Cold case: Questions remain unanswered about Dayton woman’s murder

The brutal murder of a 69-year-old mother of eight children is one of Dayton's cold cases.

Lillie Oglesby would have just turned 82 if someone had not put her in an early grave 14 years ago.

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"Learning about her death, I was like paralyzed. I couldn't move," said Lillie's son, Buford Oglesby.

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He had just gotten a call from his brother who had found their mother's body. When he arrived at her home on Genesee Avenue, the home where he had grown up, it was a crime scene.

"There was a lot of people there. I mean, a lot of people," Oglesby said. "They had the street blocked off and everything."

Then, someone said their mother had been murdered.

"It was shocking," Oglesby said. "I couldn't figure out why anybody would do my mother like that. She didn't hurt anybody."

Loving and caring is how everyone described Lillie Oglesby. She was an evangelist who was devoted to God, her husband and her children. Daughter Jocelyn said she and her mother had a very special relationship, and they talked on the phone every day.

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"We were just inseparable," Jocelyn Oglesby said. " Seven brothers and I am the only girl."

"She loved her kids," said Lillie's son Darryl Oglesby. "She loved every last one of her eight kids, loved us to death and treated none of us differently."

By 2004, the children were all grown and gone and, with their father's passing, Lillie was living in the family home alone for the first time. However, all the children said their mother was cautious and always kept her doors locked. That is why some of them believe their mother knew her killer.

"She is not going to open that door for anyone that she does not know," Darryl Oglesby said. "That I know."

"I'm kind of wondering if she could have made a mistake or someone could have tricked her, " said Lillie's son Alan Oglesby. "Anything of that nature and could have coerced her to open the door."

Lillie's son Vernon had stopped to check on his mother that night when he left work. He told police that the storm door was unlocked and the front door was ajar when he arrived shortly after 9 p.m. He said the television was on but the living room was empty. He found his mother lying on the floor next to her bed in a pool of blood, and he called 9-1-1. The Montgomery County Coroner said Lillie died from multiple blunt force trauma.

"Sometimes, just being an elderly person would make someone an easier victim, an easier target,” said Dayton Police Detective Patricia Tackett.

Tackett is the cold case detective for the Dayton Police Department. She said she recently opened the Oglesby case file after a retired detective, who had been at the crime scene back in 2004, asked her to look into the case. Tackett said she is now reading all the notes and submitting evidence, since DNA was only in its infancy then. She is also talking to friends, neighbors and Lillie's children, in hopes that they can remember something that may be important.

"That was their mom,"  Tackett said. "They would love to give some additional information to help us solve this case."

"It's hard to go every day and you're thinking about it. What happened? Who did this to our mother? Who would be a monster to do something like that? It would have to be a monster," Buford Oglesby said.

"Anybody who would go out of their way to commit such a violent crime on a defenseless woman, would have to be termed a monster," Alan Oglesby said.

They want this person off the street, and they are asking anyone with information to come forward.

"If you know something, anybody out there knows anything, please say something," Jocelyn Oglesby said.

Lillie Oglesby was murdered on May 26, 2004, in her home at 4612 Genesee Ave. between the late afternoon and evening.

If you have information, please call Det. Patricia Tackett at 937-333-7109.