Double murder of Wendy Offredo and Dawn McCreery by Richard Cooey and Clinton Dickens investigated on Shattered

Mugshot of Richard Cooey
Richard Cooey was executed the murders in 2008. Pic credit: Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction

Richard Cooey and Clinton Dickens kidnapped, raped and brutally murdered university students, Wendy Offredo and Dawn McCreery near Akron, Ohio in September, 1986.

Cooey, 19, Dickens, 17, and Horonetz, 19, had spent all day drinking alcohol and were throwing concrete blocks off a bridge onto Interstate 77 in Akron, Ohio. A block about the size of a basketball struck a car driven by Wendy Offredo, her friend Dawn McCreery was a passenger.

The men pretended to come to the rescue of the women, but instead ended up kidnapping them. Horonetz left the group when he realized his friends were going to rape the women.

Offredo and McCreery were taken to some secluded woods where they were brutally raped, tortured and killed. Their bodies were found the next day by a hiker, Offredo’s cause of death was ruled as strangulation, McCreery was stabbed in the neck, both had been severely beaten.

Offredo had phoned her mother, Geri Muck, to explain that their car had been hit by a block of concrete and that Cooey and Dickens were going to take them to safety. Muck insisted her daughter put one of the men on the phone, she later told how, in an unemotional voice, Cooey had lied to her about taking her daughter to safety.

A few days after the murders, an informant told police that they had seen Cooey selling jewellery that he had stolen from the victims. Cooey had also bragged to friends about the murders. Authorities caught up to Cooey, Dickens and Horonetz about a week later, and the three were arrested and charged.

Dickens was classed as a minor at the time of the offence so therefore avoided the death penalty, he was sentenced to life in prison. Richard Cooey was executed by lethal injection on October 14th 2008.

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The case is examined on Shattered at 10/9c on Investigation Discovery.

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