CLEVELAND -- The Grand Jury has indicted Robert G. Rembert Jr. for the Aggravated Murders of four individuals, three this year and one in 1997, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty said Tuesday.
Rembert is charged with killing Rena Mae Payne in May of 1997, Kimberley D. Hall in June of this year, and Jerry Rembert and Morgan Nietzel in September of this year.
In all, the indictment includes 25 charges: 10 counts of Aggravated Murder, six counts of kidnapping, four counts of Rape, two counts of Aggravated Robbery and one count each of Having Weapons under Disability, Grand Theft and Gross Abuse of a Corpse.
Rembert, 45, was convicted of Voluntary Manslaughter for the December 23, 1997, slaying of Dadren Lewis in a Cleveland parking lot.
He was sentenced to six years in prison.
He was arrested September 21 by sheriff's deputies in Medina County on a warrant for the murder of Ms. Hall and since has been held in Cuyahoga County Jail on a $1 million bond.
"Robert Rembert is a serial killer. So far, we know he's purposefully executed five people," said Prosecutor McGinty. "An investigation of his activities as an over-the-road truck driver is currently underway."
The first killing alleged in this indictment took place in May 1997. The victim, Rena May Payne, was a 47-year-old Cleveland woman whose strangled and beaten body was found on May 15, 1997. She was discovered by an RTA bus driver in an employee rest room at a bus turnaround at East 83rd Street and Central Avenue.
DNA evidence recovered from the victim's body subsequently was matched to Robert Rembert, who had been an RTA driver at the time of the murder and would have had the code to the locked restroom.
On June 10 of this year, the body of Kimberley D. Hall, 31, of Cleveland, was found near an open field at East 83rd Street and Gill Avenue by two passing workers.
This victim has been strangled, beaten and raped in a similar fashion. As with the first victim, DNA found on her body was also traced to Rembert through the Combined DNA Indexing System (CODIS) data base. In addition, the last calls made and received on Hall's cell phone were to Rembert.
On September 20, Morgan Nietzel, 26, and Jerry Rembert, 52, were found dead with gunshot wounds to their heads in their home on East 140th Street.
Robert Rembert had been living in the house with the two victims. Jerry Rembert was his cousin. Ms. Nietzel's vehicle was missing from the house.
The following day, Robert Rembert was arrested coming from the showers at a Pilot Flying J truck stop near Seville in Medina County. He had been driving Morgan Nietzel's red Saturn Vue.
