All Things Wildly Considered: Pike County Disappearances And Grisly Allegations

Tuesday, May 24, 2022

Pike County Disappearances And Grisly Allegations

Brittney Hewell, left, and her father Raymont Willis at her wedding. (Courtesy Photo/Brittney Hewell)

A woman has come forward claiming that her father, who has been missing for nearly two years, was killed in a grisly fashion.

The daughter of a missing Waverly man said people close to her father told her that he’d been cut up in a chipper and fed to hogs.

Raymont Willis, 42, disappeared from his home on Johnson Hill Road on July 4, 2020. His disappearance is connected to Koby Roush – who disappeared the following day and was also said to have been fed to pigs – through a man who overdosed two weeks later, Luke Farmer.

(Cynthia Rosi. “Missing in Waverly: ‘Cut up in a chipper.’” https://www.nbc4i.com/news/local-news/pike-county/missing-in-waverly-cut-up-in-a-chipper/. NBC 4. May 23, 2022.)

Disappearances and possible connections – this story is full of a myriad of mysterious details, yet so much remains unsolved that amateur sleuths are left scratching their heads. New information adds to the growing perplexity about the Pike County missing persons. Today, I will try to provide readers with information in hopes that something will lead to the answers so desperately sought by friends and families of the possible victims.

NBC4 recently obtained a report by the Ross County Sheriff’s Office that showed that Luke Farmer was wanted for questioning on July 20, 2020, in the disappearance and possible murder of two people in Pike County.

One person named in that document was Koby Roush, the other was referred to as “Willis.” Neither Willis’ nor Roush’s body has ever been found.

Farmer died of a drug overdose 11 hours after deputies searched for him at the request of Pike County Sheriff’s Office.

Raymont's daughter, Brittney Hewell, said that she has been told what happened to her father was similar to stories of what happened to Roush.

“About my father, yes,” she said. “He was fed to the hogs, cut up in a chipper and fed to the hogs. I was told he was in a barrel as well.”

Brittney said she went to the area to search for him but was afraid for her safety. She said she was told to stop speaking about the incident on threat of force. According to Brittney, “someone whispered to her 'I know where your dad is' and 'the person that done it was standing right in front of me.'”

Hewell said she got an out-of-character call from her father between 4 and 5 a.m. on July 4, 2020. Willis told her: “The sheriff’s raided my house, but I’ll be OK.” That was the last she heard from her father.

Pike County Sheriff’s Office records show that on July 1 and into July 2, 2020, deputies and officers from several other agencies served a search warrant at the home Willis shared with his partner.

Agents reported they cleared a tent at the back of the property and a crawlspace. They ran the plates of the vehicle. A trained canine indicated substances in a back bedroom and the kitchen.

The report said it is closed, cleared on Oct. 30, 2020.

The Charley Project online reports that Willis was last seen on Watson Road in Waverly, Ohio on July 4, 2020. He lived with his girlfriend on Johnson Hill Road. His girlfriend stated the last time she heard from him, he was on the way home, possibly from Cincinnati, Ohio, where he spent a lot of time. He has never been heard from again. His girlfriend reported him missing on July 11.

(Raymont Earl Willis Jr. https://charleyproject.org/case/raymont-earl-willis-jr. The Charley Project.)

Kelsie Houpe has been trying to find Willis as a volunteer since about two weeks after he was reported missing. She said she saw tattoos identifying KKK and Aryan Nation on the people she talked to.

She said going to Waverly took courage because it’s a former “sundown town.”

“Yes, it did,” said Houpe, who is African American. “It was very scary. It was terrifying. But I felt like, it’s now or never.”

Houpe made a list of places Willis lived and frequented, including the last place he was seen on Watson Road. It’s there that Willis was reported to have run into the woods.

“When I went there, there was actually a giant jump to even to get into the woods,” she said. “The guy that went with us is almost 7 feet tall and very slender. And he had trouble climbing up there. There’s no way that Raymont just jumped up there.”

(Cynthia Rosi. “Missing in Waverly: ‘Cut up in a chipper.’” https://www.nbc4i.com/news/local-news/pike-county/missing-in-waverly-cut-up-in-a-chipper/. NBC 4. May 23, 2022.)

If you have any information about the disappearance of Raymont Willis or Koby Roush, call BCI at 855-BCI-OHIO (855-224-6446) or submit a missing persons tip through the BCI website.

(Cynthia Rosi. “Missing in Waverly: ‘Cut up in a chipper.’” https://www.nbc4i.com/news/local-news/pike-county/missing-in-waverly-cut-up-in-a-chipper/. NBC 4. May 23, 2022.)

A memory board for Koby Roush in the home of his sister, Danielle Dyer.

The Koby Roush Connection?

Danielle Dyer, Koby Roush's younger brother feels sure that he is dead.

An officer found Roush’s car abandoned on July 5, 2020 off Mt. Carmel Road near Jackson, Ohio, and called his father. “It was at an old paper mill, like strip pits. Someone just dropped it off, looked like,” Dyer recalled.

Dyer said: “I found my mom’s ashes, and some kind of band [Koby] had on his hand. Those were my mother’s ashes that he wore around his neck. He never took them off.

“They was beside the car. My husband picked them up out of the sand and I busted out crying. Because I knew something was wrong with my brother – he wasn’t here anymore.”

(Cynthia Rosi. “They said, ‘He’d been fed to pigs:’ Family’s hell after brother disappeared.” https://www.nbc4i.com/news/local-news/pike-county/they-said-hed-been-fed-to-pigs-familys-hell-after-brother-disappeared/. NBC 4. April 15, 2022.)

The Charley Project online reports Roush was last seen at a party in Coalton, Ohio on July 6, 2020. He called his father at 6:00 a.m. to say his car was stuck. His father lived over an hour away, so Roush said he would call someone else to assist him. He has never been heard from again.

(Koby Daniel Roush. https://charleyproject.org/case/koby-daniel-roush. The Charley Project.)

The first few months after police found the car of Koby Roush, 24, were not only painful for Dyer; they were terrifying.

Dyer said she and her family were “afraid for their lives.”

“It’s thrown my world into a whole different world — before it wasn’t as scary…for the first year we couldn’t sleep,” Dyer, 38, recalled. “We thought people were going to burn our house down. We had death threats. We thought people were after us. Me and my sister and brother all got concealed weapons.

“Someone called [from New York] and tried to get ransom that he was keeping my brother hostage,” Dyer said. But when Dyer’s family asked a question only Koby would know, the blackmailer couldn’t provide an answer. “Just horrible things that people do, and we’re already going through so much.”

“He said he was calling someone named Luke, and after that his phone just went dead, went to voicemail, we couldn’t get ahold of him.”

But the worst was this so-called tip: “That he’d been fed to pigs,” Dyer said. “We couldn’t sleep for weeks after that, imagining something like that happening to my brother.

“Put in barrels, thrown off bridges, shot…kidnapped. All kinds of things,” she said about the tips. “Just don’t know how much is true, but we’re pretty sure that he was shot.”

Prior to that night on July 4, 2020, Roush was at a friend Paul’s house. Dyer believes her brother left with a person named Kody.

In his last message to a friend, Roush said that he’d taken drugs again, and was upset with his roommate for bringing drugs into the house. (Dyer said that “life took a turn when their mother died in 2018 of lung cancer” and “an older neighbor first gave drugs to Roush to try as an early teen,” and since then, he's “had a lot of trouble.”)

Dyer played the message on her phone; it had been sent to her by the person who received it.

Roush said in the message: “Dave and I got into a big fight and I’m moving out because he was getting high and kinda puttin it out there too much and I don’t wanna be around it.

“So then it turned from that and so I relapsed…anyway, just a big bunch of bull****. But it’ll be fine. I ain’t worried about it,” the message concluded.

Of all the tips the family received, they think only one person seemed to be legitimate.

“There’s a lady that called me and my father, and she told me that my brother was murdered in her truck,” Dyer said. “She went into detail. She told me the people that was involved…she told me about a Sheriff Reader that was out in the yard, and that she told him everything and begged the police to come and investigate and they wouldn’t.

“[She] said [Koby] was shot in the head. They cleaned the truck with cleaner. She said the truck had all kinds of cleaner, bleach smell, and they came back later that morning — but she didn’t give a location of the body.”

Dyer says the woman told her that a person who was allegedly in the truck at the time of the killing was later found dead.

At the moment the family would like hunters, and mushroom hunters, to keep an eye out for Roush’s remains.

The last known location of Koby, where the family found his abandoned car was 38°56’43.8″N 82°25’47.8″W on Mt. Carmel Road, Raccoon Township in Gallia County. It is close to a former paper mill.

The family has put out a $5,000 reward to help find Koby Roush. Anyone that may have information about the case is encouraged to call BCI at 855-BCI-OHIO (855-224-6446) or submit a missing persons tip through the BCI website.

The Luke Farmer Connection?

After Koby Roush’s car was found abandoned on in southeastern Ohio in July 2020, the Pike County Sheriff’s Office called over to its counterpart in Ross County with a request:

Deputies wanted to question Luke Farmer about a double homicide, and they thought he was in Ross County.

They said, ‘He’d been fed to pigs:’ Family’s hell after brother disappeared

According to sheriff’s office records, a person told the deputies that Farmer had “told him in person that he had murdered two people.”

NBC4 has learned through a source that one of those people was Roush, who hasn’t been seen alive since, nor has his body been found.

On July 20, 2020, Ross County deputies went to a Chillicothe home where they thought Farmer was staying, according to a report filed with the Ross County Sheriff’s Office.

Seven people from law enforcement were present. One of them “ordered Mr. Farmer out of the house over his cruiser’s PA system.” A man came out and told deputies that Farmer wasn’t there and didn’t live there.

The man allowed officers to search his home. Three people searched the house, but they didn’t find Farmer.

According to the coroner’s verdict, Luke Farmer, of Liberty Hill Road in Chillicothe, died the next day, being pronounced dead at 3:11 a.m. from a drug overdose at a home near Waverly in Pike County. He collapsed in front of friends who attempted CPR and administered Narcan, according to the coroner’s report.

(Cynthia Rosi. “Luke Farmer’s death, and the mystery of Koby Roush.” https://www.nbc4i.com/news/local-news/chillicothe/luke-farmers-death-and-the-mystery-of-koby-roush/. NBC 4. April 21, 2022.)

Blood from Farmer was collected hours later and sent to the Ross County coroner for testing. The toxicology report on Aug. 6, 2020, showed Farmer’s blood tested positive for amphetamine, methamphetamine, and designer opioids 4-ANPP, fentanyl, and norfentanyl.

Coroner Benjamin Trotter said in his report that the death was accidental.

“According to information provided to this office, Mr. Farmer was found unresponsive at the above residence,” the coroner’s report said. “A forensic toxicology was performed. After the investigation was completed it was determined that the cause of death was due to multiple drug overdose and the manner was Accident,” the report concluded.

Trotter said an accidental death ruling occurs when a person takes the drug and had no intention of killing themselves.

“A ‘hot shot’ is an arbitrary term,” he said. “Drugs now are so pure that people who use them are in danger. They are all cut and laced, and not like a drug from a pharmacy. In this case, he had the same drugs in his urine so he had been using them well before he died. He had been using them for hours prior to him passing away.”

Tuesday, May 24, 2022

Pike County Disappearances And Grisly Allegations

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