Since , everyone had known Dellerba killed herself. At least that was the official version, a ruling made by the previous coroner, Dr. Gus Shaheen, who was the last word on deaths in the county for more than 18 years. She was a year-old prostitute with a half-dozen aliases who ran a brothel in the industrial city of Wheeling, W. The week before her violent death, she had been arraigned in federal court in Cleveland on a prostitution case. Similar federal charges were pending in Miami.
Case closed. Asher was in an Ohio prison for an unrelated murder. He had an upcoming parole hearing. If he helped the feds, they'd put in a good word for him.
Hankish had sent Asher and another associate, Ronald Bris, miles to Canton to kill a woman, or to "paint a house," as they called it in their secret code. Asher didn't say the woman's name or know her age.
He didn't know why he had to kill her, except for the fact Hankish wanted it done. And he recalled he was told to do it soon. Assistant U. Attorney John H. Reed questioned Asher about the Canton murder. Reed: And how did you do it, sir? Asher: I broke her neck. Reed: What else did you do? Asher: At Ronnie's insistence, because he wasn't sure that she was dead, stabbed her. Asher said he later learned from Bris the woman's death was ruled a suicide.
Pinzolo, her hometown, was closer to St. Moritz and Innsbruck than to Florence and Rome. She was a baby when she and her mother sailed to New York.
