Insets, left to right: Lawrence Drotleff, Larry Drotleff (Tuscarawas County Sheriff’s Office/WJW). Background: A stretch of Winkler Hill Road in Dover Township, Ohio (Google Maps).
A shocking revelation has emerged in a cold case from Ohio, where a man is accused of dismembering his father’s body and concealing the remains in two suitcases that were later discovered on rural roads by children, authorities have reported.
The Tuscarawas County Sheriff’s Office announced on Saturday that they have finally pieced together the mystery that began decades ago. In a rural area of Dover Township, located approximately 85 miles south of Cleveland, children stumbled upon a grim find that has since haunted the community.
“On February 1, 1998, we received a report from a group of children who found a suitcase along Winkler Hill Road in Dover Township,” the sheriff’s office shared in a Facebook update. “Inside the suitcase were several unidentified male body parts.”
A week later, another suitcase containing body parts was found on a different rural road about 15 miles away. Although DNA tests confirmed that both suitcases held remains of the same individual, investigators were unable to identify the victim until 2023. With the case reopened, advancements in DNA technology led authorities to identify the victim as Larry Drotleff, aged 81.
In a January 2024 interview with Ohio law enforcement, Drotleff reportedly confessed to discovering his father’s lifeless body in their shared home.
“Larry explained that he lived with his father and had gone to work. Upon returning home, he found his father deceased,” the sheriff’s office detailed. “He admitted to dismembering his father’s body using a manual hand saw, not a power tool, and placed some body parts in the suitcases while disposing of others in a dumpster near his workplace.”
Drotleff provided DNA, which “confirmed he was the biological son of the victim,” who was then identified as Lawrence A. Drotleff.
“[H]e would have been approximately 93 years old at the time we located the suitcases,” the sheriff’s office noted of the victim.
Larry Drotleff cannot be charged under Ohio state law due to the long-expired statute of limitations, but he is facing federal charges for allegedly stealing hundreds of thousands in benefits intended for his father.
For some 15 years, federal prosecutors say, Larry Drotleff stole nearly $250,000. A federal criminal complaint filed in the Northern District of Ohio noted that because authorities were “unaware that death had occurred,” monthly Social Security and pension deposits continued to be made in the elder Drotleff’s accounts.
“From in or around February 1, 1998 to in or around September 13, 2010 … [Larry Drotleff] did willfully and knowingly steal, purloin and convert to his own use [Social Security benefits] in the amount of approximately $111,485,” a federal complaint says. He allegedly stole even more — $135,040 — from his father’s General Electric pension, the complaint says.
The Tuscarawas Sheriff’s Office noted that “[w]hile the case did not prove to be a murder, it should be noted that the inhumane treatment of the corpse was conduct so inexcusable” that the office never fully abandoned it.
“It remains difficult to comprehend that the greed of theft could cause someone to treat their father’s body in this manner,” the sheriff’s office said.
