(Warren County Sheriff’s Office) 
 
 It was near dusk in Lebanon, Ohio, when a successful furniture salesman named Richard Woods, then 41, walked into Just Living Rooms on Oct. 8, 1992. The furniture store was owned by rival salesman Sam Perone, who was not so competitive that he would not sell Woods a supply of Berkline home furnishings. 
 
 Perone had phoned Woods to have him visit the shop, said Woods’s wife, Susan. 
 
 “Sam Perone left a message saying he could see him Thursday night — the later the better,” she said in the missing person report filed in the early hours of Oct. 9, 1992, as the Columbus Dispatch wrote a year later. 
 
 The message Perone left for Woods would be revealed as a lethal trap, but only after 24 years had passed. “Sam Perone did not like Dick Woods,” Warren County prosecutor David Fornshell said Tuesday, according to WLWT. “We think there was an issue of jealousy.” 
 
 Just Living Rooms was Woods’s final destination of the day, after which his wife and four children expected him home for stir-fry in Dublin, a small Ohio city a 1½-hour drive away. 
 
 Woods never made it back to Dublin. 
 
 “Part of his job required him to travel,” Warren County Sheriff’s Office Lt. John Faine told the Cincinnati Enquirer in 2015. “His last stop that day was at Sam Perone’s furniture store. That stop there was the last time Richard Woods was ever seen alive.” 
 
 On the same day Susan Woods filed the report, police found her husband’s car, a 1990 Lexus, unlocked and empty at a highway rest stop a few miles from Perone’s store. 
 
 The police obtained a search warrant for Just Living Rooms, as well as Perone’s house, truck and van. Susan Woods had described a possibly menacing interaction between her husband and Perone in the report she filed: ”On one other occasion, Mr. Perone took my husband into a field or a deserted road and more or less threatened him.” 
 
 [Break in ‘unholy’ cold case: Police arrest former beauty queen’s priest in her 1960 killing] 
 
 Mark Florence, Perone’s attorney, told the Dispatch in 1993 that he believed her statement in the missing person report prompted the warrant. Although Perone was the last person to see Woods alive, Florence acknowledged, Woods had left Just Living Rooms at 7 p.m. unharmed. At the time, the lawyer also disputed Susan Woods’s interpretation of the answering machine message and the idea that Woods and Perone were rivals. 
 
 In Perone’s house, police found marijuana, guns, a meat saw and large amounts of cash, although nothing linking Perone to the crime. On a backroom floor of Just Living Rooms, authorities found human bloodstains. Forensic tests on the blood were inconclusive. 
 
 ”Whatever samples were tested,” Warren County Prosecutor Timothy Oliver said in 1993, “they were unable to determine anything of value.” 
 
 Hours grew to days and then weeks. There was still no sign of Woods. Around Lebanon, missing posters appeared: ”Help Us Find Our Dad!!” 
 
 [Her friend’s brutal murder was unsolved for decades. This is how she helped find the killer.] 
 
 A month after Susan Woods filed the report, a Lebanon man looking for decorative wild grapevines in a wooded ravine stumbled upon a corpse, the Dispatch reported in November 1992. 
 
 The man had been slain by two gunshots to the back of his head. The bullets passed through his body, and so could not be recovered to offer any clues. The dead man’s clothes — dress pants and tie — matched the outfit Woods had worn Oct. 8. 
 
 There was enough evidence for the coroner to put the time of death around 7:30 p.m., and dental records confirmed it was Woods. Woods’s wallet was found emptied, but a gold necklace remained around his neck, puzzling the investigators. 
 
 ”Whoever wanted Mr. Woods dead,” Warren County Sheriff Tom Ariss said to the Columbus Dispatch, “wanted to be sure the job was done.” 
 
 By spring 1993, Perone and his wife closed their Just Living Rooms store; the attorney Florence intimated the small town viewed the pair as outsiders. Years later, they would leave the area completely, moving to Arizona in 2002. 
 
 Local suspicions about Perone never fully subsided. A former Lebanon neighbor of Perone’s, Dave Campbell, told the Dayton Daily News in 2015 that what began as a friendly acquaintance took eccentric and then intimidating turns. The furniture salesman once invited Campbell over for dinner. While giving Campbell a tour of the master bedroom, Perone showed off a portrait of himself wearing only a loincloth, fashioned out of a leopard pelt, that hung above the bed. 
 
 Even stranger was how Campbell’s two dogs disappeared after Perone complained about their barks. When Campbell approached his neighbor, Perone showed up at the foot of Campbell’s driveway with a third, larger man. 
 
 “I also knew he was very dangerous,” Campbell said to the Daily News; he decided to let the matter of the missing dogs lie. 
 
 [A girl was found dead in a landfill 49 years ago. She has finally been identified.] 
 
 In Arizona, Perone continued selling furniture. He served as an officer on the board of the American Legion in nearby Cave Creek. It seemed as if he had left the business of Woods’s death behind. 
 
 That was, until concussion grenades shattered the tranquility of his north Phoenix neighborhood one Thursday morning in October 2015. 
 
 “Yeah, we don’t usually have explosions in our neighborhood with SWAT teams and arrests,” Phoenix man Ron Heisner said to KPHO. Police had raided Perone’s house, taking him into custody and holding him at the Maricopa County Jail. It was, coincidentally, exactly 23 years since Woods’s disappearance. In the county jail Perone awaited extradition to Ohio, where he would be charged with murder. 
 
 Back in Ohio, 1,875 miles away, a police team had reopened the cold case. Investigators returned to the wooded ravine, excavating the area where Woods’s body was found. New DNA technologies reviewed samples from Just Living Rooms and Perone’s house. And in 2012, detectives received permission to wiretap the Perone’s phones. 
 
 “DNA evidence is part of it,” Warren County Prosecutor David Fornshell said in a 2015 news conference at the time of Perone’s arrest, reported the Cincinnati Enquirer. “I believe we’ve successfully identified a motive.” He would not explicitly make clear at the time what that motive was. 
 
 [How a pair of brothers may have cracked a 5-year-old cold case over their Christmas break] 
 
 But a year later, Fornshell had no need for reservation during a news conference on the steps of Warren County Common Pleas Court: Perone had murdered Woods out of professional jealousy, Fornshell said. 
 
 On Tuesday, Perone, now 68 and of Desert Hills, Ariz., pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and gross abuse of a corpse. Warren County Common Pleas Judge Donald Oda sentenced Perone to 11 years in prison, to which the year since his arrest has been credited. 
 
 Fornshell said DNA tests identified Woods’s blood on the inside of a door jamb in the Just Living Rooms back office, and also in the basement of Perone’s old Lebanon residence. The only reason for that blood, the prosecutor said, would be if Perone had killed Woods. 
 
 On the wiretap, Debbie Perone, Sam’s wife, could be heard referring to a suspicious agreement. “Quote, remember our promise, remember our promise,” Fornshell said during a Tuesday news conference, reported Cincinnati’s WLWT5. “If you go down, I go down.” 
 
 In Perone’s public statement after his plea, he said his wife had nothing to do with the crime, the AP reported. Under the plea deal agreement she will not be prosecuted. 
 
 Gabriel Woods-Schneier, Woods’s youngest child, addressed her father’s killer in court. 
 
 “I spent 24 years of my life asking why you made that fateful choice, and how you can take a life as precious as my dad’s,” she said, according to WLWT5. “Because of you, I have no memories of my father.” ||||| LEBANON, Ohio -- A little more than one year ago, an Arizona man, Sam Perone, was charged last year with killing a rival furniture store salesman, Richard Woods, back in 1992. 
 
 On Tuesday, Perone, 68, pleaded guilty, putting the 24-year-old case to rest. 
 
 MORE: Warren County deputies make arrest in cold case homicide 
 
 Perone pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and gross abuse of a corpse. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison. 
 
 Sam Perone in court plea expected in cold case killing of Dick Woods @WCPO pic.twitter.com/powGlrT6ep — Jay Warren (@JayWarrenWCPO) October 18, 2016 
 
 Last week, prosecutors said they had more than 15,000 pages of documents. The documents -- and accompanying 50 compact discs -- consisted of phone records, photographs and transcripts. 
 
 Sam Perone 
 
 Perone was extradited from the Phoenix area and booked into the Warren County Jail in 2015. He remains in the jail on $750,000 bond, charged with Woods’ murder, according to the Dayton Daily News. 
 
 Perone used to live in Lebanon before moving to Arizona several years ago. 
 
 Richard Woods was killed Oct. 8, 1992, and his body was found in a ravine more than a month later with two gunshot wounds to the head. His car was found 1.5 miles away at an I-71 rest area. 
 
 At the time, deputies interviewed Sam Perone, who they said was the last person to see Woods alive. Woods, a successful furniture salesman known nationally in the industry, had visited Perone's Lebanon store, Just Living Rooms, on business. Perone was both a store owner and rival salesman for another manufacturer. 
 
 In 2006, investigators reopened the case and discovered blood on the carpet in the store, but tests were inconclusive. 
 
 In 2014, investigators announced they were renewing their search for evidence in the case aided by new technology developed since Woods' death. 
 
 “We felt this was the best time in the position of the case to be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Perone killed Dick Woods,” Warren County Prosecutor David Fornshell said. 
 
 Perone faced life in prison when he was initially charged with murder. 
 
 WCPO will update this story as more information is available. ||||| Sam Perone, an Arizona man accused of murdering a rival salesman in 1992, pleaded guilty Tuesday in the 24-year-old murder of a Columbus-area salesman. 
 
 Perone, 68, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and gross abuse of a corpse in in Warren County Common Pleas Court. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison by Judge Don Oda II under a plea agreement. 
 
 He will receive credit to more than a year of jail credit. 
 
 Perone was arrested in 2015 on the 23rd anniversary of the shooting death of Richard Woods, 41, a furniture salesman from Dublin, Ohio. 
 
 + Sam Perone, 68, of Desert Hills, Ariz., is expected to enter a plea in a 24-year-old murder case in Warren County. × 
 
 UPDATE @ 11:41 a.m. (Oct. 18): 
 
 Sam Perone, 68, of Arizona pleaded guilty this morning in the 1992 murder of a Columbus-area salesman. 
 
 Perone pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and gross abuse of a corpse during a hearing in Warren County Common Pleas Court. 
 
 + Richard Woods, a Columbus-area furniture salesman, was killed in October 1992 in Warren County. × 
 
 UPDATE @ 11:13 a.m. (Oct. 18): 
 
 Sam Perone is expected to plead guilty to a bill of information to charges of voluntary manslaughter and gross abuse of a corpse today in Warren County Common Pleas Court. 
 
 Perone is suspected of killing rival salesman Richard Woods in November 1992 before his body was found dumped in Warren County. 
 
 + LARRY BUDD / STAFF × 
 
 Perone was arrested at his home in Arizona last year, 23 years after Woods’ death. 
 
 Perone is expected to spend 11 years in prison. 
 
 INITIAL REPORT (Oct. 17): 
 
 Sam Perone, an Arizona man accused of murdering a rival salesman in 1992, is expected to enter a plea Tuesday in Warren County Common Pleas Court. 
 
 Perone, 68, was arrested in 2015 on the 23rd anniversary of the shooting death of Richard Woods, a funiture salesman from the Columbus area. 
 
 Warren County Prosecutor David Fornshell scheduled a press conference on Tuesday after a plea hearing scheduled for 11 a.m. in Judge Donald Oda II’s court. 
 
 The hearing comes after pre-trial hearings last week during which prosecutors indicated they had turned over to Perone’s lawyers 15,683 pages of documents and 50 compact discs of phone records, photographs and transcripts. 
 
 “This is a 24-year-old cold case now,” Assistant Warren County Prosecutor Scott Knippen said during an Oct. 12 hearing. 
 
 Perone was extradited from the Phoenix area and booked into the Warren County Jail on Oct. 11, 2015. He remains in the jail on $750,000 bond, charged with Woods’ murder. 
 
 Also last week, Perone’s lawyers withdrew a motion to suppress DNA evidence prosecutors plan to use at trial. ||||| FILE – This Oct. 8, 2015, file photo, provided by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office in Phoenix, Ariz., shows Sam Perone after his arrest in connection with a 1992 murder case in Ohio. Perone was sentenced... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE – This Oct. 8, 2015, file photo, provided by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office in Phoenix, Ariz., shows Sam Perone after his arrest in connection with a 1992 murder case in Ohio. Perone was sentenced to 11 years in prison after pleading guilty Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2016, to voluntary manslaughter... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE – This Oct. 8, 2015, file photo, provided by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office in Phoenix, Ariz., shows Sam Perone after his arrest in connection with a 1992 murder case in Ohio. Perone was sentenced to 11 years in prison after pleading guilty Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2016, to voluntary manslaughter... (Associated Press) FILE – This Oct. 8, 2015, file photo, provided by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office in Phoenix, Ariz., shows Sam Perone after his arrest in connection with a 1992 murder case in Ohio. Perone was sentenced... (Associated Press) 
 
 LEBANON, Ohio (AP) — An Arizona man admitted Tuesday that he fatally shot a rival furniture salesman 24 years ago in Ohio. 
 
 Sam Perone, 68, will serve a decade in prison for voluntary manslaughter and gross abuse of a corpse in the death of Richard Woods. Woods' body was found with gunshot wounds to the head in a ravine near Perone's Lebanon store. 
 
 Warren County Common Pleas Judge Donald Oda sentenced Perone to 11 years, with credit for time served since his arrest a year ago at his Phoenix-area home. 
 
 Perone had previously pleaded not guilty to murder charges and denied involvement in Woods' death. The Columbus-area furniture salesman and father of four children was last seen alive Oct. 8, 1992, at age 41. 
 
 Members of Woods' family were in the courtroom. 
 
 Susan Woods Schneier told the judge the family was seeking just "a small measure of justice." She said Perone was "a bad man" who had threatened her husband. 
 
 Prosecutor David Fornshell said the family supported the plea agreement, especially because even if Perone were convicted, he would have been eligible for parole at age 82. 
 
 Fornshell said he and the family believed it wasn't worth the risk of going to trial over a difference of four years in prison. 
 
 "So based on that issue, we decided to go forward with this plea agreement today," he said. 
 
 Fornshell said Warren County authorities think Perone was jealous of the popular and successful Woods and said they had business conflicts. 
 
 Investigators, including a cold-case squad, had continued building the case with witness interviews, wiretaps and advances in forensic technology, including gathering DNA evidence. 
 
 Authorities said Woods' blood was found on carpet in the store and in Perone's then-home in southwest Ohio. 
 
 Perone's attorney said his client's only statement was that his wife, Deb Perone, had nothing to do with what happened.
– Detectives in Ohio have closed a 24-year-old murder case, and the outcome isn't much of a surprise to them: One furniture salesman killed another. Sam Perone, now 68, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter Tuesday, admitting that he shot 41-year-old Richard Woods in 1992, reports the Dayton Daily News. Perone had been a suspect from the start, given that Woods had visited his store on the night he disappeared on Perone's request. His body was found a month later in a ravine near Perone's store in Lebanon. Blood stains found in the store were inconclusive at the time, but detectives used more modern techniques to ID Woods' blood in both the store and at Perone's home. Perone was arrested in Arizona last year and extradited to Ohio. It's a "small measure of justice," Woods' widow and the mother of his four children told the judge, per the AP. She called Perone a "bad man" who had threatened her husband before his murder. The judge sentenced Perone to 11 years in prison, with credit for the year he's been in custody. WCPO describes Woods as having been a successful salesman who'd made his name in the furniture industry, and authorities chalked up the motive to what the Washington Post calls "professional jealousy." The newspaper notes that Perone's wife was heard on a wiretap saying to her husband, "If you go down, I go down," but under Perone's plea agreement, she won't be prosecuted. (An ex-boyfriend who is now a paraplegic is accused in a woman's 33-year-old murder.)