GEORGETOWN, Ohio — A deadly crash that left three family members dead, including a 10-year-old, is now being considered a murder-suicide by investigators.
On Nov. 28, 2018, 33-year-old Nicholas Moler, of Bethel, was driving along Bethel New Hope Road with his 10-year-old son Cameron, and his 83-year-old grandfather, Bob Moler. A 10-year-old dog named Ellie was also in the vehicle at the time.
Bob Moler was a longtime coach and teacher at Bethel.
At some point along the road, just 1.2 miles outside of Clermont County in Brown County, Nicholas Moler drove off the side of the roadway and struck a tree, killing all three.
The Georgetown State Highway Patrol, a division of the Ohio State Highway Patrol, now thinks Nicholas Moler intentionally drove into the tree.
According to the crash report, Nicholas had no alcohol in his system at the time, but did test positive for cannabinoids.
Lt. Randy McElfresh, post commander, concurred with the findings of Brown County Coroner C. Timothy McKinley, that it was a murder-suicide, he told Wayne Gates.
“Dr. McKinley, of course,ruled the driver as a suicide, and then the two passengers that were in the vehicle would then be classified as death as a result of homicide,” he said.
The indications of this were known the night of the accident on Nov. 28 around 5:45 p.m.
“Most of the time when we investigate a crash, it’s pretty obvious that while there is a contributing circumstance, this person did not mean for this to happen. In this particular case, there was enough evidence at the scene that kind of led us to believe, even at the onset, that perhaps this was not accidental, was more of a purposeful, or with intent, kind of act,” he said.
McElfresh said the evidence in most crashes he covers in Brown and Adams counties, if someone “drops off the road way,” there are indications of braking. “That’s usually the first thing someone will do,” he said. “Or a combination of
braking and steering.”
He added, “In this case, there was not that.”
As the crash occurred, McElfresh said, Nicholas Moler came out of a curve and into a longer straight away, and then there was an indication of a “slight steer” off the roadway followed by no braking, no evasive steering and then “pretty much” a
dead-center impact with a “very large tree.”
“So that was enough to say, perhaps there’s more here than what we see,” he said.
McElfresh said police acquired essentially the vehicle’s “black box,” which in this case is the airbag control module. That device acts as on on-board computer logging all the inputs from the driver, as well as the system as a whole. The device told investigators there was an input to slightly steer the vehicle off of the roadway, and a “very slight correction” that was
more or less to “square up with the object that was intended to be hit.”
“And there was no change in acceleration and of course, no change in acceleration means there was no braking,” he said.
Additionally, McElfresh through interviews with family members, recreated the life the deceased led the 24 to 48 hours prior to the crash.
“So we were able to pull information from those interviews that would lead one to believe that perhaps there were things at play that maybe you and I don’t deal with on a daily basis and maybe this person did,” he said.
McElfresh said that there were at least three occurrences that were “totally out of the ordinary for that person to do based on their past history” prior to the crash.
Those occurrences were “very strange, were out of the ordinary,” which also led investigators to believe there was premeditation or calculation of what Nicholas Moler wanted to happen in the “very near future.
Champion Media reached out to McElfresh for a follow-up of what those occurrences could mean.
“The only one I can comment on is the fact that he called and requested to pick his son up during the week, which was highly unusual,” he said.
