In the small town of Rogers Ohio, in 2005, a man was found murdered in the seat of his car off of a desolate country road. I hadn't heard of this mystery until I unexpectedly ran across the crime scene.... (Pictures and articles included)

I am not saying it was an accidental death. I am saying that seems most likely. We haven't seen the Coroner's Report. The Police on the scene first would probably have looked for evidence of foul play, or noted it had there been any... for instance: some contrivance to keep the accelerator pressed. We're getting nothing there. Those kinds of rewards are almost always offered by the family, and there is no reason they would have to ask for police permission to offer a reward.

We have no information on the condition of the vehicle. Had it rolled? Did it hit a tree? How fast was it going? Were there skid marks? Were there tire tracks? And so on...

To directly answer your question: We don't know that he was beaten to death. We know that he was found in his vehicle, dead, with the engine running, off the road. We do not know if he had his seat belt on. We know that this event was initially seen by Police as an accidental death. We know that two days later, the Coroner ruled on the matter in some way. We do not know how. There are varying policies on these matters. Sometimes Coroner's Offices are legally compelled to rule in a stark fashion: Homicide, Natural Causes, Accident, and so on. Sometimes they are permitted to rule deaths as "Suspicious." It does not look like this county permits rulings of possible Homicide or "Suspicious death.* So, in this county, if the Coroner wants questions answered, he must rule the death as a homicide. This is not unusual.

We know that the family, particularly the decedent's mother was absolutely destroyed emotionally by this event, as is only natural. It is not unusual or unexpected for extremely distraught people to demand investigations. It is not unusual for them to get an investigation. It is not unusual for people to not like the results of an investigation (in this case... it was an accident) and start hanging up flyers, offering rewards, starting webpages, writing horrifyingly sad all-caps comments... starting to believe that the Police were in on it, that there was a conspiracy, etc...

/r/UnresolvedMysteries Thread Parent