The murders of Raymond Ogle and Arthur Works have gone unsolved for more than 25 years.
Tonight, News Center 7’s I-Team investigates what happened to a mystery woman and her possible connection to a local crime boss.
The two men worked at a Dayton car dealership and also were killed there.
In 2014, News Center 7’s Cheryl McHenry reported that a friend of one of the victims had come forward with a possible motive behind the killings that had cold case detectives wanting to speak with a mystery woman.
But have the detectives gotten any closer to solving these murders?
Talia Reese fondly remembers all the things she used to do with her father, Raymond Ogle.
>> 8 unsolved murders in the Miami Valley
“We went to movies; we played sports together,” she recalled. “He taught me how to play softball.”
Raymond’s ex-wife, Carmen Wade, said those qualities served him well in his job as an Indiana police officer.
“Everybody like him,” she said. “He talked to everybody. He was just a real outgoing person.”
Raymond was Mike Wamsley’s training officer.
“Y’know, you learned from Raymond that arresting someone was a last resort,” Wamsley said. “If he could help ’em or solve the problem another way, that’s the way it got done.”
The two played softball together on the FOP championship team with Talia as the team mascot.
The men remained close after Raymond left the force to manage the J.R. Motors “buy here, pay here” used car lot in Dayton.
He worked alongside Arthur Words, a married father of six and church deacon.
J.R. Motors sat on West Third Street in a building that now houses a phone store and smoke shop. But it became a crime scene the evening of May 16, 1994, when someone came in and shot both men to death
“I was doing my homework and saw it come across Channel 7 news,” recalled Talia.
A decade later, during a 2014 Miami Valley Murder Mysteries special report, Wamsley told News Center 7 who he thinks killed Raymond and Arthur.
In the weeks before the murders, he remembered Raymond, now divorced from Carmen, bringing a woman to the Lebanon racetrack.
“Apparently, she was also seeing a guy in the Dayton area who was probably one of the major drug dealers,” he said.
And he told us something else: Raymond — who he described as a big, athletic man, afraid of no one — had been beaten up 10 days before he was killed.
“He said it had been over a female and just a little squabble at a club,” Wamsley said. “No big deal.”
Cheryl McHenry followed up with Dayton cold case detective Patty Tackett is her plea for information from that “woman at the racetrack” had yielded any clues.
“We were hoping that after that aired that we would get some information,” she said. “That somebody would call in with some information, and unfortunately that did not happen.”
>> What happened to Cheryl Coker? Family desperate for answers
Tackett still believes Raymond was the target because the murders happened after the close of the business — when Arthur Works had usually gone home for the day.
She said Raymond was in the front office, which was visible from the street. Arthur was in a back room and may have surprised the killer.
“At this point what we know about is there was no robbery that occurred. We're not aware of any money missing,” Tackett said.
If not a robbery, what was the motive?
Wamsley suspects the drug kingpin wanted Raymond out of the picture, possibly because they were involved with the same woman, and ordered an accomplice to kill him.
A retired drug task force detective told the I-Team that they support Wamsley’s theory about the same two suspects.
Both men are in prison for life — one on drug crimes and the other for murder.
Still, the victims’ families deserve to know for sure who killed Arthur and Raymond.
“I don’t think there would be any hard feelings towards anyone at this point,” said Talia. “We just want closure.”
Tackett said it’s never too late for someone who can give them that closure to come forward.
“Because you never know what circumstances may change and what people may be willing to tell as they might reach deathbed,” said said. “They might want to get out of jail; they might just want to do the right thing and go to heaven.”
If you have any information at all about the murders of Raymond Ogle and Arthur Works at J.R. Motors in 1994, call Tackett at 937-333-7109.
She said no one is in trouble if they’ve withheld information because they were afraid to come forward before. And you can remain anonymous.
