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THE PLAIN DEALER
Painter: Give Me Polygraph In Spirko Case Page 2 of 5 On Aug. 1, 1997, while being questioned on an unrelated matter by William Latham, an investigator for the Wyandot County prosecutor's office, Willier disclosed that Dingus was involved in Mottinger's kidnapping and murder, both of which followed a botched drug pickup by Dingus and others at the Elgin post office. In a letter in December from the Avoyelles Correctional Center in Louisiana, where he was serving a 25-year sentence for rape, Dingus told The Plain Dealer he had no involvement in Mottinger's death. On Friday, Willier said authorities investigating the murder showed him a piece of the paint-splattered shroud and he recognized it as part of the dropcloth he and Dingus had been using to paint a Findlay house that summer. "I am 99-point-nine-tenths sure that that tarp came from that painting job," Willier said. And, he said, besides the owner of the house, Dingus was the only one who had access to the tarp. "That's the key thing that has me baffled over the years," Willier said. "Look, if this guy - this John Spirko - if he don't know me and I don't know him and he don't know Dingus and Dingus don't know him, how the hell did he get the tarp?" Willier lives in a small town in Tennessee and works in the cable industry. He declined to discuss the specifics of his 1997 statement to Latham, although he said he stands by it. But Willier did say he is more than willing to talk to federal authorities - and he's eager to take a lie-detector test about his assertions to Latham, both to finally clear his own name and to help reopen the investigation. He said he offered to take a lie-detector test in 1982 to prove he wasn't involved in the murder, but has never been given one. "I've been out of trouble since 1988," Willier said, referring to a past scarred by drug involvement and criminal convictions. "I'm very clean now. I'm married. I go to church and everything. I just want this to leave me alone." But he also expressed some sympathy for Spirko's situation. "I think about it a lot," Willier said. "It has me bothered. Because what if there is an innocent person there. And what if the guy that actually did it - or guys or whoever - are walking free?"
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