The current murder case involving the death of three-year old Marcus Fiesel has managed to attract national attention. This is very similar to a 1952 murder case that was tried in Clermont County Common Pleas Court. This is the first part of a two-part series about the Dovie Dean murder trial.

Interestingly enough, the Fiesel case is taking place in the same courtroom in which Mrs. Dean was tried. The second floor of the old Clermont County Courthouse on the middle of the south side of the building facing Main Street. After her sentencing, Liz Carroll, found guilty of murdering Marcus, was assigned to be imprisoned at the Marysville (Ohio) Women’s Reformatory, the same detention center to which Dovie Dean was taken after her sentencing.

In the spring of 1952, Clermont County was very much a rural community. When Hawkins Dean and Dovie Myers married on April 13, he was a farmer who owned of a 115-acre farm located less than two miles north of Owensville on Belfast-Owensville Rd. At the time, she lived on Titus Road, just south of “Hawk” Dean’s farm. She was a homemaker and a housekeeper. She was his second wife, he was her third husband. They were married in the home of the minister of the Dodsonville (Highland County, Ohio) Methodist Church.