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Home > Blogs > Dayton Courts: Legal and crime news > Archives > 2011 > June > 13 > Entry
Man convicted in Erica Baker case is released from prison
DAYTON — Christian Gabriel, considered a central figure in the 1999 disappearance of Erica Nicole Baker, was released from prison Monday to the custody of the Mercer County Sheriff’s Office.
Gabriel, 40, was convicted of gross abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence in 2005 following a jury trial. Sentenced to six years, he entered prison on Oct. 20, 2005. Gabriel was given 105 days of jail credit, said JoEllen Smith, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
“We had planned to go up and hold some placards that he could see, asking him to tell us where Erica is,” said Pamela Schmidt, Erica’s maternal grandmother.
Gabriel has a warrant out of Mercer County, Smith said. Gabriel will not be on parole supervision, as he has completed his sentence, she said.
The warrant, issued in June 2000, is for failure to pay fines and court costs for a 1996 domestic violence conviction, said Gary Thobe, chief deputy for the Mercer County Sheriff’s Office. Gabriel owes $440.50, Thobe said.
Online jail records show Gabriel was booked into the jail Monday.
Baker was 9 when she disappeared from Kettering’s Indian Riffle Park on a rainy Sunday afternoon in February 1999. Her body has never been found.
“We don’t wish him any harm,” Schmidt said.”We know he probably wants to be reunited with his family. That’s all we want - to be reunited with Erica and lay her to rest.”
Police believe she was hit by a van that Gabriel and others were driving on Glengarry Drive. A grand jury declined to indict Gabriel on charges related to causing Baker’s death, but did indict on the other charges three days before the statute of limitations expired.
Gabriel gave his first account to investigators in July 1999, in which he said that he and two other people, one of them Jan Franks, had been stealing from the Kettering Meijer store the day Baker disappeared and that “something could have happened” as they fled in Gabriel’s van.
Gabriel sold the van 16 days after Baker’s disappearance. In July 1999, the van was impounded at the Miami Valley Regional Crime Laboratory, but forensic scientists found no evidence linking the van to Baker.
From April through December 2004, Gabriel made several statements to police, with various shifts. Once he identified Franks, who died of a drug overdose Dec. 30, 2001, as the van’s driver when the van struck Baker. Another time, he said he was the driver. His statements also led police to searches for Baker’s body at Huffman Dam and Caesar Creek State Park, but no trace of the girl was found.
Tom Beyerlein contributed to this story
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