Jim Donofrio

On September 25, 2011, 64-year-old Jim Donofrio told his wife Rosanne that he was headed to Avalon Gardens, the bar and restaurant he owned in Youngstown, Ohio, to grab some dinner, check in with employees, and then close up for the night.

This wasn’t unusual for him, as it was often his routine to close, make the deposit, and then return home late, usually around midnight. 

Before leaving at around 9:00 p.m., Jim called his cousin, who worked in the restaurant’s kitchen, to place his order for a pasta dinner. Then, he left his home on St. Albans Drive in the Sherwood Forest neighborhood of Cornersburg, to make the approximately 10-mile drive to Belmont Avenue in Youngstown. 

But he would never arrive.

Rosanne went to sleep for the night and woke up around 5:30 a.m. on Monday morning, realizing her husband wasn’t there and had never come home. Alarmed, she drove to the restaurant, thinking he may have had a health emergency. 

Normally, Jim was a good communicator and had the habit of calling her as he was leaving work and heading home. Plus, a few years prior, he had fainted at the post office, hitting his head on concrete. He was cleared of the head injury, but doctors found a blockage to his heart, and he underwent a stent placement. So, Roseann’s first thought was that he may have had another fainting incident or even a heart attack.

When Jim’s car wasn’t at the restaurant, she learned from employees that he had never arrived the night before. She then called his brother, and they started contacting local hospitals to see if he had been admitted somewhere. 

 When Rosanne called the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office, jurisdiction issues arose because their address had a Youngstown ZIP code but fell within Boardman Township. She was told she needed to wait 24 hours before filing a missing persons report.

This was incorrect. Ohio has no mandatory waiting period to report an adult missing, especially when foul play is suspected.

Rosanne knew that there was no reason her husband wouldn’t have come home as expected unless something was wrong. And it wouldn’t be long before her intuition proved right.

Within hours, a new lead emerged. Jim’s brother called a friend who was a police officer and quickly learned that an ambulance crew stationed near the Market Street Bridge had reported an abandoned white Land Rover on the south side of the railroad tracks. It matched Jim’s vehicle.

Police documentation shows the call came in at 7:17 a.m.

Inside the SUV, on the driver’s seat, the report shows officers found a single car key, which fit the ignition. The front passenger window was down, and the glove compartment was open. Lying on the front passenger seat was Jim’s brown leather briefcase, his cell phone, and a green hoodie. Additionally, family at the scene found his wallet, with cash, his ID, and credit cards inside. 

In the back seat, police noted there was a box, assorted tools, wax rings for a toilet, and a wooden mitre box. And the trunk contained clothes and wooden boards.

Additionally, police recovered a marijuana pipe, and they processed a pack of Marlboro Light cigarettes. Since Jim did not smoke cigarettes, police tried to obtain fingerprints from the pack, but the ridge detail was insufficient for comparison.

Nothing at the scene indicated where Jim had gone, or why he had left everything behind.

Officers processed the scene and searched the bank of the nearby Mahoning River, from the bridge to the Covelli Center, but no evidence turned up. 

The case was now in the hands of the Youngstown Police Department. 

In a follow-up report dated October 4, 2011, Officer Ken Ruse wrote that he walked westbound along the railroad tracks to determine the direction from which Jim’s vehicle had approached. He observed tire tracks and concluded that Jim had backed his vehicle along the tracks. According to Ruse, Jim then attempted to cross the tracks. While the left front wheel cleared the rail, the rear wheels began to spin. Ruse determined that Jim then reversed course, drove beneath the Marshall Street Bridge to cross over the tracks, and continued toward the Market Street Bridge, where the vehicle was ultimately found.

However, no tire track analysis confirming that the impressions were made by Jim’s Land Rover appears in the police files obtained through a FOIA request.

From the beginning, Jim’s family stressed that he would never voluntarily disappear. He was devoted to his wife, his daughter, his teenage son, and the restaurant he had recently taken over. He had been excited about his son’s upcoming senior year of high school.

But the family also discovered troubling clues.

A Freshly Broken Taillight

According to the Donofrio family, the Land Rover’s taillight had been freshly broken. Shards of glass, that appeared to potentially be a match, were found in the street near Jim’s home. 

Was there an accident? Or a confrontation?

A Massive Log Disabling the Land Rover

When the Land Rover was found, it was sitting on a large piece of wood, measuring approximately 8 feet long and 12 inches in diameter, effectively pinning the wheels in place. While in reports, it’s described as a “log,” the family who observed it describe it as a nice piece of wood, new in appearance and well cut. It did not appear to be road debris or the result of weather or an accident. Its size, weight, and positioning suggested it was deliberately placed.

In fact, when Harvey Towing arrived at the scene and tried to jack the rear of the Land Rover off the log, they were unsuccessful.

Even more troubling, on the passenger side of the car, police found 2 slats of wood, similar to the boards found in the trunk. To officers, it appeared they were used in an attempt to dig the log out to free the car. 

Why would someone immobilize Jim’s car? To stage the scene, or to delay discovery? To keep the vehicle from being moved?

Police have never offered an explanation.

A Disturbing Scratch Mark

Photographs, never publicly reported until now, show that the letters “JEW” had been scratched into the side of the vehicle. Could this have been a hate crime? A targeted attack? Or are they initials? The family had no answers, and police provided none.

Unseen on CCTV

The Donofrios asked police to pull surveillance footage from businesses along Jim’s route to the restaurant. When they received no response, Jim’s brothers and friends visited the businesses themselves and reviewed footage. None showed Jim’s vehicle.

Police viewed footage from cameras near Avalon Gardens, and his car never appeared.

A Strange Voicemail at 1:24 a.m.

Phone records indicate that first, Jim placed a phone call at 12:50 a.m., to Pedro Colon, or Pete as he was known. He lived near Avalon Gardens and spent time there. Jim also occasionally hired him for odd jobs.

Then, a lifelong friend, Mike DeNiro, came forward with an unsettling detail. At 1:24 a.m., he received a voicemail from Jim’s cell phone. It sounded like Jim’s voice, and he said, “This is James Donofrio, returning your call.”

The formality struck him as deeply out of character. Jim never referred to himself as “James,” not socially or professionally. 

The voicemail was later deleted and could never be recovered, leaving its authenticity and significance unknown.

At the same time the voicemail was reportedly left, a train crew passing through the area reported seeing Jim’s Land Rover in the same place it was discovered hours later by police.

Interestingly, Mike had just been in contact with Jim in the days before his disappearance regarding a mural at Youngstown State University. Jim had commissioned the mural for Avalon Gardens, part of renovations including a bocce court. Mike had even provided scaffolding for the students completing the work.

Six Months Later: A Discovery 

Six months after Jim vanished, on March 25, 2012, a body was recovered from the Ohio River in Carlington, West Virginia, roughly 120 miles from Youngstown.

But no one connected it to Jim. Not local authorities, or the Youngstown Police, or the FBI. And not any national database.

This, despite the fact that Jim’s dental records and DNA had already been submitted to NamUs, the national missing persons database.

For more than a year, the remains sat in a morgue, unidentified.

Finally, on April 9, 2013, authorities informed Youngstown detectives that the body was confirmed to be Jim Donofrio, identified through dental records.

Cause of Death: Undetermined. But the Family Believes Otherwise

The official cause of death was listed as undetermined. Youngstown Police and the FBI have both maintained that no foul play occurred, and the case is now considered closed.

Jim’s family firmly disagrees.

They believe he was the victim of homicide.

Aside from so many odd details in the case, authorities told them that Jim’s body could not have entered the Mahoning River anywhere near where his car was found and then traveled the connected waterways to where it was recovered in West Virginia.

The rivers, while linked, contain multiple locks, shallow sections, and bends that would make this journey physically impossible. The FBI brought in the EPA to do a study and confirmed these findings.

This means one thing: Jim’s body was placed directly into the Ohio River, two hours from Youngstown, by someone.

The autopsy showed a fractured nose and three fractured ribs, though it remains unclear whether these injuries occurred before or after death.

A Life Remembered

Jim was born on November 27, 1946 in Detroit, Michigan, and his family  moved to Youngstown when he was just two years old. He was an avid golfer, who got the nickname, “Peaches,” while working as a caddy at the Mill Creek Golf Course when he was a kid. He went on to play golf in college at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He then had a successful career working in real estate development, eventually serving as the Vice President of Leasing for DeBartolo Property Management, before opening up his own leasing company in 1996. He owned and operated Avalon Gardens for just about a year before his death. 

The restaurant Jim had taken over from Al Salata in 2010 was forced to close in January 2012, after Jim disappeared. It had been robbed four times during the months after he went missing, before the family officially shut its doors. Now, the property where the beloved business once stood has been completely razed.  

It has quite a storied history, well known as a Youngtown Mob hangout back in its heyday, and for all the gambling activity that occurred there. There were back rooms, and as Jim renovated the building, he found loose, hinged floor boards, concealing phone lines, used by bookies.

But those days were long over, and Jim was known as a generous and caring boss to his employees. He helped them any way he could, like paying medical bills for staff in need.

Another Tragedy Connected to Avalon Gardens

In a tragic twist, one of his employees would later face a sad and gruesome fate. Shannon Graves and her mom Christine Graves both worked at Avalon Gardens. 28-year-old Shannon would be reported missing years later, in June 2017. Then in July, her dismembered remains were found in trash bags in a freezer in Campbell. Youngstown Police and the coroner say she was killed in her home on Mahoning Avenue, struck in the head several times with a heavy object. 

Arturo Novoa would be convicted in March 2020 on multiple counts, including murder, abuse of a corpse, tampering with evidence, and drug trafficking. He and several others, including co-conspirator Katrina Layton, not only dismembered her body, investigators say Novoa also used sulfuric acid to burn her torso and skull. 

Did someone associated with Avalon Gardens cause Donofrio’s death? There is no clear evidence to suggest so, but the coincidence remains deeply unsettling to those who knew them.

Nearly Fifteen Years Later, a Family Still Wants Answers

More than a decade after his disappearance, Jim Donofrio’s family is still searching for truth. They want to know:

What happened to Jim Donofrio?

Why was his case closed?

They are certain that someone out there knows something.

If you have any information, no matter how small, you may help provide long-awaited answers and justice for Jim Donofrio.