A Woman arrested in Indiana and charged in Mercer County for the death of Ryan Zimmerman received her sentencing on Thursday. Sarah Buzzard received a sentence of life in prison, with a possibility of parole after serving 30 years.
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A woman who was charged with killing Ryan Zimmerman has accepted a plea deal in Mercer County Common Pleas Court. Sarah Buzzard has accepted a plea deal that will have her plead guilty to one count of aggravated murder in exchange for the rest of her charges dismissed.
Sarah Buzzard had a pretrial hearing Thursday afternoon with her newly appointed attorneys to represent her in a death penalty case. The attorneys discussed making sure everyone had the same evidence moving forward in the case. Buzzard is facing 18 charges, including murder, felonious assault, kidnapping, gross abuse of a corpse, tampering with evidence, and grand theft of a motor vehicle.
An Indiana woman gets additional charges for the 2015 death of Ryan Zimmerman. 30-year-old Sarah Buzzard has been charged with murder and felonious assault, in addition to the charges the gross abuse of a corpse, tampering with evidence, and grand theft of a motor vehicle she was already facing. If convicted on the murder charge, she could get up to life in prison.
An arrest has been made in a case that dates back to 2016.
A news release this evening from Sheriff Jeff Grey's office says there will be a substantial update on the Ryan Zimmerman homicide case, during a Thursday morning news conference. Zimmerman is the person who had gone missing from the Columbus area in 2015; and whose bones were discovered in West Bank State Park, near U.S. 127 in early 2016. It wasn't until January of 2020 before the bones were positively identified, using DNA from Zimmerman's parents. The cold case investigation has been ongoing. We will have a crew at tomorrow's news conference and plan to have updates on tomorrow evening's newscasts.
Back in 2016, human remains were found, near the intersection of U.S. 127 and Coldwater Creek Road. Now, four years later, authorities can link a name to the bones found at the site.