In the calm of the woods in Mercer County, Ohio, a woman’s dog found a nightmare on a January morning in 2016.
A person’s backbone was found under the leaves. It was the first clue in the mystery of how a young man died.
Ryan Zimmerman was only 21 years old. His family in Columbus hadn’t seen him for months and were very worried because he had gone missing.
Ryan had a different kind of start, as he tried to come to terms with life on social media at 21 in 2015. An online connection with Corey Buzzard led to a move to Columbus for a fresh start.
He was living there with Corey, his wife, Sarah, and after she moved out with her new man, Naria “Jen” Whitaker, without any idea of the darkness that lies within.
Tensions boiled as loyalties were tested. Corey’s marriage came apart at the seams, and Sarah married Jen in a cloud of whispers of betrayal.
Ryan was ensnared in the tangle, attracting jealousy and rage. He disappeared on Sept. 25, 2015; his car was impounded a few days later, after which a missing persons report was filed, and that went cold.
DNA did not link the spine to Ryan until five years had passed, a development that came as a shock to investigators.
The partial remains are dismembered at the neck, arms, and legs, suggesting a brutal cover-up. Absent were his head, lower arms, and legs, clues to a crime strewn across Ohio’s tucked-away places.
Detectives homed in on the roommates and their competing narratives gathered like storm clouds. Sarah and Jen initially denied involvement, but the case grew stronger with social media warrants.
The Columbus apartment would become the scene of a crime, with Ryan losing his life in a lethal altercation along a hallway.
Sarah was admitted in 2021, acknowledging she had strangled Ryan in a fit of rage, with Jen aiding in the macabre damage control.
They cut his body into pieces in the bathtub and threw some of the parts away in trash bins, gas stations, and a park called West Bank State Park.
The disposal spree took place across states, a frantic effort to wash away their crime.
Jen broke the commandment of denial when confronted with forensics, but tragedy would find her during her arrest.
She drew a pistol from her purse and killed herself before five officers, leaving Sarah to face the music alone.
The suicide stunned the residents of Marion, Ind., where the women had quietly rebuilt their lives in a state of denial.
Sarah’s pleas deflected blame, containing the suggestion of an accident in a love triangle that went bad.
But prosecutors described a cold-blooded killing, fueled by rejection and rage.
In January 2022, she said she was guilty of killing someone. Because of that, she didn’t get the death penalty but was given a life sentence in prison. She can ask to leave after 30 years.
Ryan’s sister, Manda Moore, wept as she addressed the court at sentencing: “My kids will never meet their uncle.”
She grieved the brother who loved video games and cartoons, stolen by those he trusted. The courtroom resounded with loss, a family’s grief exposed.
The case laid bare the darkness behind common bonds of affection, in which jealousy devolves into violence.
They commended DNA’s role in breaching five years of silence. Ryan’s story is a call for vigilance, reminding us that behind help waits horror we never imagine.
While Sarah spends her sentence, Ryan would live on through memorials and family stories. His light, extinguished far too early, serves as a warning about the cost of unchecked anger.
The justice was slow, but the justice came, scraping by on a death rattle and an echo for what’s gone.
