Montgomery County Sheriff's Office

The Montgomery County Sheriff's Office is a law-enforcement agency whose deputies investigate locations connected to the Howard sisters’ murders. Its limited but consequential appearance in the inquiry brings physical evidence from the Ohio investigation into the investigators’ wider effort to understand the crimes—and shows Lieutenant Yunel Sablo trying to manage what local authorities are told while the evidence remains unexplained.

Contact During the Inquiry

While the investigators are at the Bolton home, Sablo receives a call identified on his phone as Montgomery County PD. He steps outside to answer, introducing himself as Lieutenant Sablo. Holly Gibney follows him onto the porch, visibly concerned; the call interrupts the group’s conversation, though the excerpt does not disclose what the caller says.

Deputies Examine the Photographed Sites

Sablo later reports that the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office sent two deputies to examine locations Holly had photographed. At an abandoned factory bearing a spray-painted swastika, they find a pile of bloodied clothes, including an orderly’s jacket with a tag identifying it as property of the Heisman Memory Unit. That institutional label connects the find to Heath Holmes, who had worked at the facility, and to the investigators’ developing theory about the Howard murders.

The clothing has not yet been analyzed when Sablo relays the discovery. Howie Gold predicts that its blood may belong to one or both Howard sisters, while Alec Pelley expects any fingerprints might be Holmes’s and could be blurred if his transformation had begun. Holly cautions that the investigators do not know how long that change takes or whether its duration is consistent. The distinction matters: the deputies have found potentially important evidence, but its meaning remains provisional rather than established.

Limits of the Office’s Role

Sablo says the sheriff in Montgomery County has questions, but that he has put him off. He hopes to keep doing so indefinitely because of what the investigators may be confronting. This is a deliberate delay, not evidence that the office has abandoned its inquiry: the deputies have already acted on Holly’s photographs, and their discovery prompts immediate discussion among the group.

The exchange also exposes a practical tension between ordinary investigative procedure and the group’s extraordinary suspicions. The local sheriff seeks information about a developing case; Sablo, working with investigators who believe they may be facing something beyond a conventional perpetrator, withholds further explanation. The office’s role therefore remains grounded in conventional police work—responding to sites and seeking answers—even as the central investigators try to control how much of their uncertain theory reaches other authorities.

Narrative Significance

The office’s contribution is concrete but bounded: its deputies locate a cache of bloody clothing and identify a garment tied to the Heisman Memory Unit, while the resulting questions remain unresolved. The discovery strengthens the investigators’ suspicion that Holmes has been framed or imitated, but the evidence has not yet been tested in the reported scene. By showing both the value of local follow-up and Sablo’s effort to delay the sheriff’s questions, the episode makes the investigation’s coordination problem part of the mystery itself.