Barbara Blatnik

Case background and investigation

Barbara Blatnik, known to friends as Barbie, was a 17-year-old from Garfield Heights, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. According to a Cuyahoga Falls Police Department statement quoted by Cleveland 19 News, she was last seen alive around midnight on December 19, 1987, when a friend dropped her off at the corner of Warner Road and Grand Division in Garfield Heights.

At about 10 a.m. on December 20, 1987, her unclothed body was found beside O'Neil Road, a narrow access road leading to Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls, Summit County. Police said her injuries were consistent with strangulation. The location is roughly 25 miles from her home, according to a summary of the case by The Cinemaholic, which also reports that a ring engraved with her name helped identify her.

The investigation produced no charge for more than three decades. The Cinemaholic's account says male DNA recovered from under her fingernails could not be matched to anyone in law-enforcement databases. In August 2019 the journalist James Renner launched the Porchlight Project, a nonprofit that pays for DNA testing in Ohio cold cases, and chose the Blatnik case as its first. According to Wikipedia's article on Renner, the group funded new testing of the fingernail samples and forensic genealogy research carried out by Identifinders International.

On May 6, 2020, Cuyahoga Falls police arrested James Zastawnik, 67, of Cleveland. Police said he had been linked to the crime through new evidence made possible by advances in DNA technology, and the police chief credited cooperation between detectives, the Porchlight Project and the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Zastawnik pleaded not guilty at a video arraignment in Stow Municipal Court and bond was set at $1 million. In June 2020 a Summit County grand jury indicted him on charges of aggravated murder and murder.

The case never reached a jury. The Cinemaholic reports that his bond was later reduced, that the trial was postponed several times, and that he maintained he did not kill her. Cleveland 19 News reported in September 2021 that Zastawnik had died while free on bond awaiting trial; other outlets reported that he died of cancer in late August 2021, about two months before the scheduled trial date.

Because the defendant died before trial, no court ever ruled on the evidence, and Zastawnik was not convicted of any offence in connection with Barbara Blatnik's death. No one else has been charged.