Less than 24 hours after Mindie Mock Stanifer was sent to prison for 18 years for her role in the 2006 murder of Daniel E. Ott, the third person in the car when convicted murderer Chad South traveled to Burton Township admitted his guilt.
Alva Jacobs, 35, of Huntsville, Ala., agreed Wednesday morning to withdraw an earlier not guilty plea to third-degree felony obstruction of justice and enter a plea of guilty to a lesser charge of first-degree misdemeanor obstruction of justice.
“I’m very sorry to the Ott family for this incident. I regret the day that I ever met Chad South,” Jacobs told Geauga County Common Pleas Court Judge David Fuhry. “I feel that nobody should have the painful task of burying a child.”
Fuhry sentenced Jacobs 30 days in the Geauga County Safety Center, with 10 days credit for time already served, adopting a joint sentencing recommendation Malarcik reached with prosecutors.
Earlier, Malarcik said Jacobs had been aware of the investigation into the Ott murder since 2010, when law enforcement first contacted him in Alabama.
“He was aware that it was happening, ongoing and likely charges to come,” Malarcik told Fuhry. “He was arrested (in 2015) and released on bond on Oct. 27.”
As a condition of bond, Jacobs was required to wear a GPS monitor and for eight months was monitored without incident, added Malarcik.
He also told Fuhry the plea deal was reached after dozens of discussions with prosecutors about the case and a possible resolution, and hours of negotiations.
Prosecutors informed Fuhry the family of Daniel E. Ott — the unintended victim of the murder — was aware of the plea deal and recommended sentence, and was in agreement with it.
On June 22, South was sentenced 28 years to life in prison for pulling the trigger in Ott’s murder.
Stanifer was found in Florida in December 2014. She initially denied any involvement in the Ott murder and said she didn’t even know South. She later reached out to detectives in May 2015 and admitted her involvement, placing herself in Geauga County with South and Jacobs.
Stanifer eventually was brought to Geauga County, where she filled in gaps, providing detectives with more answers of how Ott’s murder was committed, but ultimately backed out of every deal she made with prosecutors.
Two other men are awaiting trial for their alleged role in Ott’s murder: 60-year-old Joseph Rosebrook, of Florida, and his 57-year-old brother, Jeffrey Carl Rosebrook.
Prosecutors believe the elder Rosebrook, a man named Curt Frazier and a Daniel C. Ott were involved a chop-shop operation in southern Ohio and were under investigation by the Logan County Sheriff’s Office.
Frazier cut a deal with Logan County to save himself and agreed to testify against Rosebrook, who hired Daniel C. Ott to take care of Frazier. But Daniel C. Ott agreed to turn state’s evidence against Rosebrook, who was convicted in 2005 in Logan County in the attempted murder-for-hire plot to kill Frazier.
While serving a 10-year sentence at the London Correction Institution, Rosebrook put out the hit on Daniel C. Ott. South was an inmate at the same state prison until March 2006 and had also spent time with Rosebrook in the Logan County jail.
Carl Rosebrook was the alleged moneyman in the operation and was responsible for paying South the money.
Instead of killing Daniel C. Ott, who would have been nearly 70 years old in 2006, authorities South murdered 31-year-old Daniel E. Ott.