With the sight of a shattered window 30 feet from two trees, the jury was able to get a photographic view of the shooter’s perspective Thursday morning on the second day of testimony in the murder trial of Mitchell Ruble.

Though witness testimony has remained relatively similar to October’s first trial, the state of Ohio has been taking an even finer-tooth comb through the details of the case this time around with its own witnesses.

Former Bureau of Criminal Investigation agent Henry Pataky, at one point holding up the 35-year-old plaster cast of a footprint left at the scene on Feb.7, 1981, gave lengthy testimony that was heavily debated between both parties. Also on Thursday was testimony from three former Washington County Sheriff’s deputies and seven different people that had been in the area that night.

Henry Pataky

After arriving on the scene of Washington County Sheriff’s Lt. Ray “Joe” Clark’s Dodd’s Run Road home the night of his murder, Pataky photographed and sketched the scene, evidence presented in court that was not emphasized much in the last trial.

With decades of law enforcement experience, including time working for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, Pataky testified that in his personal opinion, that the prints left behind were made by military-issued combat boots, a contentious piece of evidence considering Ruble was an Army reserve officer.

“You were never qualified as an expert regarding foot impressions, were you?” asked defense attorney Lawrence Whitney.

“No,” Pataky said.

“So the opinion you gave today is just a personal one?” Whitney asked.

“With my years of experience in the military, I know about military boots,” Pataky said.

The defense persistently argued that Pataky had no expert authority to say that the prints were made by military combat boots, and that the official criminalist never ruled that they were.

“A boot is a boot,” Pataky said. “And a military boot is a boot.”

Pataky also showed the jury an enlarged version of the sketch he drew 35 years ago, including the path of the shotgun bullet from the trees in the yard through the kitchen window, which shattered the glass and extinguished an indoor ceiling light.

“We tracked where pellets hit the ceiling, and we followed it back to the tree, and around the tree you could tell there had been a lot of shuffling around,” Pataky said.

Dodd’s Run Road residents

Both teenagers at the time, Amy Perry and Christy Illar both testified about being in the Dodd’s Run Road neighborhood the night of the murder.

Illar had been anxiously waiting for her stepmother to pick her up from inside her father’s Dodd’s Run Road home that night when she saw a car turn around nearby.

Perry’s testimony has placed her, along with two of her cousins, possibly the closest to the Clark residence, and possibly closest to the shooter, when the murder occurred.

The group of teenagers had been walking down the road past Clark’s house while traveling between their own homes.

“You could look right into the Clark house, you could see him sitting in there watching TV,” Perry said. “We were being goofballs, we wanted to see what he was watching on TV.”

Perry admitted that the three teens were at one point in Clark’s yard, “snooping to see what he was watching,” a comment that drew laughter from those in court, including Ruble.

“Then a car came up and pulled into the dog pound and turned around and drove back, but it sounded like someone was out there,” Perry said. “It sounded like branches crunching. We would stop and try to look but when we stopped, the noise would stop.”

Perry said at one point, her cousin even called out, asking who was there with them, but got no answer. When the trio started making their way back down the road after watching Clark get up from the couch, they heard a sound Perry said she could not mistake.

“When we headed up the road we heard a gunshot,” Perry said. “I’m not a specialist, but I’m very familiar with guns. A pistol makes a popping sound. This was a big kaboom.”

Former deputies

Former deputy Larry Stephens testified about going to Ruble’s home and taking his statement after the murder at Ruble’s home with Ruble’s wife present, something he admitted was probably not the best approach.

“It was a difficult situation, but it was my job,” Stephens said.

During a cross-examination, defense attorney James Burdon asked about the various things Stephens could have done to make the investigation more thorough.

“Did you ask him about his boots?…Did you ask him if he had any shotguns?…Did you ask to see any of his rounds of four buck?…Did you ask to see the tire tread of his Ford Pinto?” Burdon asked.

Stephens answered that he had not asked him those things at the time.

Special prosecutors Joel King and Daniel Breyer have argued that the sheriff’s office was taking a large number of tips after the murder, and that officers, some with little experience, were trying to respond to them as best as they could.

Former deputies Bob Sears and Richard Meek also testified.

Sears, who worked dispatch at the time that Ruble was fired from the sheriff’s office in 1979, recalled Ruble’s anger as he exited the sheriff’s office, shortly after Clark had told him that Sheriff Richard Ellis had approved his suspension.

Meek left his position at the sheriff’s office before Ruble was fired, but recalled speaking with Ruble on the phone after Clark’s murder.

“I called him about two months after and I said ‘They’re looking at you,'” Meek said. “He said ‘It’s nice to know they don’t have their head up their ass.'”

Car witnesses

Five different people also testified about seeing what investigators thought was the “getaway car,” a vehicle parked in seemingly precarious positions along the hill on Cole Coffman Road.

Cole Coffman Road residents Bruce Johnson and Cheryl Mowery both described a “little blue car” and a “dark blue Pinto station wagon,” respectively. Both mentioned that it was parked off the hill while they passed it that night. Both also saw a man in the car, and both described him as having light-colored hair.

Similarly, Pamela Hopkins, Beverly Harkins and Kathy Reichardt, who were all driving through the area at the time, also gave similar descriptions, though the defense questioned difference in testimonies between Thursday and October’s trial, and compared to statements given to law enforcement during the investigation.