Members of the Conniff family are shown enjoying a summer day in their yard. Pictured in front, from left, are Bernard "Buzz" Conniff and Debbie Conniff. In back are daughter Melissa Och and Jonathan Noon. (Photo Provided)

WHEELING — Even two decades later, the difficult memories for Melissa Och remain as the calendar turns to April. She remembers this month as the time when three of her family members were brutally murdered.

It was 20 years ago — in early April of 2004 — that the bodies of Och’s mother, Deborah Fluharty Conniff; her stepfather, Bernard “Buzz” Conniff; and her brother, Jonathan Noon, were found shot execution-style in the basement of their Gashell Run Road Home.

Robbery was believed to have been the motive, and William Richard Spears Jr. and Jeffrey Ray Woods were later convicted of the crimes and sentenced to life.

Money and jewelry stolen were later returned, and Och and her family have even moved into the home where the murders occurred.

But the tight-knit Fluharty family has never been the same.

“The family has never recovered, and never will recover,” said Del. Shawn Fluharty, D-Ohio, who is the nephew of Debbie Conniff. “It’s just like any family that goes through a tragedy.”

Prior to the murders, the family met together every Sunday for dinner at the home of Warren and Betty Fluharty.

“I’ve been using the term ‘Sundays stopped’ (after the murders),” Fluharty said. “We used to have dinner at my grandparents’ house. It was a weekly occurrence that we got together.

“I don’t recall that we ever had one again after that. It changed the whole family dynamic for sure.”

The family’s patriarch, Warren Fluharty, was in the hospital battling cancer at the time of the murders, and he also died 27 days later.

“My father and I had to go to the hospital and tell him. It was one of the hardest things I ever had to do in my life,” Fluharty said. “Once he made it out of the hospital. Once he heard the news, there was no coming back from it.”

The Last Sunday Dinner

Donna Fluharty Wilson explained she is the youngest of three siblings in her family. Debbie Conniff was the oldest, followed by brother Doug Fluharty and then her.

Wilson and her husband Bobby, who lived in Fort Knox, Kentucky, were visiting Wheeling the weekend prior to the murders. Wilson noted their visits were becoming more frequent as her father was becoming more ill.

She remembers the last Sunday dinner at the family home being somewhat somber as her father was in the hospital and not present. But after dinner Wilson said she had a wonderful day catching up with Debbie and Buzz.

“We talked and laughed and had a nice visit … it was just a fun day. It was a nice break from all the worrying we were doing over my dad,” Wilson said.

When it came time to leave, the Wilsons and Conniffs walked outside to say their goodbyes.

“My sister and I hugged,” Wilson said. “Her last words to me were, “I love you. Hurry back. I need you.'”

She said on their journeys home they often communicated with the Conniffs to say where they were on their travels. But this time they didn’t hear from any of the Conniffs as they traveled.

The next morning Wilson said she received a call from her mother Betty saying Debbie was supposed to have come that morning to take her to the hospital to see Warren, but she hadn’t arrived yet.

Betty said she was going to go over to the Conniffs’ house to see what the situation was.

“I instantly felt sick,” Wilson said. “I told her not to go alone.”

She advised her to instead call Doug to go with her, as he was working closeby.

The mother and brother of Debbie Conniff were the ones who discovered the bodies of their family members who had been shot execution style in their basement.

Shawn Fluharty was a sophomore at West Virginia University in Morgantown at the time, and he distinctly remembers walking out of the gym that day to see he had three missed calls from his father Doug.

“I called him back and he was hysterical,” Fluharty said. “My dad is a very calm, collected guy. I just remember him saying, ‘They’re all dead, Shawn. They’re all dead.’

“It was very eerie. He was able to calm down and tell me he had discovered this horrific scene. To make it worse, my grandmother was with him.”

Fluharty said he left school for the semester a few weeks early to be with his family and made arrangements with professors to take his final exams.

He sat through the trials for both defendants, and became the family’s spokesperson.

“It kind of really impacted me personally to want to be a lawyer,” Fluharty said. “And I saw how thankful we were for first responders and Prosecutor Scott Smith at that time.”

Bernard “Buzz” Conniff and Debbie Conniff are shown on their wedding day. (Photo Provided)

“Incredible People”

The Conniffs were thought of as “incredible people,” according to their surviving relatives.

Debbie raised Och and Jonathan as a single mother for many years before meeting Buzz.

Och said Buzz was actually the neighbor who lived across the road, and her grandfather came to know him as he did work on the home where Debbie’s family lived.

“I think he was trying to fix them up,” she said of her grandfather. “Then my step-father asked her out, and I think it was with the pushing of my grandfather. There was an amazing connection. It was just really sweet.

“I just think it was a wonderful thing. I think it was really a love story.”

Debbie had “always wanted to do something with her life,” Och explained. She first became an LPN and received an associate’s degree in nursing after Och became an adult and Jonathan was older.

After she and Buzz were married, he encouraged her to achieve her dream of obtaining a bachelor’s degree in nursing from West Liberty University.

“She fell in love with West Liberty so much she took a job there while she was getting her master’s degree,” Och continued. “They asked her to come be a clinical instructor, and she ended up teaching there while working on her master’s.

“She was just living her dream. And her dream was to just keep going on as a nursing educator. I just kept thinking if she had never met my stepfather, she would have never had the time to go on. He gave her the time and the way to go do that. And that was amazing.”

Och also spoke of her brother Jonathan, who worked at Kroger and had just been promoted to working in the dairy department prior to his murder.

“He loved Kroger so much he wanted to go to college to study business because he wanted to become a manager there someday,” Och said. “I was blown away by that.”

She found among Jonathan’s belongings on his dresser a letter of acceptance from Bethany College, and she believes he also applied to other colleges.

Buzz owned Valley Coin, a business that supplied coin operated machines to local stores. Och said she called him “Daddy B.”

“I had a close relationship with my father, but there was something about this man. I just fell in love with him,” Och said. “He treated my mom wonderfully – like a princess. He always had a smile on his face.”

Conversations about Debbie’s nursing often came up during Sunday dinners, as did a range of other topics, according to Shawn Fluharty.

“We would always have political and philosophical conversations, and Buzz was always part of that dynamic and part of the family immediately,” he said. “He was just an incredible guy from Day 1, who bonded with my grandfather, my father and myself and the whole family.”

As for Jonathan, he was “just figuring out life,” Fluharty continued.

“Twenty years later, who knows where he would have been,” he said.

He noted there is no return to normalcy for his family.

“My aunt was a nurse by trade, and a caretaker for my ailing grandfather. That took a very large piece of the family pie,” Fluharty said. “In your small families, you have your traditions. It’s impossible to get back to that after that happened.

“It just turns a family upside down, and there’s no full recovery that can take place.”

Och At Home

Och said many were surprised she moved into the family’s home where the murders occurred only about a year later. She raised her family there, and continues to live on the 22-acre spread.

“No one understood why I wanted to, but I knew I was going to be safe here,” she explained. “I knew my mom was going to be here watching over me.”

The first night they were in the home, her husband Charles went downstairs and began to feverishly slice away and remove the carpeting that still held the stains from the murder. Then he scrubbed the concrete.

The couple had decided the matter was too personal to allow a professional cleaning company to come in and do the work.

Och said when he was done, a typically non-emotional Charles came upstairs in tears.

“I never thought I would have to clean up the blood of my in-laws,” he told his wife.

“He did it with so much strength, — I was very proud of him for that,” Och continued. “Things like that made me love him even more.”

Prior to the new carpet being placed, Och said she wrote a letter to each of her deceased family members on the cement where they were found.

“I love the home, and my children grew up here,” Och said. “I knew they would have wanted us here, and their grandchildren growing up here.”

Her daughter’s bedroom over the years has been the in-law suite downstairs where Jonathan had his bedroom.

“It’s not like strangers died in this house. People that I deeply loved died in this house. Why would I not want to be where they were?” Och asked.

“Yes, it was a horrible thing — the worst thing in the world … But they were together. They loved each other. And they went together. If you are going to die, the worst thing is dying alone. They didn’t. They were together.”

Twenty Years Later

“I still talk to her everyday,” Och said of her mother. “I wish to God she could see everything.

“I would give anything for my mom to see my daughter. I would love to see them with my son. It would be fun to have them here.”

Och’s daughter, Chelsea — who was 6 months old at the time of the murders — is now working toward a degree in history and anthropology at Marshall University.

Son Dylan is 18, and is a junior at Linsly.

Och is a nurse like her mother. Debbie died at age 50, and Och is now 52.

“I’ve surpassed her. It’s strange,” she said.

Och said she wishes Jonathan could have gone on to have a family of his own, that he could have been an uncle to her children, and that she could have been an aunt.

She noted dealing with the tragedy has become a little easier over the years, and she no longer feels the constant need to tell others about the experience.

“But the pain is never that far away,” she said.

Grandmother Betty Fluharty helped Och raise her children, and she continues to be an influence in all their lives. Donna Wilson said she will never forget walking into the funeral home and seeing the coffins of three family members.

“Our family will never be the same,” she said. “I was supposed to grow old with my sister. We were supposed to be there for each other.”

Doug Fluharty is retired as an electrician with the Independent Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and doesn’t wish to speak about the family tragedy, according to his son.

Shawn Fluharty said he took something away from the tragedy that does help him in his role as a public servant and lawmaker. It was advice his father gave him.

“You don’t know on a daily basis what a person is going through, so it is important to listen, care and show empathy to everyone,” he explained. “That’s what I try to do, and what you learn from a tragic event. It’s something I try to use daily.”