature. Then, when he found out she didn't have the same feelings, he got mad and attacked her. On the day he was sentenced for Sherry's murder, Greene County Prosecutor William Schenck told Sherry's family the appeals would take more than 15 years.

Countless appeals in state and federal court have led to Tuesday. Schenck has presided over four death penalty cases - Brewer would be the first defendant to die. Byrne asked him to witness the execution with him, and Schenck agreed. He debunks the argument that Brewer should be spared because he is good person. "Some crimes are so horrid nothing else matters," Schenck says. "What he did more than justifies the death penalty. He had more than a dozen opportunities to let her go and he chose the dark side." Schenck says he's tense about watching a man die, but stands by his decision. "I asked for the death penalty, and I have to have enough backbone to see it through," he says.

It's never been easy, but the first year was the hardest, Joe Byrne says. Twice that year he checked into the psychiatric unit of The Christ Hospital. "I wanted to die," Byrne says. He never went back to the home he shared with Sherry.

Instead, he moved into his parents' Middletown home. He couldn't even go back to his job. When his boss pleaded with him to return, Byrne tried, but burst into tears on his way downtown. He turned around and went home. Beau the puppy was found and returned to Byrne. For months after the murder, if a woman screamed on television, Beau would go crazy. Slowly, Byrne found his drive again.

He sold the Springdale home, keeping only a few mementos. In particular, he clung to a basketball jersey his wife often slept in. He filed civil lawsuits, winning a half million dollars in a wrongful death suit against Brewer - not that Brewer has any money. It was more about making sure Brewer never sold the rights to his story for a book or movie, Byrne says.

Byrne remarried in late 1987. When a job offer came from New Jersey in 1988, he took it. Too many sad memories in Cincinnati, he thought. He and his second wife, Cristine, have three children. Now the most difficult times are anniversary dates. The day Joe and Sherry got married, her birthday.

The day she died. In 1990 during a trip home to visit his parents, Byrne went to the deserted farm lane where his wife drew her last breath. "I just sat there are cried," he says. Byrne has stayed close with the Kaylors over the years. That's helped, Myrtle Kaylor says. "There's a void in my life as if it's never really complete," says Kaylor, who lives in Dayton. She's never been able to forge close relationships like she had with her daughter. "I never remarried, never gave of myself like that," she says. "I'm so afraid that I'll be hurt again." She's hoping Brewer's death will bring a sense a relief. "It's not going to be a celebration," Kaylor says. "I don't celebrate somebody else's downfall, but at the same time it means I don't have to deal with more hearings and more appeals and read about it in the paper." Kaylor says by attending the execution she'll "walk the last mile with her daughter."

UPDATE: Details of Sherry Byrne's killing - At first authorities didn't divulge the most gruesome details of 21-year-old Sherry Byrne's death. But over the years the horror she experienced during those last hours with her killer, David Brewer, unraveled during hearings and death sentence appeals. MARCH 21, 1985: David Brewer called Sherry Byrne at her Springdale home and asked her to meet him and his wife, Kathy, at the Red Carpet Inn in Sharonville, where they were celebrating his wife's pregnancy.

Also, he said, he had stereo speakers for her that they had previously talked about. Sherry called her husband, Joe Byrne, at work with the news, and then rushed out of the house with their 4-month-old puppy, Beau, a Christmas present from Byrne to his wife. Nobody knows for sure exactly what happened at the hotel, but prosecutors say Brewer, who was more than twice Sherry's size, raped and beat her, tied her up and tossed her in the trunk of his Mercury Topaz. He drove around for Hamilton, Warren and Greene counties for several hours, stopping several times to beat her up. She was bound and gagged. She managed to write a sign in lipstick saying, "Help me please," which she shoved out the trunk's crack.

Passing motorists saw the sign, jotted the license plate number and reported it to the Beavercreek Police Department outside Dayton, Ohio. They traced the plate to Brewer and called him at work at an appliance store, only he wasn't there. He had taken Sherry to a small, secluded farm lane in Greene County. Passing cars scared him off and he left.

When Brewer stopped in at work at about 7 p.m., Sherry alive in his trunk, co-workers mentioned police were looking for him. He returned the police officers' call, but played it off as a prank he pulled with a hitchhiker. Still officers insisted on checking out his car in person. Brewer conceded, and said he'd be at the station in about an hour. Brewer took that time to drive back to the farm lane, where he killed Sherry and dumped her body in a ditch, prosecutors said.

Before talking to the officer, Brewer slipped into the police station's bathroom and wiped any trace of blood on his hands and feet. Beavercreek police believed Brewer's hitchhiker story, cited him with inducing panic, and sent him home. Brewer left, collected Sherry's body and then went to his Dayton area home to bed, leaving her in his trunk.

Byrne spent those same evening hours in a panic. He knew when Sherry didn't come home that something had happened. The story began to unravel when he called the Brewers and Cathy Brewer said she wasn't pregnant and hadn't seen Sherry that day. Her husband had not yet come home. Because Sherry had not been missing 24 hours, Byrne could only make an unofficial missing persons complaint with the Springdale Police Department.

FRIDAY, MARCH 22, 1985: Byrne made an official missing person's report and a group organized to pass out fliers with Sherry and Beau's picture. Brewer called and expressed concern. He admitted he talked to Sherry that morning, but said she didn't seem like herself. Byrne never considered that Brewer might have done something - even when Brewer asked if he was a suspect.

SATURDAY, MARCH 23, 1985: Brewer hid Sherry in a storage locker then visited her husband. He hugged his friend and Sherry Byrne's mother. It would be the last time the two men saw each other until the trial. Later that day, Joe Byrne found a card Sherry had left for him tucked inside their Bible. "I miss you more today than yesterday," it said.

SUNDAY, MARCH 24, 1985: Byrne went to church. "I talked to God like I have never done before, begging Him for a miracle, to help Sherry to be alive," he said. By this time police began to theorize that maybe Sherry had been cheating on him, something Joe insisted wasn't true.

MONDAY, MARCH 25, 1985: Springdale police interviewed Joe, then turned their attention to David Brewer. In 30 minutes they caught Brewer in three lies, each version more absurd than the last. When they left Brewer alone with his wife, he confessed. He led police to the Franklin storage unit where Sherry's body was and took police to the place where he killed her. The knife was still there.

TUESDAY, MARCH 26, 1985: Two officers, accompanied by a priest, went to the Byrne's house. They didn't have to say anything. "I fell to me knees crying as I knew that Sherry was dead," he said. "My world was crushed." A Greene County grand jury indicted Brewer on charges of kidnapping and aggravated murder with death penalty specifications. Later that year Brewer's case went trial. Brewer testified that he never meant to harm Sherry and planned to let her go eventually. But when he released her from the trunk she screamed and ran away. "I just lost control," he said during the trial. "It's even hard for me to remember what happened. I was just trying to her quiet. I just lost control."