Convicted drug kingpin Dwight Taylor asserts that Muskingum County Judge Jay Vinsel and he were good friends who often hunted together in a Y-City News exclusive interview.

The revelation comes following the discovery that Taylor’s long-time girlfriend bought farmland from Vinsel during the 1990s for which the Judge retained hunting rights.

Taylor also asserts that after being arrested, Judge Vinsel approached him with an offer of a lower bond before being bound over on a felony indictment.

Additionally, documents obtained from Muskingum County Court bring ambiguity as to which judge originally handled Taylor’s case, with one signature section appearing to have been whited out and replaced after original court documents were requested by Y-City News.

While investigating concerning revelations regarding former Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorney David DeVillers, the chief federal prosecutor for the Southern District of Ohio, Y-City News began to receive information that the case of local drug kingpin Dwight Taylor was tainted and needed to be reexamined.

Taylor was a local drug dealer who had managed to operate his illegal business for the greater part of four decades. As Y-City News began taking a fresh look at the case, which ultimately ended with cartel members also being taken down, we made concerning discoveries, worse, many officials declined to explain their bizarre and questionable conduct.

We found that Muskingum County Court Judge Jay Vinsel had sold land to Taylor’s longtime girlfriend, Deborah Kirsch, just days after he had been picked up on a parole violation. Perplexingly, Vinsel retained hunting rights on the property, the same property that Taylor would ultimately be arrested at in 2020 and where sizable amounts of cash were found.

Taylor had a prior criminal history and faced being sent back to prison, but after the property was sold from Vinsel to Kirsch, the investigation was dropped and Taylor was out of jail; Vinsel was an assistant county prosecutor at that time. The elected county prosecutor overseeing the case, Mark Fleegle, is now a Court of Common Pleas Judge and handled both criminal cases of Taylor and Kirsch.

Y-City News also discovered that after Taylor’s girlfriend was arrested, her attorney filed documentation with the court that allegedly contains evidence that prosecutors used racial remarks, including the N-word, as well as that elected officials in Muskingum County use illegal drugs.

While investigating that and many other allegations, we were presented with the opportunity to travel to Belmont Correctional Institution and interview Dwight Taylor, what he told us will make up multiple forthcoming articles. Taylor, now 70 years old, won’t be eligible for release until 2035, though says he may write a book about his life as a farmer while also secretly being the town’s drug dealer.

During our interview, Taylor made reference to his ‘hunting buddy Jay’ who he quickly clarified as being Judge Jay Vinsel, and how the two were well acquainted. He spoke about how Judge Vinsel often helped him with his evictions when renters, as they often did, failed to pay. Taylor also spoke about an interesting interaction he alleges he had with the judge following his arrest.

“We’re going to set your bail at $75,000,” said Taylor referring to what Judge Vinsel told him. “He says we’re setting your bail at $75,000 and I’m like ‘well it says on the search warrant my bail was going to be two million.’ And I’m like welp ol Jay is doing me a favor.'”

Taylor then proceeded to go back to his cell and call a relative, instructing them to go to the Feed Mill (Farm Supply Center near the Y-Bridge) where he had a bunch of his corn stored to acquire enough money to make the $75,000 proposed bail.

“And of course, the county recorded everything and so they run right down there and put a seizure hold on $30,000 worth of my corn, from my farm that I raised and combined and stored for sale later on,” said Taylor. “So they tricked me you might say and then they hauled me right back down and set my bond at five million dollars.”

Court documents obtained by Y-City News do indicate that Taylor originally had a two million dollar bond. Taylor was arrested on April 6, 2020, at his girlfriend’s home along Green Valley Road. In the morning of April 8, 2020, there was a Muskingum County Court entry where Taylor’s bond was signed by the judge affirming the two million dollar bond, however, later that afternoon, another entry was filed with the court, this time raising the bond to five million dollars; each of the respective bonds required GPS monitoring. Taylor was indicted on April 15, 2020, and his case was transferred to the Court of Common Pleas, docketed to Judge Mark Fleegle.

As part of a record’s request filed many months ago, Y-City News requested Dwight Taylor’s complete criminal case including any audio files, which would consist of jailhouse calls he made that detectives intended to use at trial. That phone call to his relative is mentioned in Detective Matt Wilhite’s report, but the audio, as well as many other records, were missing when our public record’s request was fulfilled.

“On April 8, 2020 members of the CODE Task Force began to monitor jail phone calls of Dwight Taylor,” wrote Detective Wilhite in his report. “Upon doing so (2) phone calls were located that discussed several thousand dollars’ worth of corn that Taylor has stored at the Farm Supply Center located at 411 Linden Avenue Zanesville, Ohio. This phone call was to phone number [redacted]. The conversation was with Taylor’s [relative – redacted due to privacy]. There was conversation between Taylor and [redacted] about [redacted] being Taylor’s power of attorney and going to the Farm Supply Center to obtain the credit proceeds for grain stored at the business.”

Muskingum County Court of Common Pleas Judge Kelly Cottrill approved a search warrant by Detective Wilhite to freeze and seize assets or accounts in the name of Dwight Taylor at the Farm Supply Center.

While looking over files obtained on Dwight Taylor from the Muskingum County Court, we observed an abnormality, on one of the filings from the morning of April 8, 2020, the assigned judge’s name is written in, but in the one later that afternoon, the judge’s name is typed.

We didn’t give it much thought, though it seemed strange, until we realized that the printout appeared to be a monospaced slab serif typeface called Courier, in which the lowercase letter y has a distinctive horizontal line under it, which is evident on other parts of the page but missing from ‘Def Taylor.’ Upon close explanation, a white space can be seen between the letter y in Taylor and the letter R in Judge Rankin.

Furthermore, according to the Muskingum County Court website, case number CRA2000179, the assigned judge line displays JFV – Jay F. Vinsel. As the senior judge of the court, it’s plausible the case would have been assigned to Judge Vinsel by default, however, it’s impossible to say definitively with the evidence at hand. There is also no rational why Taylor’s bond rose that day, beyond what Taylor himself alleges, from two million to five million dollars.

Unfortunately, the audio, which Detective Wilhite cites in his own report, from that same day, in which Dwight Taylor calls his relative to retrieve funds for his alleged reduced bond from the Farm Supply Center, is being withheld by the Muskingum County Sheriff’s Department, a transcript of that call was also not found in the pages released as part of our public record’s request. The attorney who filed a written plea of not guilty on behalf of Taylor on April 8, Jeffrey Moore, when contacted by Y-City News said he didn’t recall the case and couldn’t provide any assistance.

Y-City News has made multiple attempts to contact Judge Jay Vinsel, all of which have gone unanswered. From all available documents obtained by our news organization, after that afternoon on April 8, 2020, Judge Scott Ranklin handled Taylor’s criminal case until he was indicted and bound over to the Court of Common Pleas.