ELYRIA — The Nord Center’s former chief financial officer has been indicted for alleging stealing about $95,000 during the three years she worked for the mental health organization.

Bernadette Gelb-Stitchick, 42, is charged with five counts of theft and four counts each of forgery and falsification, according to the indictment. She pleaded not guilty to the charges during a brief court appearance last week.

Gelb-Stitchick

In a settlement agreement reached earlier this month in a lawsuit filed against her by the Nord Center, Gelb-Stitchick agreed to pay back the money she is accused of stealing, although her attorney, Jack Bradley, said that’s not an admission she did anything illegal.

“It takes criminal intent to commit a crime,” he said.

Nord Center President and CEO Bill Biere said Gelb-Stitchick was fired in May after Biere couldn’t verify the college degrees she said she had when she was hired in May 2006.

Gelb-Stitchick had said during the hiring process that she had an associate degree from Kent State University, a bachelor’s degree from Cleveland State University and an MBA from Tiffin University, Biere said. While she had taken classes at both Kent and CSU, neither college had a record of her ever graduating and Tiffin had no record of her taking classes at the school, he said.

Biere said he began reviewing Gelb-Stitchick’s academic credentials because there were “concerns about work performance.”

After Gelb-Stitchick was fired, Biere said he and his staff began reviewing financial transactions and came up with four distinct incidents in which she created fake invoices from companies and organizations for work that was never performed.

“One thing leads to the fall of a house of cards, and that’s sort of what happened in this case,” Biere said.

According to an affidavit filed in the lawsuit by Nord’s attorney, Richard Panza, on Dec. 13, 2006, Gelb-Stitchick created a fake letter for “The LCCF Foundation” requesting a check for $16,900 to be made payable to a business called Corporate Consultation Works.

A check was made out to LCCF/CCW and was deposited into a bank account controlled by Gelb-Stitchick two weeks later with LCCF blacked out on the payee line, Panza wrote.

The next instance of theft came on April 22, 2007, when Gelb-Stitchick sent a fake letter from an organization called LCCFS requesting $28,900 to be made payable to CCW, Panza wrote. The check was paid after a purchase order was signed, purportedly by Biere’s predecessor, Steven Laubacher.

Gelb-Stitchick then wrote out a check to cash and used it to obtain a cashier’s check made payable to CCW, Panza wrote.

The final alleged theft discussed in Panza’s affidavit took place on Dec. 24, 2008, when Gelb-Stitchick allegedly created a fake invoice from CCW for $33,720 for “governance research,” “investigative work/background research” and “travel expenses.”

The invoice had the forged signature of Julia Ecker, a Nord Center board member, and Gelb-Stitchick wrote a check to CCW and deposited the funds into a bank account for “Bernadette Gelb-Stitchick DBA Creative Custom Woodworking,” Panza wrote.

The alleged fourth theft wasn’t detailed in the civil lawsuit documents, but Lorain County Prosecutor Dennis Will said that theft took place through two separate actions.

The lawsuit against Gelb-Stitchick accuses her of using the money she allegedly stole to pay money toward a Vermilion home as well as the purchase of multiple vehicles.

Biere said all of the money Gelb-Stitchick allegedly stole has been recovered through the lawsuit.

Contact Brad Dicken at 329-7147 or bdicken@chroniclet.com.

COLUMBUS — The lawyer for an inmate whose execution was halted after an unprecedented two hours said trying to put him to death again in a week could be a disaster.

Romell Broom is still recovering from Tuesday’s prolonged execution attempt and is physically and emotionally traumatized, his attorney, Adele Shank, said Wednesday.

Broom

“It went so badly when he was walking in without injured veins, to go forward so soon afterward just seems to be inviting disaster,” Shank said.

Gov. Ted Strickland’s decision to stop Tuesday’s execution and grant a one-week reprieve appeared to be unprecedented since capital punishment was declared constitutional and the nation resumed executions in the 1970s.

Inmates in several states have experienced delays with the injection of lethal chemicals, but those executions have always proceeded the same day.

Shank said one option was to ask Strickland to consider a request for clemency and to commute Broom’s sentence.

Strickland said he is reviewing the incident and consulting with prison officials and others about the next step.

“That does not mean there will be a review of the larger issue of lethal injections,” Strickland said Wednesday. “That’s been settled. Obviously yesterday demonstrated that we have a problem with this particular set of circumstances.”

A prison log released Wednesday blamed Broom’s past drug use for problems finding a usable vein.

The log indicates that executioners made the observation at 3:11 p.m., more than an hour after first trying to find a vein.

“Medical team having problem maintaining an open vein due to past drug use,” said the log reviewed by The Associated Press.

Broom said at one point he was a heavy heroin user, but then said at another time that he wasn’t, prisons spokeswoman Julie Walburn said Wednesday.

Shank said she was unaware of any such drug use.

“If there’s such a thing, it’s got to be at least 25 years old,” she said. “I don’t think it should be having an impact at this late date.”

Broom, 53, has been placed in a cell in the infirmary at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville where he is on close watch similar to the constant observation of death row inmates in the three days before an execution.

“It was the right place to keep him,” Walburn said. “The less we can transport an offender, the better.”

Death row inmates are housed in a Youngstown prison and executed in the death chamber at Lucasville. There’s no precedent for housing an inmate whose execution didn’t work.

The night before his scheduled execution, Broom told his brother over the phone that he was ready to die.

“He is tired of being in prison and having people tell him what to do every day,” according to the prison log.

Broom was sentenced to die for the rape and slaying of a 14-year-old Tryna Middleton after abducting her in Cleveland in September 1984 as she walked home from a Friday night football game with two friends.

Richard Dieter, director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, said he knows of only one inmate who was subjected to more than one execution attempt.