When Duty Didn't Call

Indeed, work at Western Roofing was taxing, even beyond the long hours. "It was difficult to get workers willing to show up, let alone work, and that was hard for him, because he had such a strong work ethic," Grekian says. Williams remembers Cutler's frustration when an employee asked for a pay advance. Cutler asked if he would spend it on booze. No, the worker said. He'd already bought booze; he needed money for milk and diapers. "It drove Bob crazy," Williams says.

Then there was the neighborhood. Western Roofing sits at West 110th and Franklin, on the edge of a neighborhood dominated by sagging mini-marts and empty warehouses. No matter how neat the Cutlers kept the office's periwinkle paint and clipped hedges, drug abuse and desperation crouched just around the corner. Down the street, the Kirby Company headquarters stationed an off-duty policeman at the front door. Family businesses couldn't afford that luxury. Cutler Sr. was robbed early one morning by a couple of toughs. His son would experience a robbery far more brutal.

On April 1, 1999, he was closing up shop when a man rapped on the door. Was the company hiring? he asked. Cutler said no and tried to shut the door. The man pulled a pistol and forced his way in.

Cutler was pistol-whipped and ordered to the ground. The man demanded to know where the safe was. There wasn't a safe, but Cutler offered his wallet and told the intruder there was money in a desk upstairs. The man tied him with duct tape and left with $4,000, Cutler's driver's license, and a threat to kill his family if he called police.

Cutler called anyway, but only for insurance purposes. At the time, the danger in identifying his assailant seemed purely academic. With all the doped-up desperados in the neighborhood, the chance of finding his robber seemed remote.

But months later, Brian Justice, an on-and-off Western employee, told Cutler that the robber was his ex-roommate, Timothy Moulder. Justice provided Moulder's address, as well as the address of his girlfriend's apartment on Wetzel Avenue.

Deciding what to do with the information wasn't easy. While visiting his friends in Florida, Cutler asked Williams's wife, Teri, a prosecutor, if he would imperil his family by reporting Moulder. Teri Williams said no, not in her experience. Still, Cutler worried. "Bob knew how close he had come to being killed," Williams says. "He never told me the whole story, but I always pictured that he had a gun cocked to his head. There was something about it that really scared him."

Grekian urged him to keep silent. "I told him it was too dangerous."

Cutler didn't want to worry his mother, but he and his father felt obligated to put away a dangerous man. So they quietly contacted police, providing Moulder's name and the two addresses to Detective Thomas Booth, Cutler Sr. says. (Booth denies receiving the Wetzel Avenue address.) The detectives pulled a mug shot from a prior arrest, mixed it with other photos, and asked Cutler to pick his assailant. The glowering, goateed Moulder had a face Cutler couldn't forget. "He knew immediately who it was," his father says.

In March 2000, Moulder was indicted for aggravated robbery, kidnapping, and felonious assault. A warrant was issued for his arrest, and the Cutlers assumed he would soon be off the streets.

Then spring turned to summer. Summer became fall. Thanksgiving gave way to Christmas. When Cutler's phone rang the morning of January 4, it had been almost two years since the robbery and nearly a year since the warrant was issued.

Cutler talked to the caller for eight minutes before he consented to take the roofing job. He had the flu and the weather was bad, but the caller, who identified himself as "Tim DeJesus," was desperate.

When Susi Cutler called her husband at 12:41 p.m., he said he was heading to Bay Village because a caller was "wigging out." A tree had fallen through his roof, and Cutler hoped to remedy the problem with a temporary tarp. It would be a quick job, he said.

Cutler Sr. called his son around 2:30, but landed in voice mail. "Give me a call when you get a chance," he told the machine. "Just thought I'd see how things are going. I'll talk to you later." He never would.

In the 10 months since Cutler identified Moulder, Cleveland Police made only cursory efforts to arrest their suspect. Booth stopped by Moulder's house and checked with the post office, but Moulder had moved. So Booth sent a letter to the old address, commanding Moulder to turn himself in. Moulder never got it.

It's unlikely Cutler considered any of this as he drove to Bay Village. He didn't know that Moulder had been featured on a recent Crime Stoppers flier. Nor did he know that Moulder was still enjoying his freedom -- and was prepared to do anything to keep it.