BATAVIA, Ohio — The jury in the Jacob Bumpass trial will reconvene Monday morning after it failed to reach a verdict after more than eight hours of deliberation.
The case was handed to the six men and six women tasked with determining Bumpass's guilt just before 1 p.m. Friday, but despite deliberations extended well into the night, the jury requested more time.
Shortly after 4 p.m., the jury asked the judge for clarification on the definition of "reasonable doubt" — the threshold for their decision. Judge Kevin Miles told them he already provided the necessary instructions and did not provide further information.
Bumpass, 34, is charged in connection to the 2010 disappearance and death of 17-year-old Paige Johnson. Her remains were found in a wooded area near East Fork Lake Park a decade later in 2020.
Following the discovery, a Clermont County grand jury indicted Bumpass on charges of tampering with evidence and abuse of a corpse. Bumpass is not standing trial for nor is he charged with murder in Johnson's death. That's because prosecutors didn't have enough evidence to file homicide charges, in part because coroners were unable to determine a cause of death for the 17-year-old mother.
For five days, prosecutors argued their case in an effort to prove to jurors that beyond a reasonable doubt, Bumpass is responsible for leaving Johnson's body in Clermont County.
More than a dozen witnesses took the stand over three days of testimony including Johnson's family, investigators, the man who found her remains and a retired FBI cell phone data expert.
The defense argued that there were multiple searches around East Fork State Park that led to nothing. Bumpass's attorney, Louis Sirkin, asked several detectives throughout the trial if there was a possibility the remains simply were not there during the original searches.
But testimony from David Rader, director of EquuSearch Midwest, said the area where the remains were found never peaked law enforcement's radar. Rader worked with police during their searches, noting that her remains were found off a small path that was easy to miss off State Route 32.
Covington Det. Austin Ross, the last investigator on Johnson's case, told the jury the cell tower Bumpass's phone pinged off in 2010 was just over a mile away from East Fork State Park. AT&T only keeps records for seven years, but from 2014 to 2020, there were no other pings in that area from Bumpass's phone.
Kevin Horan, a retired FBI agent and current cell phone data expert who reviewed phone records in this case, was the last to take the stand Thursday. He explained how cell towers work.
While they send and receive signals to cell phones within a 360-degree radius, typically extending a mile out, those signals are also pinpointed within certain zones of that radius.
Horan explained Bumpass's phone records put him on S. R. 32 heading east toward the location Johnson's remains were found in the early morning of September 23, or at least his phone was moving that way.
He said the phone pings suggested he was in the area between 4:13 and 4:18 a.m. and then heading west back to his home in Taylor Mill at 5 a.m.
The jury will reconvene Monday at 8:30 a.m. to continue deliberations.
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