By Tom Davidson
MERCER COUNTY — “Where does it all stop?” Linda J. Karlen asked in a 2005 prison-interview about her role in the slaying of Thiel College graduate Roger “Butch” Pratt and two arsons preceding it in the late 1980s.
The question still hangs in the air, unanswered.
For Pratt’s family, things forever changed on June 17, 1988, when he left his mom’s home in Munhall, Pa., never to return.
For Miss Karlen, who served 15 years in the Ohio prison system for her role in Pratt’s slaying and is serving a 5- to 10- year sentence on an arson charge in Pennsylvania, prison has been marked by court filings, letters, and evolution of a story she tells of the sordid series of events that put her behind bars that paints her as a victim in the crimes.
Mercer County Common Pleas Court President Judge Francis J. Fornelli Friday denied a seven-page Post Conviction Relief Act petition Miss Karlen filed on her own behalf because the state Superior Court has yet to rule on an appeal of a similar petition filed in the spring.
“The petition has no merit,” Fornelli said.
Retired Mercer County District Attorney James P. Epstein — who led the prosecution’s case of the Pennsylvania arson charges — said he’s not surprised that Miss Karlen continues to fight for her freedom.
But he reaffirmed his position that she should serve the maximum for her crimes.
She isn’t due to be released until 2015.
It was 21 years ago when Thiel College graduate Pratt went missing, leading his family on a year-long crusade to find answers to what happened to him.
The truth about his fate — that he was killed June 17, 1988 — came only after police solved separate arson cases at Miss Karlen’s home in Sharon and at the furniture warehouse she co-owned in Greenville.
Miss Karlen not only admitted that authorities had enough evidence to convict her of an arson charge for the Greenville fire, she also led them to Pratt’s body and revealed the story of his slaying at the hands of her former lover.
Pratt was beaten to death at a desolate, dead-end oil-well road in Hudson, Ohio, by his fraternity brother and Thiel roommate Edward Swiger, while Swiger’s brother Michael watched.
They buried Pratt in a shallow grave at a farm near Jamestown.
Edward Swiger is serving a life sentence. His brother served nearly 20 years behind bars in Pennsylvania and Ohio before he was released in 2006.
Authorities maintain Pratt was killed to stop him from implicating Edward Swiger in burglaries at Thiel fraternity houses and both Swiger and Miss Karlen in the warehouse arson.
“She’s maintained her innocence all along” and only took a plea deal in the arson because she thought that it was in her best interest, said Tedd Nesbit, Miss Karlen’s court-appointed attorney, during a hearing before Fornelli this spring.
State Superior Court has yet to rule whether Miss Karlen missed the time-frame to appeal her sentence.
She claims prison authorities in Ohio and her lawyers have hindered rather than helped her quest for freedom.
For Epstein, it’s a case that won’t go away.
“She will persist until she’s released, I’m sure,” he said.
