The case
Brad McGarry, 43, and David Kinney met years earlier in a coal mining class in eastern Ohio and became best friends. Kinney, who lived in nearby Brilliant, was married, and his family knew McGarry well. What they did not know was that the two men had been in a secret sexual relationship for years, and that McGarry wanted Kinney to leave his marriage.
On May 7, 2017, Kinney drove his wife and 13-year-old stepdaughter to McGarry’s home near Bellaire, saying he needed to return a weed trimmer. Inside, Kinney had his stepdaughter check the basement, where she found McGarry dead beside a covered hot tub, shot in the head. Rooms had been ransacked, yet there was no forced entry. McGarry’s cousin helped detectives identify Kinney as the man McGarry had been seeing, and cellphone location data placed Kinney at the house.
Over a long interview on May 9, Kinney’s account kept changing. He finally admitted firing the gun but claimed he had wrestled it away from McGarry during a fight. After an eight-day trial, a Belmont County jury convicted him of aggravated murder with a firearm specification in February 2018, and Judge Frank Fregiato sentenced him to life without parole plus three years. The Seventh District Court of Appeals upheld the conviction in June 2019.
Case photographs
Where it happened
Bellaire, Ohio, where Brad McGarry was killed in 2017