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House of horror becomes place of prayer Mother buys the Steubenville house where her murdered son lived to 'give it back to God' Sunday, September 10, 2000 By Cindi Lash, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Correction/Clarification: (Published Sept. 11, 2000) A photo caption in yesterday's editions about Rachel Muha's purchase of the home from which her son and his roommate were abducted and killed last year was incorrect in saying that Muha wanted priests to consecrate the ground.
STEUBENVILLE, Ohio -- The drab walls, the floors, even the narrow blacktop street outside were heart-piercing reminders of her son.
On the walls, police found blood that spattered when an intruder punched and pistol-whipped him. On the floor, his sandals lay where he'd kicked them off before stretching out on the couch to doze.
The first time Rachel Muha saw the Steubenville house where her son, Brian, and his roommate, Aaron Land, had been beaten and led away to their deaths, she could scarcely bear to go inside.
Less than two months later, she bought it.
Relying on prayer and borrowed money, Rachel Muha has converted the two-story frame Victorian at 165 McDowell Ave. to a rent-free guest house for priests and others with religious vocations who are studying at nearby Franciscan University.
Brian Muha, 18, of Westerville, Ohio, and Land, 20, of Philadelphia, were students at Franciscan and were preparing to attend summer classes there when they were kidnapped and killed. A devout Catholic, Muha said she bought the house 150 miles from her suburban Columbus home both to maintain its connection to her son and to defeat the evil that once raged there.
"I wanted to reclaim it, to give it back to God. Something horrible happened there, but I felt it also could be something wonderful," said Rachel Muha, 47, also of Westerville. "I want it to be a beacon for the whole neighborhood."
Brian Muha and Land were abducted May 31, 1999, by two men who broke into their rented first-floor apartment in search of money or valuables that could be used to buy drugs, according to court testimony. The men drove the students to Pennsylvania in Rachel Muha's sport utility vehicle, which her son had driven to college, and fatally shot them on a hilltop off Route 22 in Robinson, Washington County.
One of those men, Nathan Herring, 19, of Steubenville, was sentenced to life in prison without parole last month after a jury in Steubenville convicted him of 12 counts of aggravated murder and other charges in the students' deaths. Jurors, however, concluded that Herring did not fire the fatal shots.
Jury selection will begin Wednesday in the trial of the second suspect, Terrell R. Yarbrough, 19, of East Liberty. Testimony and evidence in his trial -- particularly DNA analysis that detected blood that probably came from the victims on Yarbrough's clothing -- is expected to mirror much of that presented during Herring's trial.
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Yarbrough, who also is facing new charges in an attack on another prisoner Wednesday night in the Jefferson County Jail in Steubenville.
Muha said the idea of buying the house came to her in the four days that passed between the abductions and the discovery of the bodies of her son and Land.
"The word 'rescue' was going through my mind over and over, as in, 'We have to rescue them.' It was a heartbreak not to be able to rescue them," she said.
"Later, it came into my mind that maybe we couldn't rescue the boys, but we would try to rescue the neighborhood."
The house, by then, had been photographed and shown repeatedly in news accounts. Muha wanted to make it known as a place of prayer and peace.
A former teacher and school administrator, Muha already had a mortgage on her Westerville house; another son, Christopher, now 21, is in college. She didn't even have enough money for a down payment.
But after praying for guidance, she approached the owner of the house about selling it. At first, he wasn't interested, she said, but changed his mind after learning that the would-be buyer was the mother of one of his slain tenants.
The owner sold the house for $47,000, about $8,000 less than its appraised worth. Muha closed the deal in July 1999 after taking out another 20-year mortgage and a home-equity loan.
"I'd tell people 'I've got this idea,' and they would say, 'Slow down, Rachel. Why do this?' And maybe it was a crazy idea," she said. "But I don't live extravagantly, and I just knew I had to do this."
After painting and making repairs to the duplex house, Muha rented the second floor to a Steubenville construction company, which houses out-of-town workers there. The two-bedroom apartment on the first floor now is available for financially strapped priests or nuns while they study at Franciscan.
"We keep our tuition costs as low as possible, but it can still be a stretch. For priests from Africa and Third World countries, it can be especially difficult," said Franciscan University spokeswoman Lisa Ferguson. "So what [Muha] has done is a great boon for them. I have met few people who are so inspiring."
Rent paid by the second-floor tenants covers the mortgage for the house, but Muha pays for repairs and utility bills for the first-floor religious tenants. Those tenants are asked to pray for the slain students, for their killers and for residents of the neighborhood in their daily devotions.
Two priests from Africa who were the first to live in the house also have celebrated Mass there. They recently graduated from Franciscan, but two more priests from Africa are set to replace them.
"It is a comfort to me, knowing that there are priests there and that they're praying," Muha said. "We're all asked to transmit some of God's love through us. The more good we can put into the world, the less room there is for evil. That's the way God's economy works."
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