ABERDEEN, Ohio -- It was a chilly, gray day when Allen Brown went back to the place where his son overdosed.
Brown hadn't been to the trailer on Chestnut Street in nearly six years. It's not far from U.S. Route 52, just downriver from where a two-lane suspension bridge connects the small city of Maysville, Kentucky, with the even smaller village of Aberdeen.
This time, Brown stood outside a black chain-link fence that surrounds the property. Three rows of barbed wire run across the top. It was April, but winter lingered. Snow blew into Brown's face, and from where he stood, he said it didn't look like much was different.
Six years ago, he was on the other side of the fence. He'd come to confront Ron Fizer, the man who lived there.
"He said he loved my son,” Brown said. “He said he didn't have nothing to do with my son's death, (that) he was fishing.
"That was his story from day one. But that's not the story."
Brown questioned the integrity of the investigation from the beginning, partly because at the time, Fizer was the brother-in-law of Aberdeen Police Chief Clark Gast.
The Aberdeen Police Department conducted the investigation.
It took years of kitchen-table detective work for him to persuade the sheriff's office to reopen the case. Two months ago, the county prosecutor charged Fizer with involuntary manslaughter and reckless homicide.
Brown contacted the 9 On Your Side I-Team and asked that we look at the case, too. He provided us with the results of his investigation, including his interviews with witnesses. The I-Team also requested and received copies of the original 2012 investigation conducted by the Aberdeen Police Department, statements by key witnesses, and the 2018 investigation conducted by the Brown County Sheriff’s Office that prompted the current criminal charges against Fizer.
We reviewed the evidence Brown and law enforcement collected, then examined additional court records that provided more context for why Brown had concerns about the Aberdeen Police Department and how it handled the first criminal investigation.
Our goal was to determine why Fizer wasn’t charged in 2012 and why he was charged six years later.
Special bond between father and son
Justen Ramsey was Brown's stepson, but Brown said he raised Ramsey and considered him to be his own child.
Ramsey was a woodworker who lived with his mother, Viola, and Brown, her husband. He was tall -- 6-foot-2 -- and thin.
He loved rap and hip-hop music. His favorite athlete was LeBron James. Ramsey’s family and friends say his best friend was his father, Allen Brown. It’s that special bond between Brown and his stepson that drove Brown’s relentless pursuit for justice.
Fizer's trailer is about two blocks from Brown's home, where Ramsey grew up.
Justen Ramsey
On May 3, 2012, the Brown County Communications Center got a call for help there. Ramsey was in the trailer's bathroom, and he wasn't breathing. He was turning blue.
Two members of the Aberdeen Life Squad asked for a paramedic from Ripley, the nearest village downriver. But, according to the dispatch report, they were all at a meeting in Georgetown, about 21 miles away.
About 22 minutes after the first call, the life squad got Ramsey to Meadowview Regional Hospital in Maysville.
About 15 minutes after that, he was pronounced dead. It was eight days before his 23rd birthday.
Moments after doctors announced his time of death, Viola and Allen Brown kissed him goodbye.
‘No Deception Indicated’
The Aberdeen Police Department handled the first investigation in the days and months after Ramsey died.
Officers talked with witnesses who had been at the trailer that evening and other people Ramsey knew. They got statements from Viola and Allen Brown. They sent a vial of brownish liquid to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations.
People knew Ramsey used drugs. The vial turned out to be heroin; someone told police they thought it had been mixed with strychnine, but lab testing found that wasn't true.
Because he died in Maysville, Kentucky, that county’s coroner was responsible for the autopsy.
In a letter sent June 6, 2012, Aberdeen Sgt. Shawn Newman asked the coroner for Ramsey's autopsy report. Newman said police "recently received information ... which indicates possible foul play," though his letter didn’t specify what that might be.
The Northern Kentucky Regional Medical Examiners' Office in Fort Thomas completed the autopsy the same day. It confirmed Ramsey died of a heroin overdose.
Ron Fizer in Brown County Common Pleas Court in April.
Still, police were troubled by discrepancies in a timeline from the night Ramsey died. Fizer claimed he had been out fishing, just like he told Brown, and that he didn't get back home until about 6:50 p.m. But two witnesses told police he had been at the trailer for at least a half-hour to an hour before finding Ramsey's body.
Detectives wanted to know who knew what -- and when.
That October, Fizer agreed to take a polygraph examination at the Adams County Prosecutor's Office.
Fizer denied knowing Ramsey was in his home before one of the witnesses found him. He denied knowing Ramsey was using drugs in his home. And he denied doing anything to prevent Ramsey from getting help.
The polygraph examiner indicated there was "No Deception Indicated" in those responses.
Two days later the case was closed.
‘I wish I could change the whole day’
Brown went to the trailer the day his stepson died. He said he doesn't remember much, just that there were people everywhere.
He said he wasn't worried then about what happened, or how it happened; he just wanted Ramsey to be all right.
Standing on the other side of that fence last month, he said the loss is still just as difficult today as it was six years ago.
"Now when I look back, I wish I could change the whole day," he said.
Brown felt someone should be held responsible, and he thought Fizer wasn't being honest.
He collected scores of documents from the investigation, organized on a laptop that he uses at his kitchen table: police reports, notes from his conversations with investigators and people who were at Fizer’s trailer the night Ramsey died. He gathered and examined records from court cases involving witnesses and former chief Gast, who resigned in August 2012 while the case was still open.
Greg Caudill, Gast's successor as Aberdeen Police Chief, declined to comment for this story.
Allen Brown sits at his kitchen table, looking over his research into his stepson's death.
Brown was persistent.
Brown County Sheriff Gordon Ellis agreed to reopen the case last year after Brown presented him with his findings. Investigators found the witnesses and their original statements and interviewed everyone again.
According to Ellis, Fizer confessed.
He admitted to knowing Ramsey was dead in the bathroom and leaving him there for a half-hour before someone else found him, Ellis said; Fizer also admitted that he knew Ramsey was using drugs in his home.
Brown "played a pivotal role in providing information in this case," Ellis said.
"This case demonstrates our dedication to doing what's right, what the law requires us to do and frankly, what the public expects from its law enforcement agencies," he said.
Fizer, now 51, entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. On April 15, Judge Scott Gusweiler ordered an evaluation of Fizer to determine if he’s “competent to stand trial.” The report is due by the next hearing, which is scheduled for June 7. Fizer is being held at the Brown County Jail.
Did Aberdeen police do enough?
There were discrepancies in Fizer’s timeline from the night Ramsey died, but Gast told the I-Team he believes his department investigated the case as thoroughly as it could.
Asked if he, as police chief, recommended charges, Gast said his department didn’t cut Fizer any breaks.
“I told the officer to do exactly what he needed to do regardless of who the individual was,” Gast said.
Jessica Little, the Brown County prosecuting attorney in 2012, is now a municipal judge. Little declined to say why charges weren't filed against Fizer six years ago. Judicial ethics rules do not allow her to comment on an active case, she said.
Outside Fizer’s trailer, a chilly April wind blew in Brown’s face. All he has now are memories and a headstone.
He said he’ll face his grief head-on until he knows the truth of what happened to his stepson.
“I try to deal with everyday life,” he said. “I know I’ve got to move on, but I’ve got to figure out how.”
WCPO's Joe Rosemeyer contributed to this report.
