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
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.