There has been a lot of speculation about this case. I am posting only what is available and has been released by the officials.
This article appeared in the Evening Review.
Suicide leads deputies to murder scene
LISBON — The murder of a man in a home outside of Lisbon on Sunday and a suicide outside of East Palestine both remain under investigation by the Columbiana County Sheriff’s Office Monday and may be linked to each other, as well as a murder from the past.
Sheriff Brian McLaughlin said Monday deputies were notified first of the suicide, after a man found an abandoned vehicle down Jimtown Road in Unity Township and reported there was a dead man inside. A handgun believed responsible for the suicide was found there.
McLaughlin said the vehicle belonged to Nick Ieropoli.
When deputies responded to Ieropoli’s home at 10984 state Route 45, a second man was found deceased and that one is believed to have been a homicide.
This was not the first time deputies have been called to that home outside of Lisbon. In August of 2008, deputies responded to the home for another homicide, the shooting death of Sherry Ieropoli. That case was never solved or at least never saw charges filed.
The murder of Sherry Ieropoli was on the short list of four homicides that former Sheriff Ray Stone said he was sending to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations in 2016, in hopes of solving them by getting someone else take another look at them. However, at the time BCI said the county could only send two and the two chosen were Melinda Todd and William S. Young Jr. The Todd investigation ended in the conviction of Kevin Kirby in October of 2021.
At the time of the murder of his mother, Jesse Ieropoli was 17 years old and investigators said the only people home were her husband Nicholas Ieropoli and her son, Jesse. During that initial investigation former county Prosecutor Robert Herron had said Sherry Ieropoli’s son was involved in her shooting.
McLaughlin said the sheriff’s office had recently set up a meeting with the Columbiana County Prosecutor’s Office of Vito Abruzzino about the Sherry Ieropoli murder. The two offices have been making an effort to take another look at some of the past unsolved murders in the county. McLaughlin said the purpose of that meeting was to “do a freshen up” on the evidence from the case and consider whether there was enough to proceed with prosecuting it.
djohnson@mojonews.com