Ohio BCI: Investigation into Cleveland Clinic worker’s murder case ‘active’ 10 years later

CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) – Thursday marks 10 years since a Cleveland Clinic worker on his way to save a life lost his own to a single gunshot.

Who killed Stephen Halton Jr.?

The case may be unsolved, but we learned this is one of BCI’s more active cold cases.

Wednesday, we heard from Stephen’s family.

19 Investigates also spoke to the BCI special agent working his case.

January 11, 2014, Stephen Halton Jr.was on his way to assist an organ transplant team for his job at Cleveland Clinic.

He was waiting at a bus stop near Lakeshore Blvd. & Grovewood Avenue in Cleveland when someone shot and killed him.

Halton was just 30 years old. He was a father, a husband and a son.

“He missed on everything. Everything a person should be able to see and enjoy in their life,” said his mom Sheila Halton.

Special Agent Lindsay Mussell is hard at work trying to solve this case.

“Is a person possibly gonna hurt someone else? That’s never off your mind,” she said.

In the beginning, Cleveland Police said it may have been an attempted robbery gone wrong.

CPD referred the case to BCI’s Cold Case Unit in July 2021 along with two other unsolved homicides. You can read about Aliza Sherman’s case here.

You can learn more about Ryan Dixon’s case here.

“I’m hopeful in this case that with this being the 10-year, that we will get justice for Steven and his family. He deserves nothing less,” Mussell said.

We learned BCI is still processing a lot of physical evidence from Stephen’s case in their Richfield lab.

“The area of canvass revealed that there were witnesses who heard commotion and did hear a gunshot. So information was collected on scene at the time of and then we just kind of pick up where Cleveland has left off,” Mussell said.

And even though this case is now a decade old, there is still hope.

“In a cold case, we see that time can either help or hurt an investigation,” Mussell said.

“But obviously with this case we are hopeful that this is the 10-year anniversary, that not– not too much time has passed to where time is going to be particularly hurtful to this case,” she said.

Special Agent Mussell said this is one of BCI’s more active cases.

But they’re still facing challenges.

She said no suspects been ruled out in Stephen’s case.

BCI agents care about these cases and don’t stop thinking about them when their day is over.

They too are hoping for justice.

“He makes me smile. I can tell you that I never met Stephen. I’ve met his family in their wonderful. He had that smile and I wish I would have seen it because it was just so bright and bold,” she said.

When we asked about the possible attempted robbery, Mussell told us they don’t want to get too narrowly focused on a motive right now.

If you have any information in this case, even if it’s small, she said it may be enough to help solve it.

You can call BCI at 855-BCI-OHIO.

You can also call Crime Stoppers if you’d like to remain anonymous at 216-252-7463.

They’re offering a $20,000 for information that leads to an arrest in this case.

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