PORT CLINTON — In the weeks between when Harley Dilly missing and when his body was found, all Dina Rodgers could see when she drove through Port Clinton were places he might be: abandoned buildings, someone’s basement, the Portage River.
“Finding him felt impossible,” the Port Clinton business owner said.
The youth was last seen the morning of Dec. 20, and nearly a month later authorities found his corpse stuck in the chimney of an unoccupied home at 507 Fulton St., just a few hundred feet from his own house.
Ottawa County’s coroner ruled the youth died of compressive asphyxia — the compression of the chest in a way that limits the lungs and interferes with breathing.
No foul play is suspected.
Just as how questions popped in the days after his disappearance, new mysteries have emerged in the days since his body was found. Why exactly did the Dilly youth climb into the chimney, as police believe he did? Why did police not search the inside of the house where he was found sooner? Perhaps most perplexing of all, how did his parka and glasses end up in a room on the second floor of the home?
Port Clinton Police Chief Robert Hickman held a news conference the day after his officers’ grisly discovery, but his remarks only partially filled in the blanks.
Police believe Harley got onto the roof of the house by climbing an antenna tower, and then the youth decided to climb down the chimney. The chief said the chimney was blocked between the first and second floors, and that’s what led to him getting stuck. They also believe the boy was able to push his coat and glasses through a chimney flue into the second floor room, though he did not detail how exactly that would have happened or why investigators believe he took this action.
“Right now this is an ongoing investigation, and the coat and glasses were outside the flue of the chimney,” Chief Hickman said.
He also said police canvassed the area multiple times but did not go inside until about 4:10 p.m. Jan. 13. When asked why it was not previously entered, the chief said the home was double-locked and showed no signs of forced entry.
Reporters asked the chief multiple times what led them back to the area.
“With any investigation we start back at the beginning and re-canvass anything that has already been checked,” he said.
The Blade has requested multiple interviews with the chief since the news conference, but he has not responded to those requests. A Blade reporter who visited the police station Friday was told the chief was not in the office and was not available.
The youth’s family also previously declined to comment.
The house where the youth was found has been unoccupied for years, said Columbia Station, Ohio, resident Jim Schmitz, whose parents own the residence. The house has been in his family since it was built, and the chimney, where the youth was found, hasn’t been used for as long as Mr. Schmitz can remember.
There have never been any fireplaces in the house, he said. From the inside, the chimney was plastered over. The only openings were two flue vents on the second floor and at least one on the first floor. Each opening was about six to eight inches in size. The vents were designed to hook up to wood-burning stoves, which once upon a time heated the home.
Now the house is heated through modern means. Mr. Schmitz didn’t even know the chimney was blocked until the police told him.
Port Clinton residents for weeks helped in the search for the youth. Nearly $20,000 in reward money was raised for anyone with information that led to his safe return. At least part of that money now will go toward paying for the teen’s funeral, according to posts on social media.
Before anyone knew what happened, questions abounded. People were scared, Ms. Rodgers said, especially when there was a possibility he’d been abducted.
When school started again after the holidays, the line for parents to pick up their kids from school grew much longer.
“That first Monday after Christmas break was over, nobody was letting their kids walk home,” Ms. Rodgers said.
She was one of those parents. Her daughter is the Dilly youth’s age and had known him casually. On Friday afternoon, three days after the teen was found, Ms. Rodgers was wearing pink as she worked in her store, Lilly & Gert’s, in downtown Port Clinton.
“It’s heartbreaking,” she said. “[Harley] loved to explore. He was a pleasant young man to talk to.”
While many in the community continue to speculate about what happened, Ms. Rodgers said she doesn’t heed any of the theories, and she believes police did everything they could have done.
“I’m completely behind our law enforcement,” she said. “I do not believe there was any foul play.”
Police asked business owners to check or allow them to check any unused areas in their buildings, such as basements or crawl spaces, Ms. Rodgers said. Non-residents of Port Clinton who own homes in the town came back, she said, specifically to check their unoccupied homes for the youth.
“As awful as [the outcome] is, it’s closure,” she said. “It’s closure for his family, it’s closure for the community, and it’s closure for Harley.”
Pink ribbons covered much of the town, on trees, telephone poles, and all the way down East Fifth Street, where the teen’s home is. Outside the house where he was found, on Fulton Street, pink stuffed animals sat on the sidewalk and bouquets of flowers decorated the porch.
Ana Stahl, of Port Clinton, said sometimes it feels like with all the speculation that people aren’t letting the teen rest in peace.
“All I know is our little town is sad, and our little town is a good little town,” she said. “Overall people came together more than tore each other apart.”
Michael Wilson, clinical therapist for Safe Haven Behavioral Health, a nonprofit organization, works with youth groups weekly, and in the wake of the Dilly youth’s death, he has been focusing on encouraging empathy.
“There isn’t a word in the English language to describe when a parent loses a child,” he said. “It’s that devastating.”
First Published January 18, 2020, 12:00 p.m.
