Belmont County Common Pleas Judge John Vavra prepares for his presentation at 6 p.m. today at the Bellaire Public Library. He will share his experiences during the Proviano homicide trial of 2006, in which he served as a defense attorney. T-L Photo/ROBERT A. DEFRANK

BELLAIRE — Question still remain in a murder case that stymied investigators for nearly a decade, and an attorney who played a pivotal role in the trial will discuss those perplexing issues today.

The annual Winter Lecture Series hosted by the Great Stone Viaduct Historical Society has cast light on historical events and legal cases that are decades old, but Belmont County Common Pleas Judge John Vavra actually played a part in the case he will be speaking about tonight.

Vavra will talk about the Anthony Proviano homicide case of 2006. At the time, Vavra was a defense attorney representing Marlene Smith, who was convicted of the crime.

Anthony Proviano, 29, was a resident of Baldwin, Pennsylvania, and a medical student who was killed on or about Dec. 23, 1997. Proviano’s body was discovered outside The Days Inn near County Road 214 and Interstate 70 east of St. Clairsville.

“He was found down at the bottom of the hill, shot once in the chest,” Vavra said.

Proviano’s own gun was the murder weapon.

Vavra said the first coroner who examined the body ruled the death a suicide. Proviano’s family hired experts to investigate further.

“He was a second-year student in the college of medicine at the University of Cincinnati. He was on his way home for Christmas. There were Christmas gifts in his vehicle, and the family just could not believe it was a suicide. There was some physical evidence as well,” Vavra said. “The gun was found approximately 96 feet from the body, so that made suicide somewhat troubling. There was evidence that he had crawled a distance, or dragged himself or been dragged, depending on the story you believe, to get to where the body was eventually found, but still it was some distance from the gun. So to believe it was suicide you’d have to believe he threw the gun after he shot himself in the chest.”

Questions about Smith’s connection to Proviano have gone unanswered, Vavra said.

“She was a heroin addict — long history of substance abuse, alcohol and drugs,” Vavra said. “She would pretty much do anything to get money to acquire her drugs.”

Vavra said there were allegations that Smith and co-defendant Doug Main would frequent the Ohio Valley Mall to shoplift and then sell the stolen items to raise money to buy drugs. While the prosecution argued that Smith murdered Proviano after he refrained from giving her drugs and money in exchange for sex, Vavra said he has no theories.

“To this day, I do not have any evidence, indication, thoughts of how they met, how they ended up being in that place,” he said. “All the years I worked with her, she never once would address my questions about the facts of the case. She was always off on some tangent, she’d make up some story. She’d tell me one thing and then change it later — very hard to get her to focus. In fact, I could never get her to focus on the case, tell me what happened or give me any kind of an intelligent framework. … How did the three of them come to be together at The Days Inn at St. Clairsville?”

Vavra said Proviano rented the room but was only about an hour’s drive from his home.

“Why does he stop there? He rents the room. He takes a bottle of whiskey. … His car was not vandalized. … The items in there were not stolen, which makes no sense if these people were drug addicts that need to steal things to get money. His car keys and his wallet were left on his person,” the judge said.

Vavra said DNA testing on clothing in the area yielded no match with Smith or Main, and since 1997 pre-dated social media, law enforcement could not establish any communication between them.

He said Smith gave an initial statement saying Main had told her he had struck someone’s face and shot him. Vavra said the key witness in the case was a woman who had been in jail with Smith and testified about Smith’s actions and conduct.

At the conclusion of the eight-day trial, the jury deliberated one and a half days before returning a guilty verdict. Smith died several years later of breast cancer. Vavra said Smith never disclosed the full story.

“Twice she and I had contact,” Vavra said, noting Smith had offered to tell him and the prosecutor everything. “So we went, and it was the exact same thing it always was: ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Professed to know nothing of the crime.”

Vavra said there was no hard, physical evidence putting Smith at the murder scene, but Smith’s lack of cooperation and the poor impression she made on the jury were liabilities to her defense.

“She scared the jury. She had places where she had cut herself, attempted suicide,” Vavra said, adding Smith would only appear in a jail-issued T-shirt. “She would look at them, stare at them. … I kept trying to tell her … she wouldn’t take advice.”

Main was later tried for perjury and obstruction of justice. He was found innocent.

The presentation is from 6-7 p.m. today at the Bellaire Public Library, 330 32nd St. , Bellaire. For more information, call 740-676-9421.