ON THE WEB

To read Dan Pompili’s story about Steffen Baldwin’s conviction for dog abuse, click this link:

https://www.vindy.com/news/local-news/2025/03/campbell-officer-exposes-dog-trainer-fraud-abuse/

CAMPBELL — The police officer who brought down a fraudulent dog trainer says there’s much more to the story.

In January, a Union County judge found Steffen Baldwin guilty of more than 30 felonies for abusing dogs and defrauding animal charities. In March, Baldwin was sentenced to more than 15 years in prison — the longest animal abuse sentence in Ohio history.

Now authorities say he’s linked to the case of a woman who disappeared more than 20 years ago in New Hampshire.

And Campbell patrolman Jim Conroy — the man who spent nearly four years tracking Baldwin’s trail of destruction from Ohio to California to bring him to justice — says that woman is not the only one of Baldwin’s past girlfriends to end up dead or missing.

Maura Murray disappeared in Haverhill, New Hampshire, a town in central east New Hampshire, near the Vermont border, on Feb. 9, 2004, when she was 21. Now police and the FBI want to know why Baldwin’s fingerprints were found on an item in her car.

“When he was arrested, I got a call from New Hampshire State Police,” Conroy said.

His fingerprints were put into AFIS (the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, used by law enforcement nationwide) and it got a hit on a CD or CD case of Maura Murray’s, which was found in her car the night she went missing.

Conroy said he spoke with NHSP staff and provided them with what information he could, then heard nothing back.

Author and podcaster James Renner and other journalists who have followed the Maura Murray case closely have said that NHSP has been almost notoriously tight-lipped about what it knows and what evidence it has.

Renner wrote a book about the case, “True Crime Addict: How I Lost Myself in the Mysterious Disappearance of Maura Murray,” and Maggie Freleng, a journalist and podcaster, produced a six-part TV series on Oxygen called “The Disappearance of Maura Murray.”

Renner, who lives in the Cleveland area, told The Vindicator he found out about the fingerprint on the morning of Baldwin’s sentencing.

“I got a tip the morning of his sentencing, and I was able to get down to the courthouse in time to talk to him before that,” he said. “I just got lucky.”

He said Baldwin told him the FBI had interviewed him about a year earlier.

THE LINK BETWEEN THEM

In a case that has had no meaningful leads since that snowy night in New Hampshire 21 years ago, Renner said the thin evidence the fingerprint represents still makes Baldwin the best suspect they have identified so far.

“I did not expect his case to intersect with Maura Murray’s,” he said. “The only thing we really know about this guy is that he’s a pathological liar and capable of violence, so he’s a very interesting person in regard to the case.”

Renner said Baldwin also changed his name about eight months after Murray went missing..

“He was known as Steffen Finkelstein, and then became Baldwin after her disappearance,” Renner said.

Renner and Conroy agree on several basic points.

The first is that both Baldwin and Murray attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, and both left before they graduated.

In Freleng’s documentary, Renner explained that Murray got into trouble when her class visited Fort Knox and she stole some small, cheap items from the gift shop there. During her disciplinary hearing, Baldwin testified on her behalf.

After getting into trouble, Murray left West Point and became a nursing student at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

On the day of her disappearance, Murray sent an email to her professor stating that she needed to leave and would miss class time because of a death in her family. There was no death in her family. She took about $280 out of her bank account, emptying it, and started driving north toward a location in the White Mountains where her family had vacationed in her childhood.

On the way, she bought a large amount of alcoholic beverages, which were found in her car.

Murray’s car crashed into a snowbank on state Route 112 in Haverhill about 7:30 p.m. In the brief time between a neighbor driving by and asking if she was all right and the time police first arrived on the scene — about five to seven minutes — Murray vanished. She has not been seen or heard from since.

Conroy and Renner add some different individual pieces to the story. Renner said that Murray was known to be at a party with some friends only a couple of nights before her disappearance. He said none of the people known to be at that party have spoken publicly about what they know, and it’s unclear if police have learned anything from them. Renner said another long-established rumor is that someone named Stefan or Stefano was believed to be at that party as well.

What’s known is that after their brief dalliance at West Point, Murray broke up with Baldwin / Finkelstein, and at the time of her disappearance was dating a man named Bill Rausch.

Baldwin and Murray left West Point within a week of each other, Renner said.

Conroy said that Baldwin told authorities he traded CDs with Murray while they were at West Point. But Conroy said West Point had — at least at the time — incredibly strict rules about what personal items cadets could keep, and CDs were not on that list. Renner said he has not been able to confirm or refute that.

A BAD HABIT

Conroy said Baldwin does not have a healthy track record with women, and they do not have a healthy track record with him either.

Conroy said that during his investigation of Baldwin, he discovered that Baldwin’s carefully crafted persona was not just to promote himself for possible TV deals about his animal rescue and dog behavioral rehabilitation (all proven in court to be lies), but also to attract women.

Indeed, much of the money Baldwin stole from his own charities and his employers was spent on travel and gifts for his girlfriends.

“There was no situation he was involved in that there wasn’t some deception,” Conroy said. “There was always some ulterior motive, which was fame, popularity, money or attention from women. That’s what attracted him to any situation. If those elements were not involved, he would not help.”

He made $16,000 in gas purchases, paying for plane tickets, hotels and gifts. On one girlfriend, he spent $3,300. All of it was charged to the animal rescue he ran.

But for all the money he spent on winning women’s attention and affections, Conroy said Baldwin was far from a winning boyfriend, and women around him just seem to die or disappear.

In at least two cases, Baldwin cannot be directly blamed for the deaths, or at least not charged with murder or manslaughter.

Conroy said Shelby Grabor helped Baldwin establish his nonprofit, the Animal Cruelty Task Force of Ohio in Marysville, in 2014. But when film company Lionsgate came calling with the prospect of a show about Baldwin’s rescue and rehabilitation endeavors, he sent Grabor packing.

“He broke up with her and told her it was because Lionsgate wanted him to be single for his reality show pilot, which of course was not true,” Conroy said.

Grabor died in a head-on crash on April 8, 2016, after driving into the wrong lane on Interstate 270 in West Columbus. She was 24.

Conroy said that after breaking up with Grabor, Baldwin immediately began dating Amanda Walton, a woman he met after she began following him online.

Emma Ripka runs Blue Chip Farm Animal Refuge in Dallas, Pennsylvania. Testifying before the court at Baldwin’s sentencing, Ripka said Walton was her mentor and lived on the Blue Chip property. After following Baldwin online and forming a relationship with him, Baldwin came to Blue Chip and took in a dog named Gucci, who had behavioral problems. Shortly after that, Walton moved to Ohio in May 2016 to be with Baldwin and help him with his organization, bringing another dog with her.

Ripka said Baldwin told Walton he wanted her to be on the TV show with him.

But it did not last long. She returned to Pennsylvania in August 2016, traumatized, Ripka said.

“She told us about the lies Steffen told her and some of the abuse she endured from him, but would not go into full detail on anything else,” Ripka told the court. “She seemed afraid to speak about anything else.”

Baldwin euthanized Gucci on Oct. 10, 2016. Another of Walton’s dogs in his care, Mozart, remains missing to this day, Ripka said.

She told the court that Walton had been clean and sober since December 2011. When she returned to Pennsylvania after a few months with Baldwin, she was off the wagon.

“She was no longer able to hold a solid job anymore. She was no longer able to care for her animals. She was no longer able to live on her own,” Ripka testified.

Walton died at 27 on Nov. 3, 2018. Conroy said it was from an overdose.

And yet another important woman in Baldwin’s life also disappeared.

“His mother has been missing since 2008 and nobody has heard from her,” Conroy said.

He said Baldwin stated he has had no contact with Barbara Baldwin since Easter 2008.

Renner said he spoke to Baldwin’s father about Barbara, whom online sources say was estranged from the family.

“What he said to me was that she could be buried in a desert somewhere,” Renner said.