Competency hearing set Thursday for suspected serial killer in 1992 Austintown murder

A hearing is scheduled Thursday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court to determine if Samuel Legg III, labeled a serial killer by the Ohio Attorney General, is competent to stand trial for the 1992 beating death of a woman at an Austintown truck stop.

Judge John Durkin will review a forensic psychiatric report he requested last month for 55-year-old Legg, who is charged with two counts of aggravated murder and murder in connection with the death of Sharon Lynn Kedzierski.

Kedzierski’s body was discovered near the edge of the Universal Truck Mall parking lot in Austintown in April 1992. The coroner determined she died from blunt force injuries to the head and chest.

This will be Legg’s fourth competency hearing in Mahoning County. He was previously found incompetent after hearings in 2019, 2021, and 2023, leading to his repeated return to the Twin Valley Behavioral Health Center in Columbus.

Just last week, during a mandatory biennial hearing, a judge in Wood County found Legg not competent to stand trial for the 1996 murder, rape, and kidnapping of Victoria Jane Collins. The judge stated that Legg "remains unable to understand the nature and objective of the legal proceedings against him or to assist in his defense and remains a mentally ill person.”

Legg’s arrest in 2019 followed years of investigation into cold-case killings linked by DNA that connected him to three homicides. Attorney General Dave Yost referred to Legg as a serial killer when announcing his arrest in February of that year.

The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation first linked two crime scenes – the 1996 homicide in Wood County and a 1997 killing in Illinois – in 2006 through matching DNA. The Mahoning County homicide was added to the database in 2012.

Investigators used familial DNA searching, a process that identifies close genetic relatives of an unknown offender by analyzing DNA profiles. This method is employed in Ohio only when all other investigative leads have been exhausted and there is public safety concern.

A familial DNA match led investigators to Legg, a former truck driver. Further investigation revealed connections to other unsolved cases, including the 1997 rape of a 17-year-old in Medina County, where DNA evidence confirmed the link to the cold-case killings.