COPLEY TWP.: Michael Hance would pop vitamins like candy, convinced he could stave off cancer.
He took copious notes on his diet, filling yellow legal pads and documenting his research into the deadly disease. He told his friends he could rid the world of cancer, if only he had the time. After all, doctors knew the cure, they were just hiding it.
Other days, he could be found outside his Goodenough Avenue home sitting in his truck, doing nothing. Just sitting and staring. Sometimes, when he chose to speak, he’d point to stained rooftops as proof that airplanes were polluting Copley Township.
Friends say he didn’t like guns or water. In fact, his fear of drowning led him to bring his own canoe to construction jobs nowhere near a lake or river. There were times he would sit for hours in a kayak floating on the lawn outside his house.
There were other occasions when Hance, 51, would slide tiny skintight shorts up his thin 6-foot-3 frame to work on his beloved pickup truck. Or he’d just walk outside half-naked, oblivious to the kids getting on a school bus.
Some thought he was schizophrenic. Others were sure he was depressed or at least bipolar. They all agreed Hance needed help. But no one sensed a threat and certainly no one saw Aug. 7 coming.
On Friday, Copley police released the final 268-page investigative report that recounts the violent, 10-minute rampage Hance undertook against his family and neighbors that left eight people including him dead. Despite the mound of reports and interviews, police have been unable to determine the most elusive question remaining: Why?
“Obviously, there are a lot of unanswered questions, things we’ll never know,” Copley Police Chief Michael Mier said Friday. “The fact is, you can’t rationalize his actions because his thought process that morning was clearly not rational.
“But it appears from the investigation that most people who knew Michael Hance had concluded he had mental health issues. However, no one was so concerned that they thought he would do anything like this.”
What does become clear through the investigation is a portrait of Hance as a depressed, eccentric, sometimes paranoid loner who hadn’t worked in three years and was facing mounting financial issues and a possible breakup with his longtime girlfriend, Rebecca Dieter.
Despite Hance’s mental troubles, police believe he planned the assault, purchasing a second pistol and ammunition from a pawn store and honing his shooting skills at a local firing range just days before the killings.
Mier said it appears that Hance’s original targets may have been Dieter’s family members, whom the couple planned to visit at a reunion later that day in Pennsylvania.
His weapons and ammunition where already packed, along with a tent, inside his car. In his home, he had a bag stuffed with clothing, bug spray, a raincoat and new boots. In his pants pocket were a leatherman’s tool and a magnesium fire starter.
If needed, it appears Hance had guns to kill and equipment to live in the outdoors.
Copley’s investigation also paints a picture of the panic and chaos that struck the serene neighborhood in the suburb’s south end without warning on a beautiful Sunday morning.
Gunshots, more than 20 in all, rang out as men, women and children, some screaming in fear, ran for safety. Neighbors offered fleeing strangers shelter while caller after caller dialed 911 to report the gunfire as the stalking Hance made his way through yards.
It is a shooting spree that covered 12 acres, 25 homes and four murder scenes. It brought police from Copley, as well as Akron and Fairlawn, Summit County deputies and later the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation.
A troubled life
The investigation is essentially twofold: the events of Aug. 7 and the troubled life of Michael Hance.
Joyce Webb told police her brother was easygoing with no temper. As a child, he disliked guns and avoided them. In recent years, she said, Hance struggled with his emotions when their sister, Wanda, died from breast cancer in 2002. He was so distraught, he chose to store his dead sister’s belongings in a local storage unit facility so he would not have to see them. His mother, Thelma, died in 2006 after a 15-year fight with oral cancer. His father, William, long divorced from his wife, died the same year.
Webb told detectives that Hance had not worked since being fired as a clerk and driver from an Office Max store in 2008. On his last day, he was accused — wrongly he felt — of stealing $20 and he cussed out his female supervisor.
His only recent paid work came from helping his girlfriend’s father, Wayne Dieter, who lived on Goodenough Avenue and was dying from Alzheimer’s disease. The work ended with the man’s death in November 2009. Within months, Hance and Dieter, his girlfriend for about 30 years, moved into the house.
Nevin Webb, Joyce’s son who also works as an Akron police officer, told investigators he worked in the construction field with Hance for about 10 years. He recalled the canoe brought to work sites and Hance’s fear of water. He also described Hance as an “undiagnosed schizophrenic,” supporting his mother’s conclusion that Hance was likely bipolar and suffered from depression and mood swings.
Family tensions
Hance’s neighbors on Goodenough were Gudrun and Russell Johnson. The couple’s sons, Bryan and Michael, lived nearby with their own families. The police investigation shows the Johnsons were frustrated at times by Hance’s behavior: the short shorts, the constant work on his truck, including a time when he parked the vehicle under a makeshift tent.
They tried to avoid confrontations and often took their concerns about Hance or the condition of their property to the kinder and more reasonable Rebecca Dieter. Hance disliked his neighbors in return.
On one occasion in the summer of 2010, Hance caught Michael Johnson’s son shooting squirrels on his property. He took the boy by the arm and marched him home. Michael Johnson wasn’t happy with Hance, who by now was talking about the start of a neighborhood feud.
“You just wait, I’m going to finish it,” Hance told Johnson.
Friends and family told police that Hance grew darker in his final months, talking less than ever and withdrawing more and more, especially when it was suggested he seek mental help. He slept and ate poorly and had what a family member said were “delusional beliefs” that airplanes were polluting the area and the proof was on the stained roof shingles atop homes.
Lisa Dieter, his girlfriend’s sister, told police that Hance was “overall a weird individual” with many quirks. For instance, she said, Hance considered himself a nutritionist of sorts and thought he could cure cancer if he had the time.
Girlfriend speaks
In an interview at Akron City Hospital while she recovered from gunshot wounds, Rebecca Dieter said Hance’s behavior was progressively changing, but he never showed signs of anger or violence. She did, according to one report, confide to Joyce Webb during lunch on July 31 that Hance needed psychological help and she was considering separating. Hance, however, resisted getting help and withdrew further when it was suggested.
Rebecca Dieter was apparently unaware that Hance had bought a .45-caliber pistol at a Barberton pawn shop on Aug. 2 and ammunition for the pistol the next day, or that he was target shooting in Norton two or three days later.
Still, everyone recalls Hance acting quieter, anxious and more withdrawn during a cookout at Lisa Dieter’s home in Cleveland Heights on Aug. 6, one day before the shootings.
Those at the get-together say Hance’s behavior was more odd than usual. He was constantly checking his cell phone, going to the bathroom or walking outside to his car. For some reason, he glared at little Scott Dieter as the boy sat at a dinner table. One witness told police that Hance might have been angry at the boy, believing he had stolen a tool from him during a visit a year earlier.
In fact, Scott’s mother, Beth Dieter, told police Hance had “a look I had never seen before.”
The next morning, Beth Dieter was outside Hance’s home on Goodenough Avenue, helping her husband, Craig, load their car for the trip to Pennsylvania. The Kentucky couple had spent the night with Hance and Rebecca Dieter, Craig’s sister.
Hance was busy doing what he had been doing for what seemed like most of the morning: walking in and out of the house, making several trips to the basement or the upstairs for no apparent reason. Rebecca Dieter was annoyed by his lack of help in packing.
The Dieters were supposed to drive to Pennsylvania with Hance and Rebecca, but they changed their minds at the last minute. Outside, Beth Dieter told Hance about the switch. He gestured his approval and she walked inside.
Then the first gunshots rang out.
Neighbors killed
Gudrun Johnson, 64, and Russell Johnson, 67, were killed in their driveway. The Johnsons’ granddaughter, Autumn Johnson, 16, and her friend, Amelia Shambaugh, 16, were shot inside a parked minivan.
Craig Dieter, 51, was killed in the driveway. Rebecca Dieter, 49, was shot when she went outside. She told police she played dead to avoid being shot again. She recently was released from the hospital.
Michael and Bryan Johnson ran for safety as Hance paused to reload. He had two guns, a .357 and a .45-caliber pistol, in his hands.
Bryan Johnson, 44, made it a few hundred yards before he was shot and killed. Scott Dieter, who moments before was playing with a puppy, ran for his life with his mother. At Schocalog, she went right and he went left toward a home, where he was let in by a mother with three children inside.
Hance forced his way inside and found the boy in the basement. The child was shot at point-blank range. Michael Johnson, meanwhile, had gone to the attic in the Schocalog house, telling police he hoped to separate from Scott Dieter in order to draw Hance away. He later climbed down the house and sought shelter in a nearby swamp.
By then, Copley Patrolman Ben Campbell was walking down Schocalog with former police officer Keith Lavery. Hance refused to surrender and was shot and killed by Campbell. The officer’s actions have since been ruled justifiable.
Aside from a few words inside the Schocalog Road home while searching for Scott Dieter, Hance never shouted or spoke a word to anyone during his rampage. Beth Dieter, whose interview with police was filled with tears and an almost inaudible voice, said Hance had ample opportunity to kill her. She doesn’t know why he didn’t.
Mier said the investigation is closed, although he’s interested in having an expert compose a psychological profile of Hance that might help bring more answers. Meanwhile, signs of support for the victims still dot the Copley landscape and there are talks of building a memorial on the township circle at Copley and Cleveland-Massillon roads.

Phil Trexler can be reached at 330-996-3717 or ptrexler@thebeaconjournal.com.