A judge in Ohio threw the book at a 27-year-old man who brutally killed his 24-year-old girlfriend by hitting her over the head with a hammer, wrapping her body in plastic, and dumping her body in a trash can at a park named after an iconic character voice behind from many children’s books.
Judge Frank Forchione of the Stark County Common Pleas Court said that Sean Goe would spend the maximum of 29 years to life in a state prison for killing Raychel Sheridan.
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Looked at court records and found that Goe was found guilty last week in Stark County of murder, felonious assault, gross abuse of a corpse, and tampering with evidence. He was also found guilty of burglary and grand theft when the property was a gun or other dangerous weapon.
The hearing for sentencing
Before giving the sentence, Forchione went on a tirade against Goe, who killed Sheridan with a hammer and then threw her body in a trash can at Canton, Ohio’s Mother Goose Land park.
In his closing argument, Dennis E. Barr, the head of the criminal division for the Stark County Prosecutor’s Office, said that he had tried 78 different murder cases and had a “hard time thinking of anything that was this brutal and savage.” Forchione agreed with Barr.
Forchione said, “I’ve been on this bench for 17 years and I agree with Mr. Barr—this is without a doubt the most brutal murder I’ve seen.” An ABC affiliate in Cleveland, Ohio, posted video of the hearing. “That’s terrible.” It breaks my heart.
Raychel Sheridan was beaten so badly that the deputy sheriff who saw her body couldn’t recognize her from a picture of her.
Forchione also said that Goe “crushed a 3-by-2-inch hole in her skull” with a hammer, causing her skull to collapse into her brain tissue.
“The coroner said that a part of her face pretty much exploded,” Forchione said.
Forchione went after Goe again after officially giving the sentence.
His words were, “Mr. Goe, you sold your soul to the devil. Because you deserve the maximum sentence, I have ordered that you receive it on every count.
These are the maximum consecutive sentences that can be given because you committed the worst type of crime and there is a good chance that you will do it again. “I’m not able to assist you.”
The murder
At 12:32 p.m. on July 2, 2024, deputies from the Stark County Sheriff’s Office were called to a home in the 4100 block of Orchard Dale Drive NW in Plain Township about a missing woman named Sheridan. This was reported by Law&Crime earlier. She was quickly put into a national list of people who are missing.
The release says that while deputies were at the scene, they saw a maroon Jeep Liberty traveling on Guilford Ave NW in Plain Township. The license plate belonged to Raychel. “Deputies stopped the car and talked to the driver, Plain Township resident Sean Goe, 26. Goe then ran away on foot.”
Early in the morning on July 3, officers from the Canton Police Department found Goe at a homeless shelter. He was wanted for burglary, grand theft of a firearm, and domestic violence with a victim.
A news release from the Stark County Sheriff’s Office says that around 12:32 p.m. on Tuesday, July 2, 2024, deputies were called to a home in the 4100 block of Orchard Dale Drive NW in Plain Township about Sheridan, a woman who had been reported missing. She was quickly put into a national list of people who are missing.
The release says that while deputies were at the scene, they saw a maroon Jeep Liberty traveling on Guilford Ave NW in Plain Township. The license plate belonged to Raychel. “Deputies stopped the car and talked to the driver, Plain Township resident Sean Goe, 26. Goe then ran away on foot.”
Early in the morning on July 3, officers from the Canton Police Department found Goe at a homeless shelter. He was wanted for burglary, grand theft of a firearm, and domestic violence with a victim.
Police said that when the search warrant was carried out at Raychel Sheridan and Sean Goe’s apartment, evidence of foul play was found. “Detectives have found proof that Sheridan was killed in the apartment.” Sometime around 9:24 a.m. on July 3, 2024, Canton sanitation workers found what they thought was Raychel Sheridan’s body in a park in the Southwest part of the city.
The body was found at Mother Goose Land, an old theme park in the 400 block of Schroyer Avenue SW that had been closed since the 1980s. It had opened in 1956. About 10 years ago, the area was fixed up and turned back into a public park.
A worker for the Canton Parks Department was taking out the trash when they found Sheridan’s body wrapped in plastic inside a trash can. They called 911, according to WOIO, a CBS affiliate in Shaker Heights, Ohio.
The Canton Repository reports that prosecutors told the jury that Sheridan was hit in the head at least 10 times with the blunt end of a hammer.
The report says that Sheridan was beaten so badly that her body could not be identified when compared to a headshot of the victim. It was said that the hammer was found in the apartment that Goe and Sheridan shared.
DNA from Goe and Sheridan was also found in a bucket and gloves that were found in the apartment.
“Only the person who killed Raychel would have a reason to throw her body away like trash in that dumpster in Mother Goose Land,” Criminal Division Chief Prosecutor Dennis Barr is said to have said during closed arguments. “That person is sitting here right now and their name is Sean Goe.”
Reports say that Goe’s lawyer said the investigators thought Goe was guilty right away and used the investigation “to prove the assumption, to prove the conclusion, not the other way around.”
