James Ruppert, who killed 11 family members on Easter Day in 1975, dead at age 88
James Ruppert, who shot and killed 11 members of his family on Easter in 1975, died Saturday at Franklin Medical Center in Columbus Saturday. He was 88.
News of his death came Monday from the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. The agency reported Ruppert died due to "apparent natural causes," but the official cause of death is pending.
The murders Ruppert committed, which included the deaths of eight children, rocked Hamilton and challenged the legal system.
Ruppert lived with his mother, Charity Ruppert, on Minor Avenue. Reports from the time said he struggled with alcohol and was unemployed.
That Easter, Ruppert’s brother Leonard Ruppert, Jr., his wife Alma Ruppert and their eight children came to visit for the holiday.
Ruppert later told a psychiatrist he slept most of the day then decided in the afternoon to leave to go to a shooting range. On his way out, his brother asked him about his car.
“How’s the Volkswagen?” his brother asked.
James Ruppert killed 11 people on Easter Sunday
Ruppert said he took it as an insult, a judgment from the successful General Electric engineer.
Ruppert fired 44 shots, and 40 struck victims. Eleven people were left dead including his brother, sister-in-law and mother. The bodies of his nieces and nephews were found strew across the two first-floor rooms of the house: John Ruppert, 4, Teresa Ruppert, 9, David Ruppert, 11, Ann Ruppert, 12, Carol Ruppert, 13, Thomas Ruppert, 15, Michael Ruppert, 16 and Leonard Ruppert III, 17.
Three pistols and a rifle were used in the attack. Police said the only sign of struggle was an overturned wastebasket.
A psychiatrist would testify that Ruppert laid on the couch for two hours after the massacre contemplating suicide, but suicide was a mortal sin and Ruppert did not want that to be his last act.
Instead, he called police.
Ruppert has been detained or otherwise incarcerated since his arrest on the day of the slayings. He was 40 then. Most recently, he was imprisoned at the Allen-Oakwood Correctional Institution in Lima where was serving two consecutive life sentences.
He was denied parole several times. His next parole hearing was scheduled for February 2025.
His case wound through the justice system for seven years.
In the first case, Ruppert admitted to killing his family but pleaded innocent by reason of insanity, the official phrasing used at the time.
Prosecutors claimed Ruppert killed his family for money. The estates of his brother and mother were worth an estimated $300,000. His defense team said Ruppert was beaten and taunted by his older brother after their father died when Ruppert was 12.
Two psychiatrists testified during the trial that Ruppert suffered from paranoia and delusions of persecution. Both said Ruppert was unable to control his actions at the time of the shooting.
“In fact, if there had been more people in the house they might have been killed also,” Harvard University psychiatrist Dr. Lester Grinspoon said.
Ruppert opted to have his case tried by a panel of three judges instead of facing a jury. He was erroneously told the three judges would have to unanimously agree.
Two of the judges found Ruppert sane and convicted him of 11 counts of aggravated murder. The third, Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Fred Cramer, found him insane.
He was sentenced to 11 consecutive life sentences. In 1975, the United States was in the midst of a 10-year moratorium for the death penalty. It was not considered in this case.
In 1977 and 1978, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that the judges erred in telling Ruppert he needed all three judges to agree on a verdict. He was granted a new trial that began in 1980.
The new trial was scheduled to take place in Hancock County but was delayed another two years while an appeals court and Ohio Supreme Court considered Ruppert’s claim that he was now facing double jeopardy. In 1982, it was decided he was not, and the new trial proceeded.
This time Ruppert opted for a jury. The trial lasted two weeks. The jury found Ruppert guilty of two counts of aggravated murder for the deaths of his mother and brother. He was found innocent by reason of insanity in the rest of the killings.
He was sentenced to two consecutive life terms. His attorney attempted to appeal citing a judicial error, but the motion was denied.
Edna Allgeier was the mother of the slain Alma Ruppert. On the day of the 1982 verdict, she offered a scathing view of the murderer.
“I sometimes think I’d like to string him up on the cross like Christ and cut a little piece off at a time. I’d want him to bleed slowly,” the bereaved Allgeier said. “But if you put that in the paper, people will wonder what kind of a Catholic I am.”
She blamed Ruppert for 13 deaths, not 11. Three years after the killings, her husband, Alma's father, shot himself in the head at 4 a.m. on Easter Day. A juror during the 1982 trial collapsed during the trial from a heart attack and died.
“Those pictures must have got to him,” Allgeier said.
She speculated that Ruppert was jealous of his brother for marrying Alma, as they were all friends in high school. Alma Ruppert was the only victim shot just once through the heart.
Allgeier died at the age of 92 in 2004. Her obituary read: “Survived by 16 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren… Preceded in death by eight grandchildren.”
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: James Ruppert, Easter Sunday Massacre killer, dead
