Prosecutors dodge questions

NORWALK — The senior assistant Ohio attorney general overseeing the search for Amanda Dean called an allegation he's obstructed the investigation misinformation, saying it's never been reported to him. Amanda Dean "You have bad information," Dan Kasaris wrote in response to questions. Kasaris was appointed earlier this year to serve as special prosecutor over the Dean investigation, however, which was reclassified as a homicide investigation in April. The obstruction allegation specifically cites the Dean investigation, so it's not clear why Kasaris suggested it wasn't his case. Kasaris declined to say why he was picked as prosecutor for it, or why the appointment had been kept secret for months. The Register learned of the appointment after asking the Norwalk Municipal Court for court records related to a search warrant the court granted last month giving state crime lab investigators permission to search a Wells Road property in Collins where Dean lived before she went missing. It's the same property Dean's family and friends wanted to search just prior to when Sheriff Corbin shut down the initial investigation a day after they reported her missing in July 2017. Agents spent two days at the property last month, using a backhoe and shovels to dig in several areas. The agents appeared to gather property from the dig sites and set that property aside, but it's unknown what, if anything was removed or taken as evidence. It's also unknown what agents were searching for at the property because the court sealed the search warrant records. The order to seal the records was not sealed, however, and it showed Kasaris as the special prosecutor assigned to the case. Don't look, don't see Kasaris was provided a copy of the email that was sent last week to the Norwalk police and subsequently forwarded to the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, an arm of the attorney general's office. Kasaris The anonymous email alleges Huron County Sheriff Todd Corbin, county Prosecutor James Joel Sitterly and Kasaris all engaged "in the falsification of documents and tampering with property, thus obstructing a lawful inquiry into the demise of (Amanda Dean and Dawn Pasela)." Pasela was a 26-year-old woman who worked for Kasaris when he was an assistant Cuyahoga County prosecutor, according to a website that contends she was the victim of foul play. She was found dead on April 25, 2012, in her Midtown Towers apartment in Parma. The Cuyahoga County coroner's office ruled that Pasela's death was caused by acute ethanol intoxication and alcoholic steatohepatitis, a liver disease, according to a Cleveland.com news article. She had a blood alcohol content level of .537%, according to the article. Pasela's parents, Edward and Karen Pasela, both filed affidavits in May 2022 alleging the investigation of their daughter's death was falsified and accusing Kasaris of wrongdoing. "I believe that there should be a full investigation of Dan Kasaris as well as an entirely new investigation of our daughter's death," they wrote in the affidavits. The affidavits also allege that evidence in a mortgage fraud criminal case was withheld from a defendant's attorney and that the office was lax in protecting files and computers with sensitive information. Although she was not a trained investigator Pasela was used undercover in an investigation of a mortgage banker, the affidavits contend, but she began to sympathize with the banker being targeted by the prosecutor's office. It's not known if the allegations about Kasaris as it relates to Pasela, or the connection to Amanda Dean, are credible, or who will make a decision about whether the Dean investigation has been compromised. Kasaris suggested the allegation about obstructing the Dean investigation might be related to a different case, one that he's not handling. "The procedure in our office is that when we are asked to take a matter as a special prosecutor or a special assisting prosecutor, (the special prosecutions unit's chief prosecutor) Chris Kinsler receives the matter via a written request and assigns the matter to a prosecutor of his choosing if we accept the referral," Kasaris wrote in a reply to questions the Register sent him last week. "We do not accept everything that is referred to our office." Don't ask, don't tell Kasaris did not answer the questions, and instead referred them to Kinsler and to Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost's spokesman, Steven Irwin. Neither man responded to requests for comment and they also failed to address the questions. Yost also failed to respond. Amanda Dean has been missing since July 2017. There was never any search for her, however, until this year because Corbin insisted she was alive and well even though she's never been seen or heard from since she went missing. Corbin told a deputy he spoke with the director of a women's shelter the same day Dean was reported missing, or the next day, who informed him Dean was safe but did not want to talk with her family, according to a supplemental report the deputy filed. The contact information for the shelter director was not documented. Corbin, who also did not respond to questions about the allegation, was still contending as late as January this year that Dean was alive. Sitterly also did not comment or respond to written questions about the allegation.