NORWALK, Ohio — The recent murder indictment in the case involving Amanda Dean's former boyfriend has prompted new questions about how the Huron County Sheriff's Office handled the case before handing it off to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI).
The Board president of Cleveland Missing says — based on what he's read, seen, and heard — he believes the sheriff's office had "dropped the ball" on Amanda's case.
From the beginning of her disappearance from Collins six and a half years ago, Dean's family knew something was off, but they said they struggled to get answers or help from law enforcement.
In a March 2020 interview with the 3News Investigates team, Amanda's mother Caroline Tokar said she believed her daughter's boyfriend — Frederick Reer — had abused her. Her worst fear was that Amanda was dead, even though the sheriff's office was telling her she was alive.
"I just don't believe my daughter would go this long without contacting her boys, her sisters, and her mom," Tokar said at the time, roughly two and a half years after Dean first went missing.
During that same investigative story in 2020, Sheriff Todd Corbin told WKYC his team was initially investigating Amanda Dean as a missing person's case. However, they stopped the investigation, he said, after a domestic violence shelter told him she was living there.
"[The domestic violence shelter] explained the protocol is that they don't normally relay that information, 'But for purposes of what you're doing, we'll just say that [Amanda's] fine,'" Corbin told 3News at the time. "'She's in a good place and she's okay and she's being cared for.'"
Watch our original reporting below:
But that timeline doesn’t add up to the dates in recent court documents obtained by 3News over the weekend. According to the office of Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, Dean had already been dead for more than two and a half years by March 2020. In the indictment filed at Huron County Common Pleas Court Friday, a grand jury found "Frederick Reer, on or about the 11th day of July, 2017… did purposely cause the death of Amanda Dean."
"This case had sat dormant for many, many years, which is very discouraging," Newburgh Heights Police Chief John Majoy lamented.
Majoy is also the Board president of the nonprofit Cleveland Missing. He's not involved in the investigation of Dean's case, but he has been working with the family since December of 2022, when he brought it to the attention of the Ohio BCI. According to him, a BCI agent then reached out to Huron County and the sheriff's office asked if the state agency could investigate the case.
"I don’t know those circumstances, but the second BCI got involved in this case, everything seemed to turn for the better," Majoy contended. "And 414 days later, we got an indictment on this case."
Majoy says he does not believe this case would be where it is today had BCI not picked it up. Asked if the Huron County Sheriff's Office "dropped the ball" on this case, he answered, "I don't know all the facts and circumstances, but at first glance, it does appear as such."
"And that makes me sad, because this family had asked for answers for years and they had gone to the sheriff's office and dropped off cards and asked that the cards be given to [Amanda] under the assumption that she was alive, but she wasn't," he added. "[The family] asked for proof of life for a long time, and they had not gotten it."
WKYC called the Huron County Sheriff's Office and also emailed Corbin and the department's communications supervisor. We also visited the sheriff's office on Tuesday to attempt to talk to them about the matter, but were told Corbin was not in and that the communications supervisor was on his way out and wouldn't be able to speak to us.
As of Tuesday evening, 3News had not heard back regarding our requests.
Reer appeared in court earlier this week where he pleaded not guilty to charges in the case.
