Justice comes in 2 colors

CLYDE — Another national television show about crime in America has produced a segment about the six-year-old local murder case that led to the downfall of a drug-addicted sheriff and a dishonest detective. Dometi Pongo Register photo/ANDY OURIEL "Heather Bogle's case is one of the few that sheds a light on so many of society's ills, from the way people without money and resources interact with police, and police misconduct, all the way to issues involving violence against women and folks being falsely accused," said Dometi Pongo, a New York-based journalist and host of "MTV True Life: Crime." NBC's "Dateline" and CBS' "48 Hours" television news programs both also previously produced segments about the April 2015 murder of Heather Bogle. Both programs and MTV gave considerable praise to the Register for sticking with the story and exposing the corruption of former Sandusky County Sheriff Kyle Overmyer and former sheriff's detective Sean O'Connell. Register executive editor Matt Westerhold was interviewed for the program by Pongo at the newspaper's building in Sandusky. Heather Bogle Provided photo "What I love about his paper, the Sandusky Register, is they have no problem holding authorities accountable. I mean this dude is my kind of reporter," Pongo said, referring to Westerhold. Ex-sheriff Overmyer was forced out after being convicted in 2016 of drug and theft charges. He was sentenced to four years in prison. O'Connell quit after he was caught falsifying evidence against a Black woman, Keyona Bor, who told her story on the Register's public affairs talk program "Between the Lines" after O'Connell began harassing and falsely accusing her. O'Connell quit his job in June 2016. "He thought by resigning he wouldn't get in any trouble," Jennifer Bogle, Heather's sister who became an activist for justice for Heather, told Pongo, referring to the former detective as a "POS." O'Connell was convicted on charges related to manufacturing false evidence during his investigation of Heather's murder and sentenced to two years in prison in 2017. While being interviewed during Between the Lines on Friday, Keyona Bor talked about how she was falsely accused as a suspect during the Heather Bogle investigation by former Detective Sean O'Connell. Register photo/ERIN McLAUGHLIN "O'Connell's sentencing was a far cry from justice for Keyona Bor," Pongo said. "She lost her job, her apartment and even her kids for a while when he targeted her for murder." Bor, who appeared several times on "Between the Lines" with Westerhold during O'Connell's falsified investigation, told Pongo she didn't feel a "sense of redemption," as he suggested she might after her name was cleared. "I felt like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I'm still facing evictions on my record. Those are things I still have to deal with, pieces of it." Sandusky County Sheriff Chris Hilton, who defeated Overmyer in the 2016 election, also was interviewed for the "True Crime" segment. Less than six months after taking office, Hilton and sheriff's investigators with assistance from state crime lab agents arrested Bogle's killer, Daniel Myers, in June 2017. "It was singularly one of the most exciting moments of my career," Hilton said. "The fact that we found the person who killed Heather Bogle after such a long time was huge." During the election campaign, Hilton had promised he would make solving the Heather Bogle homicide a top priority. O'Connell pleaded out on July 30, 2018, at Sandusky County Common Pleas Court. Register photo/ERIN McLAUGHLIN O'Connell had been given information about Myers' history of sexually abusing women just weeks after Heather was killed. Myers worked the manufacturing line along with Bogle at Whirlpool in Clyde, but O'Connell ignored that information and instead chose to manufacture evidence against Bor, including getting a woman to impersonate Bor and admit killing Bogle. Pongo asked Bor if justice was served for O'Connell. "He got two years. I feel like he should have gotten more time," she responded. Jennifer Bogle said she still misses her sister. "I can still hear her laugh, all the time." Heather's daughter, who was just 6 when her mother was killed in 2015, "looks just like her, acts just like her," Jennifer Bogle said.