Family of murdered woman
Murdered woman Michelle Hively from Canton is upset because despite her efforts and those of others last year to deal with threats made by Nicholas Cunningham from Alliance towards her family, He wasn’t taken into custody or accused of committing a crime.
Hively believes that if Cunningham, who is 32 years old, had been put in jail, it might have prevented him from killing her sister, Gena M. Wade, who was 44 years old. The incident happened at Wade’s home on Courtney Road, north of Beloit, on October 26th.
“We’re really upset. We just want fairness. At first, it shouldn’t have happened, and now we want fairness, but it feels like we can’t reach that point,” Hively said recently.
Hively feels like people are already starting to forget about her sister’s murder.
“She said, ‘It feels like a bad dream. We really miss her a lot.'”
Cunningham is at Heartland Behavioral Healthcare, a mental hospital in Massillon. He’s getting treatment for mental illness linked to the serious charges he’s facing, like murder, burglary, and violating a protection order, all related to Gena Wade’s death. In November, the Mahoning County Homicide Task Force arrested Cunningham after a two-week investigation.
Cunningham was charged with a crime on December 7 in Mahoning County Court. His lawyer said he wasn’t guilty because he wasn’t in his right mind. They had him checked, and the doctors agreed he wasn’t well enough to understand the trial process. Now, he’s in a hospital where they have up to a year to help him get better so he can go to trial.
Hively feels frustrated because Cunningham is in a mental health facility instead of being punished. She believes he might be using mental health problems as an excuse to avoid consequences. Hively thinks it’s unfair because it seems like Cunningham got away with a serious crime in 2015 involving a child.
After his 2015 convictions, Cunningham was labeled a Tier II sex offender. This meant he had to tell the county where he lived where he was living twice every year for 25 years.
In November 2015, Cunningham was sentenced to three years in prison after being evaluated for trial readiness and found capable. Surprisingly, he was released the next month and enrolled in the county’s H.O.P.E. program, which supports offenders emotionally and mentally.
This is made for people with court cases who have dealt with mental health problems before, as stated on the court’s website.
PROTECTION ORDER
Hively’s daughter, sister, and mother got protection orders against Cunningham on March 31, 2023, because he threatened them. But sadly, the order couldn’t stop him from harming her sister.
In February 2023, Hively’s family went to the Smith Township Police to talk about Cunningham’s threats, hoping he’d face new charges and stop what he was doing. But no charges were made in the end.
“We thought they were going to send him to prison,” Hively said.
Gena Wade told the Smith Township Police on February 24, 2023, that she was worried about Cunningham. Even though he was considered a family friend, he had been making scary phone calls about Hively’s 12-year-old daughter.
The family let Cunningham visit the girl because they thought he had the mind of a child. The police saw Cunningham’s Facebook page, and it had a picture of the girl on it.
According to the report, Gena Wade told the police that Cunningham said he planned to marry the girl when she turned 18. Detective Ryan Smith from the Smith Township Police looked into the matter four days after Gena Wade’s report. He spoke to Carol Wade, Gena’s mother, who said the problems with Cunningham and the girl began about two years ago and got worse over time.
On March 1, 2023, Smith talked to a detective from the Stark County Sheriff’s Office. The detective told Smith that Cunningham, who lived in Stark County, was a Tier II sex offender. This meant Cunningham had to tell the authorities his address in Stark County twice a year. The detective promised to look into the accusations against Cunningham.
The detective told Smith on March 2, 2023, that he couldn’t report Cunningham for having an unregistered social media account. The detective said it would be the prosecutor’s decision. Smith later spoke to another officer from the Stark County Sheriff’s Office, who said their sex offender unit hadn’t been successful in reporting registered sex offenders for their social media accounts.
On that day, Smith phoned Katie Jones, who was working as an assistant prosecutor in Mahoning County around Sebring. After checking Cunningham’s Facebook page, Jones agreed that action was necessary, as stated in the police report.
Jones recommended charging Cunningham with a misdemeanor for menacing behavior, like stalking. But Smith faced difficulty gathering statements from family members and getting copies of the messages Cunningham sent, as mentioned in the report.
On March 6, Smith said in a report that the family wasn’t helping and wouldn’t fill out forms about what happened. They also wouldn’t let Smith talk to the child. Then, on March 9, 2023, Jack Ausnehmer, who helps with legal matters in Sebring, told Smith to stop looking into it because we didn’t have enough evidence to charge anyone.
When Hively saw the police reports saying her family wasn’t helping the investigation, she wasn’t sure if she and her sister really did that. The names of the people the detective spoke to are hidden in the reports. Hively explained that she didn’t let the police talk to her daughter because she wanted to protect her. She didn’t know they would think she wasn’t taking it seriously. But she wants to make it clear that she did take it seriously.
HISTORY
Hively and her fiance, Richard Hashman, explained that Hively and her sister had been caring for Cunningham’s mother, Kathy Cunningham, for around 20 years, so they’ve known Cunningham for a long time.
“We felt sorry for Nicholas, so we drove him to the gas station,” Hively explained.
Hashman mentioned that Nicholas Cunningham didn’t have a lot of friends, so the sisters tried to take care of him a bit.
In late 2022, Hively and her family found out that Cunningham had done something really wrong. Back in 2015, he was found guilty of a crime involving a child. Because of that, he was labeled as someone who did a very bad thing.
Cunningham used to send messages to Hively’s 12-year-old daughter on Facebook. But when they learned about his criminal past, he stopped doing that.
“So we decided that this needs to stop. It’s not going to happen anymore,” Hashman stated.
Hively found out that Cunningham was posting bad stuff about Hively’s daughter on Facebook, so they told him to stay away.
Hashman said Cunningham’s behavior became even worse after that. “Once we stopped talking to him, he started sending death threats to our whole family. We took these threats seriously. We showed the messages he sent through Facebook and Messenger on our phones to the Smith Township Police Department to let them know what was happening.”
The police told the family they could press charges against Cunningham to stop the threats, but they didn’t end up doing it, according to Hively and Hashman.
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In February 2023, before the protection order was issued, Cunningham drove his car onto Courtney Road but got stuck in a ditch, according to Carol Wade. The next day, a family member received a text from Cunningham saying, “I tried to deliver mail but ended up in the neighbor’s ditch. I had to get towed out. I’ll bring the mail another time.”
Carol said she told Gena about it, and Gena agreed, saying, “When he starts coming out here, we need to take action because he never came out here.”
Hively gave The Vindicator a Facebook message that Cunningham wrote on February 13, 2023. In the message, Cunningham expressed how upset he was when the family unfriended him on Facebook and wouldn’t let him see the 12-year-old girl.
“When I seek revenge, I’ll catch you off guard. Don’t underestimate me, especially since you took everything from me. It’ll be easier for me to do what I need to do.”
“I want you to feel what I feel, the hurt and pain from my friend being hurt for no good reason. It’s because of selfish people who made my friend go against me. I promise I’ll make sure you all feel the pain you caused me.”
Carol said that the messages found by the Smith Township Police Department on Facebook showed that Cunningham really liked the girl.
Gena Wade asked for a protection order. She said Cunningham was bothering her 12-year-old niece. Cunningham had been convicted of a serious crime. Gena said he threatened her and her mom a lot on Facebook.
Hashman shared that the Smith Township Police Department told the family that two weeks before the crime, Cunningham tried to purchase a gun from a local sports store. However, he couldn’t buy it because he didn’t pass the background check.
Hashman believes that it might be considered illegal for someone with a criminal record to attempt to purchase a gun. However, he mentioned that Cunningham didn’t face any criminal charges for trying to buy a firearm.
POLICE CHIEF
When asked about the problems Hively and Hashman brought up, Police Chief Paul Ceresna chose not to talk because the case against Cunningham is still going on.
But he did share his thoughts on protection orders in an email.
“Protection orders really help victims during tough times,” he explained. “They’re like a warning sign that can stop bad things from happening to someone.”
He said protection orders aren’t a sure way to keep someone safe. They’re mainly to stop suspects from contacting a victim or their family. If a suspect breaks the order, they might have to stay in jail until they can go to court. Plus, breaking the order can lead to harsher penalties if the suspect gets arrested again.
He said it’s really important to have people who can help you when you need it. This could be family, friends, or neighbors who know what’s going on in your life. They can watch out for anything strange happening nearby and you should also try to notice anything unusual.
He said that in the Gena Wade case, the punishment didn’t stop the suspect from doing it again.
MAHONING PROSECUTOR
Gina DeGenova, who is the prosecutor for Mahoning County, was questioned about why Ausnehmer advised the Smith Township Police Department to stop investigating Cunningham’s threatening actions in March 2023.
She said in an email that when talking with Smith, one thing they discussed was that Cunningham lived in Stark County. Officer Smith told the officials in Stark County about possible violations because Cunningham was a registered sex offender, but they decided not to press charges. I don’t know who made this decision or why.
“We looked into Cunningham’s Facebook posts to see if there were any reasons to charge him with a crime. But because the people involved didn’t help us enough, we couldn’t find enough proof to charge him with anything.”
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