Arraignment delayed for St. Marys murder suspect

UPDATE @ 3:30 p.m.

Brian Guggenbiller appeared today for a scheduled arraignment, but the court action was delayed pending a court-appointed attorney.

Judge Reginald Routson, visiting from Hancock County, delayed the arraignment to allow time for Guggenbiller to get a court-appointed attorney.

He is expected to be arraigned in the next week or two.

EARLIER REPORT

Brian Guggenbiller, 51 of Lima, is being held on a $2 million cash bond in the Auglaize County Jail. He was taken into custody yesterday and charged with aggravated murder.

Two other men — Tracy Mabry, of Celina, and Paul Hoover, of Florida — were arrested in 2014 and have since taken plea deals. They are serving 7 to 25 years in prison.

The victim, Marcellus Reineke of St. Marys, was killed during a robbery on Oct. 13, 1981.

Guggenbiller is the final suspect in the case.

Who was Marcellus Reineke?

In this decades old case, it’s hard to find information about the victim, Marcellus Reineke. What we know is Reineke was a 71-year-old retired farmer in the small town of St. Marys. The four-square mile town just to the east of Grand Lake St. Marys is a quiet place, his home on S. West St. a modest single story house.

Reineke, born in Ohio on Nov. 15, 1909, came from a big family. He was one of ten children. He was farming with his father, according to the 1930 census, when he was 20 years old. Listed with the nickname “Sally” in the Find-A-Grave online database, he was a life-long bachelor and lived alone.

Census records from 1940 say his highest level of education was eighth grade. While searching for information about the man who lived and died before the internet, one news report from November 11, 1969 has been found. Reineke was involved in a tractor/car crash when he was 59 years old that killed the driver of the car. The Lima News said Reineke was pulling a corn picker when a car driven by Ralph D. Goodwin, 34, on Washington Pike collided with the southbound tractor on Moulton-New Knoxville Rd. The report says Reineke was injured and had surgery.

Local reports in the St. Marys Evening Leader newspaper at the time of his death said he’d farmed in St. Marys Township for most of his life, and retired to the city in 1972. Reineke was a member of Holy Rosary Catholic Church and it’s Holy Name Society.

His obituary and official death certificate indicate the exact date of death wasn’t determined. It’s officially listed between Oct. 13 and 15, 1981. The exact cause of death, according to the local newspaper report, was a fatal stab wound to the heart. He’d been beaten, bludgeoned and stabbed in an apparent botched burglary.

It appeared the killer or killers were trying to cover their tracks and set the man’s bed on fire. The fire went out and didn’t burn the home. At the time, the St. Marys Fire Department investigators determined that the smoke consumed the oxygen in the closed home, smothering the flames. Reineke’s body was found in the dining room.

Reineke is buried in Gethsemane Cemetery in Auglaize county.