Missing N.Y. Pastor Found in Ohio Strip Club

ABC News ^ | March 28, 2008 | David Schoetz

[Choose Ye This Day]

A pastor whose disappearance from a small town in upstate New York triggered a search by police and the FBI was found earlier today — inside an Ohio strip club.

Police said that when the Rev. Craig S. Rhodenizer, 46, was confronted by an officer, he began crying and said he couldn't remember anything about the 36 hours he was missing.

But dancers at the club remembered Rhodenizer. They told investigators that Rhodenizer spent two hours drinking, soliciting dances and making threatening comments. He also said he wanted to take the dancers back to his motel, according to the police report. In his car was a bottle of Bacardi rum.

Sgt. Frank Previte, an investigator with the Lewiston Police Department, told ABC News it was one of the most bizarre cases he's seen.

"They questioned him a bit. He was very distraught, crying and hysterical," Previte said. "He did not know where he was."

Rhodenizer was discovered more than 400 miles from his Lewiston, N.Y., home by police in Riverside, Ohio, who were checking out-of-state license plates of cars parked at the club in a high-crime section of the city.

When officers ran the New York license plate on Rhodenizer's Toyota Camry, the check showed the pastor as a missing person being sought by New York police and FBI. Riverside police called authorities in Lewiston and were instructed to approach Rhodenizer.

The pastor broke down when police asked if he was Rhodenizer, crying and asking about the welfare of his wife and son, according to a Lewiston police report.

Ohio police took Rhodenizer to a hospital and towed his car.

Previte was relieved the search for Rhodenizer ended safely for the pastor, even if it was under unseemly circumstances.

"Regardless, we don't have any indication that a crime has been committed," Previte said. "And I don't see that changing."

Susan Rhodenizer, the pastor's wife, told ABC News that the family is making arrangements for her husband to return home.

"This was very much a stress-induced emotional crisis," his wife said. "He's never had any of this, historically." The family intends to seek ongoing mental health treatment for Rhodenizer.

Susan Rhodenizer reported her husband missing Wednesday after he said he was going to a Best Buy 30 minutes away to have a computer repaired. The family was scheduled to go on a vacation Thursday.

New York authorities initially feared the pastor may have been kidnapped and the FBI joined the search. They picked up a cell phone signal placing Rhodenizer in northern Pennsylvania Wednesday night, once at 9 p.m. and again at 9:30 p.m. Previte said there was no cell phone or credit card activity throughout Thursday.

Rhodenizer is the pastor of St. John's Lutheran Church in the Village of Lydonville.

Police said the pastor did not have any relevant criminal history. "In our check into his background, we could not come up with anything that indicated this was stress-incuded," Previte said.

[MarkL]

Susan Rhodenizer reported her husband missing Wednesday after he said he was going to a Best Buy 30 minutes away to have a computer repaired.

To "have a computer repaired" at Best Buy?? Uh, I think that should have been a tip-off right there. People don't get computers repaired any more than they get clock-radios repaired. You throw the computer away and get a new one.

Sorry, I don't mean to hijack this thread, but actually there are A LOT of people who get their computers repaired at Best Buy. One of the most common thing I've seen is people buying laptops, and then buying an extended warranty plan for them. However, what BB doesn't mention is that it's THEIR warranty you're buying, not the manufacturers. And they'll give you LOTS of grief when you try to exercise that warranty. An ex-girlfriend had a laptop she bought from BB, and she bought the warranty. When she had a problem outside the HP warranty, she took it to BB, they kept it for 4 weeks, and then told her that the problem was caused by someone pouring a soda on the keyboard, and it would cost about $700 to fix. Well, at the time I was warranty authorized by HP for their servers, desktops, workstations, and laptops, and when she got it back, I opened it up and took a look around, and took photos, proving that there was no such damage. I threatened them with a a law suit, and they said that they got her system mixed up with someone elses, and that they'd be happy to fix it under the warranty.

I actually do recommend extended warranties for laptops, particularly if they include accidental damage coverage, but ONLY from the manufacturer. And to the best of my knowledge, every major manufacturer offers this.

Mark

[csvset]

Missing Lyndonville pastor found OK

Wife overjoyed even though husband was located by police in Ohio strip club

By Aaron Besecker and Nancy A. Fischer - NEWS NIAGARA BUREAU
Updated: 03/29/08 6:37 AM

Search is over for Lutheran pastor Craig Rhodenizer

Nearly two days after Susan Rhodenizer last heard from her missing husband, she beamed with relief that he’d been found safe by police — even though he was in an Ohio strip club.

“Thank God, thank God,” she told The Buffalo News on Friday afternoon.

The Rev. Craig S. Rhodenizer, pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Lyndonville in Orleans County, was found by police early Friday in the K.C. Lounge, outside Dayton, Ohio.

Rhodenizer, 46, of Lewiston, was not arrested or charged, and was expected to be released to family friends following a mental health evaluation.

His wife said she believes her husband was suffering a “mental health crisis” due to ongoing job stress.

Rev. Rhodenizer just finished handling the Easter season, a busy time of the Christian calendar, and had been “consistently dealing with other people in crisis” for almost a year, said his wife, who spoke to him by phone after he was found.

“I am just thrilled to [have been] able to talk to him and tell him I love him,” she said. “And we’re going to work on whatever it is [that’s wrong].”

Susan Rhodenizer reported her husband missing early Thursday. Just after 4 p.m. Wednesday, the pastor told his wife he was taking the family’s computer to an Amherst Best Buy store for repairs.

He ended up in a strip club in Riverside, Ohio, instead. He told a dancer at the club he had not been in a strip club for more than 20 years “and it was about time he was in one again,” according to a Riverside police incident report.

A dancer inside the club told police Rhodenizer had been inside for about two hours and had three or four beers, according to the report. The dancer also told an officer Rhodenizer had been “acting incredibly strange,” used profanity and offered to pay her to go back to his hotel room.

Rhodenizer also had paid for three or four private dances, afterward arguing about the price, the dancer told police.

The dancer also said Rhodenizer did not act disoriented or like he was having a medical problem, according to police.

At 12:40 a.m. Friday, Riverside Officer Rhett Close located a passenger car with an out-of-state license plate, and ran the plate through a police database. The information Close received told him that the car belonged to a missing person.

Close said when he found the reverend, he initially appeared “collected and surprised to be speaking to police.”

After further questioning, Rhodenizer “then began to act disoriented,” the officer reported, and when asked by on-scene medics whether he felt any pain, he told them “he only felt . . . guilty.”

Officers said they found a bottle of Bacardi rum in the back seat and an empty, one-gallon bottle of gin in the trunk of Rhodenizer’s 2002 Toyota Camry, which was parked outside the club.

Police also found the computer in the back seat. Officials from the Niagara County Sheriff’s Office requested Ohio police hold the computer because they “may be interested in looking at it.”

Sheriff’s Investigator Bruce Roth said he had no comment when asked why the department was interested in the computer.

The FBI assisted Lewiston police in the missing person investigation, which involved reviewing credit card and E-ZPass records.

Investigators also tracked Rhodenizer’s cell phone, which “pinged,” or registered, on cell towers in St. Mary, Pa., at 9 p.m. Thursday, and in Dubois, Pa., at 9:30 p.m.

A staff member in the Syracuse office of the Upstate New York Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America declined to comment when reached by phone on Friday.

Susan Rhodenizer said she was ecstatic when police called her at about 2 a.m. Friday to tell her that her husband was found safe.

“That was the best-case scenario,” she said.

She also said her husband does not go to strip clubs and doesn’t know why he did this time. She had earlier told The News her husband’s disappearance was “uncharacteristic.”

Rhodenizer arrived at his religious life as a second career, his wife said, and has been pastor of St. John’s since 2004.

For the previous five years, he was associate pastor of a church in the Rochester area. Prior to becoming a pastor, he worked in the printing industry.

The Rhodenizers have a 9-year-old son. Susan Rhodenizer said her husband is “willing to seek whatever treatment he needs.”

The family has friends in the Dayton area who were planning to pick up Rhodenizer when he was released from the hospital.

Susan Rhodenizer thanked police, as well as supporters from around Western New York, and said she wished the family would have recognized signs of her husband’s stress earlier. “We’ll cope,” she said.

The community support included an interdenominational prayer service held Thursday evening in St. John’s. More than 60 people attended the service, which was organized by County Line United Methodist Church in the Town of Yates, Susan Rhodenizer said.

[Sensei Ern]

AM I the only one who saw the irony that a guy picked up at a strip club, asking for sex is the pastor of St. JOHN'S?

[Choose Ye This Day]

I didn’t even catch that. Good eye.

[ktscarlett66]

Something similiar happened to my cousin years ago. He literally ripped the front door off the hinges, walked out and disappeared. His wife called us in case he showed up, but he turned up in FL a couple of weeks later (1000 miles away from where he lived.) Cops talked to him because he seemed to be living on the beach. No shoes, no ID, no idea how he’d even gotten to FL. Turned out to be a bipolar episode. There’d been some little things over the past year, but nothing that added up to anything, until then. We saw him at Christmas and he was on the ‘up’ then, I remember my parents remarking how ‘bouncing off the ceiling’ he was that day and how unusual it was. The ‘down’ episode was about a month later.

Also happened to a former coworker, disappeared in Germany while on vacation and they found him hiding in an abandoned basement, no memory of how he got there or what had happened in the interim. Both men are on meds now and have not had any episodes like those since. Perhaps this is what happened to the pastor. You can’t look at someone’s non-existent criminal history and find stress or mental illness notes, for cryin’ out loud.

[Choose Ye This Day]

A complete mental disconnect, I can see and understand.

This pastor’s romp seems to be cut from an altogether different cloth, if you’ll pardon the pun. This seems more of an oat-sowing escapade, rather than him losing control of his mental faculties. I think the disconnect here was moral, not mental.