In the early morning hours of September 14, 1990, the body of 16-year-old Lisa Pruett was found in the yard of a home at the corner of Lee Road and South Woodland, in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Lisa, a student at Shaker Heights High School, had been stabbed 21 times sometime after midnight the previous night. She was partially disrobed, and initial reports alleged that she was sexually assaulted, although this proved to be untrue.
Her death, coupled with the still unsolved 1990 murder of a prominent Shaker couple, Phillip and Dorothy Porter, who lived just eight doors from the site of the Pruett murder, put the city on edge. Press coverage of Lisa’s death went into overdrive.
While I recall the Porter murders, the case of Lisa Pruett struck home with an element of the theory of the sixth degree of separation. At the time, my son was a student at Shaker Heights High School and although not classmates with Lisa and the two prime suspects, Kevin Young and Daniel Dreifort, he knew them and had taken the same band trip to Germany a year earlier. In addition, Lisa’s body was found on the property of Howard and Hollie Bush, who had been my neighbors growing up in the Glenville area and were long-time family friends.
When I learned that Cleveland journalist and crime writer, James Renner, had written Little, Crazy Children — A True Crime Story (Citadel Press – Kensington Publishing Corp., 2013), my interest immediately peaked.
The author utilized a line from Arthur Miller’s classic play The Crucible that uses the Salem Witch Trials as a stand-in for McCarthyism to fashion the title. Although at first glance, the title seems strange, as the reader progresses through the story, it coincides with the rush to judgment by the police and the community to assess blame in the Pruett case, the Shaker Heights rumor mill that churned out numerous theories and suspects, and the conflicting stories by witnesses, some plausible and some implausible.
The white, mostly upper-class, group of students and parents depicted in Little, Crazy Children are not the sophisticated, serious minded young scholars encountered in Laura Meckler’s Dream Town – Shaker Heights and the Quest for Racial Equity (Henry Holt Publishing, 2023). They are more akin to the free-spirited party crowd depicted in Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere (Penguin Books, 2019), a novel set in Shaker Heights. Renner’s teens engage in underage drinking, smoke cigarettes and are occasional drug users. They are sexually active teens who thought nothing of sneaking into the home of their current boyfriend/girlfriend and spending the night — obviously without the knowledge of parents sleeping down the hall.
There are numerous references to so-called Robo parties where the teens got high on Robitussin, an over-the-counter cold medication that became the drug of choice for many in the Pruett/Young/ Dreifort circle, also known as the AP Posse — referencing their shared experiences in taking advanced placement classes at the high school.
There is speculation that on the night of the murder, Dreitfort, who had been released the same day from a 30-day stay at a psychiatric ward at Cleveland Clinic, where his father was an administrator, had planned such an event to celebrate his homecoming. After the murder, suspect Kevin Young spent the same amount of time in a mental health facility, which some critics allege was arranged by his wealthy parents to get him out of the police limelight.
The ultimate question answered by Little, Crazy Children is who killed Lisa Pruett. Was it her boyfriend Daniel Dreifort, who awaited her midnight arrival on the night in question, heard screams, found her bicycle but still went to bed when she did not appear? Was it Kevin Young who traveled in the same circles and allegedly made threats against Lisa and Daniel or was it a stranger — some interloper who came into the sanctity of Shaker that did this heinous act?
Renner takes the reader step by step through the investigation conducted by the Shaker Police Department and their early focus on Kevin Young as the killer. In an era before doorbell cameras, security cameras, DNA testing and cell phone and text records, Shaker police investigated the case the old-fashioned way, using a lot of shoe leather and following up on leads, while also seeking the assistance of the FBI crime lab and a forensic psychologist and a public relations firm. But bringing a killer to justice was a slow process and as the days and months went by, the strength of the case against Kevin Young seemed to wane.
Ultimately, in 1993, the Cuyahoga County prosecutor, relying on circumstantial evidence, brought an indictment against Young. That same year prominent criminal attorney Mark R. Devan got a not-guilty verdict in a jury trial where he faced off against longtime Assistant County Prosecutor Carmen Marino. In the first vote of the jury, the vote was ten not guilty votes and two guilty votes. The ten jurors were not convinced that there was proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Ultimately, the not-guilty side won out and Kevin Young walked out a free man. No one has ever been convicted in the death of Lisa Pruett. It remains a cold and unsolved crime.
For fans of TV crime shows and murder mysteries, Little, Crazy Children will be a page turner. My copy arrived from Amazon around noon on a Saturday and I turned the last page just before midnight the same day.
Renner takes the reader down every rabbit hole and explores every possibility as to who killed Lisa. He details the inner workings of the investigation, the interrogation process, the use and misuse of lie detectors and sometimes questionable tactics of the Shaker police. But more than that, he gives detailed descriptions of the suspects, witnesses and other people in the mainstream and on the fringe of the investigation.
As the investigation unfolds, Renner reveals the seamier side of Shaker’s utopian community façade. Was the fact that the Shaker Heights mayor was a law partner of Kevin Young’s father affecting the investigation? Was there a rush to judgment that caused the police to overlook or miss vital clues? Was there just poor police work on the part of the Shaker Police?
In 2017 Kevin Young died at age 44. His life spiraled downhill after the trial and dropping out of The Ohio State University. He made a living as a house painter and by doing other menial jobs, devoid of friends because of his connection to Lisa’s death. Once a prospective date Googled his name, he never heard from them again. Ultimately, his alcohol and drug abuse contributed to his death.
Renner follows the lives of other major and minor characters such as the police officers, witnesses, jury foreman, lawyers and classmates to round out the picture. He ultimately concludes that the killer was a now deceased person, also a student at Shaker Heights High School, who may have been involved in the Porter murder and other local break-ins around the same time as Lisa’s death. I’ll leave that name for the reader to find out, but Renner’s theory seems convincing.
Little, Crazy Children is an intriguing account of life in Shaker Heights which is anything but what a person driving through the tree-lined streets full of beautifully landscaped mansions would think. While society wants to assign problems of drugs and alcohol, dysfunctional families and crime to the inner-city, low-income areas, Renner shows that such problems are not geographically, racially or economically specific.
More than just the story of the crime and the tragic death of a bright and beautiful young girl, and the investigation surrounding her death, this work demonstrates how one event can change the lives of multiple persons. Lisa’s family and the families of Daniel Dreifort and Kevin Young and many of her classmates were never the same. Kevin Young’s family did not have a funeral when he died, because they did not want the media to rehash the tragic events of 1990. Some classmates left Shaker, never to return. The repercussions of Lisa’s death still linger in psyche of many people and will probably linger in the mind of the reader, as it does with me. James Renner tells a story that the reader will not soon forget. The tragedy is that it is a story that must be told.
C. Ellen Connally is a retired judge of the Cleveland Municipal Court. From 2010 to 2014 she served as the President of the Cuyahoga County Council. An avid reader and student of American history, she is a former member of the Board of the Ohio History Connection, and past president of the Cleveland Civil War Round Table, and is currently vice president of the Cuyahoga County Soldiers and Sailors Monument Commission. She holds degrees from BGSU, CSU and is all but dissertation for a PhD from the University of Akron.
2 Responses to “BOOK REVIEW: Shaker’s Crazy Little Children, reviewed by C. Ellen Connally”
Mel Maurer
Thanks Ellen. I was out of state when these murders were commited so I was not aware of them – until now. I’m glad to see that Renner has done a good job- and it seems has cleared Young’s name. In a way, it reminds me of the Sam Sheppard case. A murder without an immediate arrest, leaving it to the public to play detective. I think Sam was guilty but that’s another story. I hope the book is widely read – especially in Shaker Heights.
Todd Harshman
Great review, Your Honor. Both my wife and I read the book in one day too. I grew up in Shaker Heights about a mile from the murder site. MY wife worked at the same firm as Kevin Young’s dad. So we had connections to the case too. Mr. Renner writes a compelling tale that is impossible to put down. The story is tragic, and maddening at the same time. Its a story of absentee parents (without being absent, seemingly) and police more interested in winning than finding the truth. My wife and I both agree with Renner on the true solution to not just the Pruett case but the Porter case as well. I can’t recommend this book enough.