Justice Served? Simpsonville Murder Cases End in Plea Deal

Prosecutors who had hoped to wage a death penalty case against a Simpsonville man charged with two murders were compelled Monday to accept a lesser manslaughter plea deal instead.

The reason? Because of former Simpsonville Police investigator and Mauldin police officer Ralph Bobo, who faces charges of evidence tampering in an unrelated Simpsonville murder case, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors decided to accept the plea deal rather than pursue capital murder charges against 36-year-old Michael Crane, since Bobo's charges would come out at trial and possibly influence jurors, the Associated Press reported.

Under the plea deal, Crane was sentenced Monday to 30 years in prison for voluntary manslaughter in the August 2011 killings of a Simpsonville woman and her daughter.

Crane beat Jane Lanser, 56, and Allison Cross, 26, with a hammer in their home after going to buy drugs with his girlfriend, police said. After Lanser failed to show for work, police said they found Crane inside the house with the bodies of the two women wrapped in a bloody comforter.

According to the AP report, Crane's attorney, public defender John Mauldin, said Crane was using morphine and didn't remember the killings. He said he recommended Crane accept the deal because Bobo's arrest didn't change the evidence against him in this case.

Bobo currently faces charges of evidence tampering in the 1984 murder case of Cassandra Johnson, a Hillcrest High graduate who was found dead from multiple stab wounds in a wooded area off West Georgia Road. Bobo, hired by Simpsonville PD in 1992, was in charge of evidence in the Johnson cold case when he allegedly disposed of key, undisclosed evidence. 

With that evidence gone, prosecutors believe it will likely be impossible to ever solve the case.

Thirteenth Circuit Solicitor Walt Wilkins has not said how or why Bobo allegedly disposed of the evidence, or what the evidence was. Bobo faces a possible 20 years in prison if convicted on the tampering charges.

Wilkins said in May that his office didn't believe Bobo had tampered with evidence in any other cases. However, former Simpsonville Police Chief Keith Grounsell, who worked on the Johnson cold case while an investigator with the solicitor's office and again as police chief, said via his Facebook page that Monday's plea deal is only the beginning of the fallout from Bobo's tenure as a police investigator.

"A murderer gets a lower sentence than he was expecting or deserves," Grounsell said. "This is an indirect consequence of the illegal actions allegedly committed by a police officer. Even though the former officer is innocent until proven guilty, it will have a long lasting negative impact on each case he was involved in over the years. Unfortunately there will be more cases like this to come in Simpsonville."

Read more about Bobo here.