On Monday, a 51-year-old Norwood man admitted to dumping a woman’s body in a garbage can after she died of a drug overdose in his apartment and was sentenced to three years in prison.
Last month, Dean Allen pleaded guilty to felony charges of corpse abuse and evidence tampering.
Cincinnati police reported that they found Brittany Moran, 30, dead in Paddock Hills at the end of the month after she went missing in Loveland in mid-May.
Allen’s attorney requested probation, citing the fact that he has lived in the Tri-State area his entire life and served as a volunteer firefighter for four years.
According to court records, he has been on disability for nearly two decades as a result of an ATV accident.
“Dean can’t change the past. He will not ask for or expect forgiveness from the victim’s family. He is simply asking for mercy from this court.
In a sentencing memo, his attorney urged the judge to take Allen’s request into consideration as he assessed his fate.
According to court records, Allen is a convicted felon whose grandparents raised him after his parents abandoned him.
Allen reconnected with his parents after high school, but they both died before he turned 40.
“All of this emotional trauma led Dean down a path of self-destruction via drugs. “He was on parole at the time of this offense, which is what drove him to make such a terrible decision,” his lawyer wrote.
“He was trying to get his life in order and was doing well. They had placed Dean under non-reporting supervision with parole, given him his own apartment, and things were finally looking up for him.”
He met Moran online, according to his lawyer, “and although she was dealing with some issues of her own by way of drug use and potentially more, he offered her a helping hand and said she could stay at his place for a few days as long as she didn’t use,” his lawyer wrote in his sentencing memo.
A few days later, however, he returned home and “found her ghost white, lying on the floor,” according to the sentencing memo.
“She died, and it appeared to him that she had taken an overdose.” Fear and panic overcame Dean. He assumed the worst because he was on parole and no one would believe a convicted felon was totally innocent.
In that moment of fear, he exacerbated an already terrible situation, and for the victim’s family, he turned the unthinkable into a nightmare, according to the court filing.
When his attorney met him in court for arraignment, he “was extremely remorseful for what happened and immediately asked to speak” with a detective.
Court records inform Dean at the start of the interview that his parole had expired a month before Moran’s death.
“No one had bothered to tell him,” his lawyer stated. “Fear drove everything he did; this was not necessary.” He was not even on parole.
Upon learning this, he did not feel a sense of relief. He did not celebrate. He sobbed uncontrollably for a few minutes. These weren’t tears of joy. There was genuine remorse and regret…”
Despite knowing he was still under investigation for her death, Dean told police everything.
Court records show that since his imprisonment for the past six months, Dean has provided additional information to assist police in this and other cases, knowing it would not matter in his own situation but would help to alleviate his guilt, if only slightly.
