The journey for Bob Gondor and Randy Resh to prove their innocence in a 1988 murder started and ended with a handshake.
The childhood friends shook hands in 1990 in the driveway of Gondor’s family home in Mantua and pledged to decline any plea deals and fight until their names were cleared.
They shook hands in the same spot 26 years later and agreed to take a settlement from the state for their wrongful imprisonment as long as it topped $4 million.
“You’re not getting this, are you?” Gondor asked Resh, who didn’t grasp the importance of the reprised handshake.
Resh looked around and smiled.
“Oh …” he said.
The state controlling board signed off last month on a total payout of $4.9 million to the two men who were wrongfully imprisoned for more than 16 years for the strangulation death of a Portage County woman.
For Gondor and Resh, now both 53, the settlement ends a battle that has consumed more than half their lives. Though both are moving forward, neither wants their ordeal to be forgotten.
On a recent afternoon at a restaurant outside Solon, the two friends shared a couple of beers while looking back at the long road that brought them to the point where they soon will be millionaires.
“I don’t think the case should end here,” said Gondor, the more outspoken of the two men.
“It’s a lesson that should be told,” agreed Resh, the quieter of the two, who was equally involved in their defense.
The case
Connie Nardi, 31, of Randolph Township, was found dead in August 1988 in a Geauga County pond near the Portage County line. She was last seen the night before at the Upper Deck Bar in Mantua.
Troy Busta, then 21, was arrested a few days later and charged with aggravated murder. He avoided the death penalty by pleading guilty to murder and agreeing to testify against Gondor and Resh, whom he said also were involved in Nardi’s death. He was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.
Gondor and Resh, who had been in the Upper Deck Bar the night Nardi disappeared, maintained from the start that they had nothing to do with her death.
Gondor said Portage County prosecutors offered him a deal. He would plead guilty and get shock probation after six months in exchange for writing down three words: “I was there.” Prosecutors were shocked when he refused.
“I wasn’t there,” he remembers telling them. “I didn’t do this.”
With Busta’s testimony, juries convicted Gondor and Resh. Both received lengthy prison sentences.
The two were cellmates for much of the 16 years they were incarcerated and worked together to have their convictions overturned. Their families lent them money and supported their efforts, including fetching them documents to help with their defense.
“I was a complete bull,” Gondor said. “I wouldn’t shut up.”
New trial
Gondor and Resh scored a major victory in June 2002 when a visiting judge nullified their convictions and ordered that they get a new trial because of the ineffectiveness of their first trial lawyers.
The Portage County Prosecutor’s Office appealed, but the Ohio Supreme Court upheld the new trial order in a unanimous decision in December 2006.
With a new trial looming, Gondor and Resh sought new trial lawyers. They reached out to Mark Marein and Steve Bradley, Cleveland attorneys with a wealth of criminal law experience.
Bradley remembers well their first meeting 13 year ago in Grafton Correctional Institution.
“I remember thinking to myself 15 minutes into our initial meeting, ‘These guys are actually innocent,’ ” Bradley said. “You felt it. You knew it. It was palpable.”
Marein, however, was put off by Gondor’s aggressive attitude.
“I immediately came to the conclusion that Bob Gondor is ‘Mr. Know It All,’ ” Marein said. “He gave me the impression he knew more about the practice of criminal law than I did. I found it somewhat insulting.”
Marein told Bradley he wasn’t sure they should get involved and they might never get paid if they took the case. Bradley, though, agreed to represent Gondor, and Marein, despite his initial concerns, joined the fight.
Bradley and Marein represented Resh in his second trial in April 2007 and won Resh’s acquittal.
“It was one of the happiest days of my life,” Marein said. “It ranks up there with the day I got married and the birth of my children.”
Rather than trying Gondor again, Portage County prosecutors dropped the charges against him.
The two men were released from prison, but they weren’t done fighting. They wanted to prove their innocence, a requirement to pursue funds from the state for wrongful imprisonment.
Life after prison
First, though, they had to adjust to being free.
Gondor felt claustrophobic. After being in huge, warehouse-like prisons, his parents’ house felt tiny. He received counseling for post-traumatic stress for eight months.
Resh recalls it seeming too dark when he tried to sleep. He didn’t have counseling, but he wonders if the adjustment was somewhat easier for him because he had a second trial.
“He didn’t go through that,” Resh said of Gondor, getting choked up. “It helped me relax. It was like beating them.”
Both also had to cope with what they’d lost while they were locked up.
Gondor still gets teary while recalling the first time he visited his father’s grave in 2007. His dad had died five years earlier without knowing Gondor would get a new trial and eventually win his freedom.
Resh divorced his wife, Traci, while he was in prison, thinking it wasn’t fair for her to wait when he wasn’t sure how long he’d be incarcerated. They remarried two years after he was released and are still together.
Gondor was married for two years after getting out of prison, but then got divorced. He now has a girlfriend.
Neither man has children.
The civil trial to test Gondor and Resh’s innocence began in May 2014, with visiting Judge Marvin Shapiro, a retired Summit County Common Pleas Court judge, presiding.
After listening to nine days of evidence, Shapiro declared that Gondor and Resh were wrongfully convicted, clearing the way for them to seek compensation from the Ohio Court of Claims. Shapiro said he found Busta’s testimony unreliable and determined there was “substantial evidence that puts them [Gondor and Resh] nowhere near” Nardi and Busta when Nardi was killed.
“THERE IS NO PHYSICAL OR FORENSIC EVIDENCE OF ANY KIND IN THIS CASE THAT WOULD LINK EITHER OR BOTH PLAINTIFFS TO THE NARDI HOMICIDE,” Shapiro wrote in all capital letters in his ruling.
The Portage County Prosecutor’s Office appealed Shapiro’s decision, but it was upheld by the 11th District Court of Appeals.
Gondor and Resh filed a wrongful-imprisonment claim with the Ohio Court of Claims in October 2015. A year later, the two men agreed with their second driveway handshake to settle the case if the final figure reached $4 million.
Future plans
Gondor and Resh are now awaiting a check from the state that will bring their total compensation to $4,932,348.
It will be the second-highest payout awarded by the Ohio Court of Claims for wrongful imprisonment since 1985, according to court records.
Gondor, Resh and their attorneys will split the proceeds three ways. They will first, however, repay debts. Marein and Bradley worked on the case for free, with Gondor and Resh’s family and friends covering the costs of any expenses the attorneys incurred.
Marein and Bradley say Gondor and Resh have become more than clients — they are like family. Bradley said Gondor helps with odd jobs at his house and Resh comes over to watch football.
“We will forever be brothers,” Marein said. “We have shared a moment in time. No one can take that away. There’s serious love there.”
Resh, who has been living in Garfield Heights, is using part of his proceeds to buy a house in Mantua, returning to the hometown where many of his family members and friends still live. He just returned from a short trip to Myrtle Beach with his wife and friends. He plans to continue working at Rohrer Corp. in Solon where he is a die-maker and has been employed since shortly after his prison release.
Gondor doesn’t see himself moving back to Portage County, but he wants to buy the house in Chardon that his brother purchased for him when he was released from prison in 2007.
Gondor, a carpenter, has his own home-improvement business. He had hip replacement surgery last week and isn’t sure how much remodeling he’ll feel up to afterward. He may get a commercial driver’s license and drive a truck.
Neither has much to say about Busta, who had an Ohio Parole Board hearing Wednesday. Busta has been denied parole three previous times. The board is expected to make its decision in the next week.
“Really, our fight wasn’t about Troy Busta,” Gondor said. “Our fight wasn’t about Connie Nardi. … This fight was about our innocence.”
Portage County Prosecutor Victor Vigluicci, who inherited the case from his predecessor, didn’t return a phone message seeking comment.
Gondor, Resh and their attorneys think the case would make a great book or potentially a movie. Asked who would play him in a movie, Gondor joked, “John Belushi is dead.”
As for how they’re feeling at the end of their journey, Resh answered “relieved,” while Gondor said “satisfied.”
“It’s been a long road,” Gondor said. “I am satisfied that we started with the truth and that’s what finally won.”
Stephanie Warsmith can be reached at 330-996-3705, swarsmith@thebeaconjournal.com and on Twitter: @swarsmithabj .
