FINDLAY, Ohio -- James Ruppert, 48, described as a paranoid pyschotic who killed 11 members of his family in a fit of rage on Easter Sunday seven years ago, will go on trial for the second time Monday.
Ruppert has been charged with the fatal shooting of his mother, a brother, Leonard; Leonard's wife, Alma and eight children in Hamilton, Ohio, on Easter Sunday 1975.
Ruppert, 48, will be tried in Findlay, 135 miles north of Hamilton, pn a change of venue.
Attorneys for Ruppert, who has pleaded innocent by reason of insanity, were granted a change of venue because of extensive publicity surrounding the case.
A three-judge Butler County Common Pleas Court panel convicted Ruppert on a 2-1 decision a few months after the deaths. But the decision later was overturned because Ruppert had been not been told that the judges' decision did not have to be unanimous.
This time, Ruppert will be tried by jury.
Ashland County Common Pleas Court Judge J. Ross Siverling, presiding in the case by special designation, has estimated the retrial will last a month.
During Ruppert's first trial, psychiatric experts testified for the defense that the unemployed draftsman was a paranoid pyschotic who shot his family in a fit of uncontrollable rage.
They testified that Ruppert, who had been treated previously for psychiatric problems, hated his brother because he felt inferior to him.
Ruppert's pyschosis was so pronounced, they testified, that he believed that his brother was responsible for all of his problems - including car trouble.
So, when Ruppert walked through his mother's kitchen the evening of Easter Sunday 1975 on his way out to do some target shooting, and his brother, who had brought over his family for a visit, asked him a seemingly innocuous question, 'How's your Volkswagen running?,' Ruppert went berserk, they said.
In rapid succession, Ruppert fired at his brother, sister-in-law, mother, and nieces and nephews, according to the testimony. Then, according to defense testimony, he lay among the bodies contemplating suicide for three hours before calling police.
Butler County Prosecutor John Holcomb, who also will head the prosecution in the retrial, argued that Ruppert planned the slayings so he would inherit about $300,000 from the combined estates of his mother and brother.
Witnesses for the prosecution testified that Ruppert was a shrewd but relatively small-scale stock market investor, and that he had inquired about a silencer for his guns shortly before the shootings of his family members.
Ruppert, who has been principally confined in Lima State Hospital for the Criminally Insane and the Dayton Forensic Facility since his conviction, will be held in the Hancock County jail in Findlay during the retrial.
Although he did not testify in his first trial, his attorneys say Ruppert might take the stand during the retrial.
