When big tragedy hits small towns, first responders can pay heavy toll

April 24--PIKETON, Ohio -- Most people can shut off the television or put down the newspaper when the tragic news of the Pike County killings finally gets to be too much.

But the deputies and paramedics who went into those homes? They can't refuse to be a part of it. Same story for the detectives and special agents who for two days meticulously and methodically combed four grisly crime scenes for clues of why eight people were killed. They can't blink it all away.

And Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader certainly doesn't have a choice: He cannot unsee what became of a family taken from the community he has always called home.

So when a longtime sheriff who has been in those shoes heard the news of the unimaginable killings in Pike County -- eight members of one family all dead, most executed while they slept -- it made him physically sick.

"You see such carnage and nastiness that you can't ever put it out of your mind," said former longtime Logan County Sheriff Michael Henry. "But eventually, you have to take that uniform off and just be a human, just feel. And that's tough to do. It's tough for everyone there right now."

>> Complete coverage of the Pike County killings

Henry understands what the Pike County law-enforcement community is going through. He was sheriff of rural Logan County in western Ohio when, on Memorial Day weekend 2005, 18-year-old Scott Moody shot and killed his grandparents, his mom, two of his friends and then himself. He also shot his younger sister who survived.

The village of De Graff where the Moody murders happened is similar to the makeup of the southern Ohio villages that the Rhodens in Pike County -- now said to be the victims in the shooting deaths --called home. Tiny places where there are no strangers.

Those relationships make the horror all the worse.

"One of my deputies went into the Moody home and he had a niece in there," Henry said. "How can anyone who's never had to do that understand how that feels?"

Yet everyone soldiers on as they are trained to do, said the Rev. Leo Connolly, longtime chaplain for the Franklin County Sheriff's office. Duty calls.

But then the moment always comes.

"Down the line, when they are finished and everyone has gone home, they must process," he said. " And they experience the horror of it all alone, after everyone else already has."

Reader said his entire staff has worked 'round the clock since the first call came in: "No one wants to go home." But he knows eventually they must. Henry said he knows they'll all take care of one another. They have to.

The pressures that came along with the Moody case nearly killed him -- literally. Serious health problems almost immediately followed. He was never the same. "I'll be blunt: The Moody case is the one that put me out of this business," Henry said. "The public pressure, the 24-hour media craze. The toll it took on my community and my office. It was brutal."

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