Sean Noakes. A friend for a few months in KHK. Programs sometimes create murderers.
http://mentalhopenews.blogspot.com/2008 ... natti.htmlStabbing devastates family Cincinatti Enquirer
By Brenna R. Kelly and Kevin Kelly - July 11, 2008FLORENCE - Candles, flowers and stuffed animals now sit on the doorstep of the house where Sharon Gette and Barbara Rodgers were viciously attacked with a knife Wednesday.
Ever since the stabbing, which killed Gette and severely injured Rodgers, her 72-year-old mother, friends neighbors and strangers have been leaving the items on the porch of the Raintree Road home, said Gette’s daughter Kelly King.
“The community has really pulled together,” she said, “So many people have walked up to my doorstep to wish me well and my family. I just want to let everybody know out there in that neighborhood that I appreciate it a lot. I couldn’t ask for a better community to live in.”
A funeral for Gette, 51, will be held Monday at Linnemann Funeral Home in Erlanger. Visitation will be from 1 to 3 p.m. with a service following at 3 p.m.
On Friday, Rodgers continued to recover at University Hospital, King said. While the family had been hopeful she would be released today, Rodgers will need more treatment including skin grafts, King said.
Sean Noakes, 39, who is accused of stabbing the women is being held in the Boone County jail without bond. He is charged with murder, attempted murder and being a persistent felony offender. He will appear in court July 18 at 9 a.m.
After Barbara Rodgers' husband died last year, Sean Noakes, who lived about two blocks away, would occasionally stop by to help the elderly woman take out the trash.
Relatives living two doors down from Rodgers thought nothing of it when they saw the 39-year-old Noakes leaving her bi-level home on Raintree Road before 8 p.m. Wednesday.
"I didn't stop and stare at him," said Matt Strickland, whose wife, Kelly King, is Rodgers' granddaughter, "because I see him all the time around the neighborhood."
Later, the family learned that Rodgers and her daughter, Sharon Gette, had been stabbed inside the home and that police think Noakes was the attacker. Gette, 51, died from her injuries; Rodgers, 72, was at University Hospital on Thursday.
"My grandmother is an old woman who doesn't turn a stranger away," King, Gette's only child, said. "My mom was a great woman. My mom was a great mom, and she was a great grandma."
Florence police found Noakes three hours later at the Houston Road Longhorn Steakhouse bar and arrested him.
"There's something wrong when you can kill somebody and then go to a restaurant," Florence police spokesman Capt. John McDermond said.
Noakes is charged with murder, attempted murder and being a persistent felony offender. He is being held without bond in the Boone County jail.
Noakes, who stands 6-foot-5 and weighs 300 pounds, has an extensive criminal background and history of mental illness. King said Thursday that she was well aware of his history.
"If you really want to report on something, report on how he was walking the streets. Run his background. Look at his report. Report that stuff," King said. "Report the fact there was a lunatic on the streets and that Kentucky laws are so ridiculous and so lenient that people like that can walk the streets."
Thursday, police were searching the east Florence neighborhood, including a creek about 75 yards from Rodgers' home, for a knife. They were also talking to neighbors.
"We don't have a reason why he did this," McDermond said.
McDermond said neighbors helped find Noakes after word circulated Wednesday night that he was the suspect in the stabbing. Someone came to the scene and told police that they saw Noakes at Steak 'n Shake in Florence, McDermond said. Police found Noakes across the street at Longhorn Steakhouse.
"He did not have a great deal of blood on him when he was arrested," he said.
Police hope Rodgers will be able to fill in the blanks in the case when she recovers, McDermond said.
King said her grandmother was in stable condition Thursday. Rodgers does not know her daughter died, King said. The family planned to tell her later, she said.
"One woman was tragically taken from me," King said. "My grandma is in the hospital over a senseless act."
Gette grew up in the area, relatives said, and was a friendly person who loved her grandchildren. She was living in the house, assisting her mother, and had been employed as an inspector at Ellison Surface Technologies in Hebron.
In addition to being known in the neighborhood where he lived with his parents, Noakes was known to police.
"We've had calls on him off and on since the early '90s," McDermond said.
In 1993, Noakes walked into the Frisch's restaurant at Turfway Road and Ky. 18 and held employees hostage. He released the hostages one by one "stating he was told to protect the people," according to the police report.
Noakes pleaded guilty but mentally ill to kidnapping in Boone Circuit Court in 1994 and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Before he pleaded guilty, Noakes underwent a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation that found he was competent to stand trial. Noakes told the psychologist that he heard voices and was taking two psychiatric medications. The report also said Noakes spent five days in Eastern State Hospital, a mental health center in Lexington, just months before the kidnapping.
Before the kidnapping, Noakes had been convicted of 14 other crimes starting in 1989 when he was 21. The convictions included criminal possession of a forged instrument, forgery, receiving stolen property and theft by unlawful taking, terroristic threatening and alcohol intoxication.
In prison, Noakes repeatedly petitioned to have his sentence reduced, telling the judge that he was "tricked and coerced" into pleading guilty, believing that he would be sent to a mental hospital. His motions were denied.
Noakes was released in 1998 after serving about four years. He went to prison twice again for parole violations.
He was released for the final time in April 2004, the Department of Corrections said.
John Stevenson said he has been a friend of Noakes' father since childhood and called to tell him what happened Wednesday. Stevenson said the family was crushed by the news.
"His mother and father both tried to help him, but with his record, he couldn't get work," Stevenson said. "Doors wouldn't open for him; so, needless to say, it sends him right back into the same old crowd with the same old habits."
Strickland said relatives of Gette and Rodgers were "staying real close together, helping each other get through."
A memorial fund in Sharon Gette's name has been established. Donations can be made at any Fifth Third Bank branch.
Staff writers Quan Truong and Jim Hannah contributed.
