James Rothenbusch received 30 months in prison after pleading guilty to complicity in tampering with evidence tied to Brittany Fuhr-Storms’ death.
HAMILTON, Ohio — A Butler County judge sentenced James Rothenbusch, 52, to 30 months in prison after prosecutors said he helped hide the body of 28-year-old Brittany Fuhr-Storms, a pregnant woman whose remains were found in a sealed plastic tote in a wooded area in August 2025.
The sentence marked the first conviction in a case that has drawn attention across southwest Ohio because Fuhr-Storms’ body was left for days in a Middletown home before it was moved and dumped. Prosecutors treated Rothenbusch as one of three men involved in concealing what authorities first described as a suspicious death and later tied to an overdose investigation. The ruling also came as the broader case kept shifting, with two co-defendants later facing federal charges that changed the path of the remaining prosecutions.
Authorities say the case began on Aug. 3, 2025, when deputies and local officers were called to a rural stretch near Fort Anthony Road in Jackson Township, Montgomery County, after a container was found along the roadside. Inside was the body of Fuhr-Storms, wrapped in towels and a tarp inside a plastic tote that had been sealed shut with screws. Investigators later identified her as a 28-year-old woman from the Middletown area and said she was pregnant when she died. The investigation quickly moved south into Butler County, where detectives traced her last known movements to a home on Logan Avenue in Middletown. There, police said, Rothenbusch admitted that Fuhr-Storms had died in his residence under suspicious circumstances and that her body stayed there for about four days before it was removed.
Rothenbusch ultimately pleaded guilty to one count of complicity to tampering with evidence, a third-degree felony. In exchange, other counts were dropped, including charges tied to drugs and failure to report a death. At his sentencing hearing on Feb. 12, 2026, he told the judge he had been using methamphetamine and panicked after Fuhr-Storms died. “I was scared to death,” he said in court, according to local television coverage. He also apologized. Fuhr-Storms’ family used the hearing to describe the loss in stark terms. Her brother, Nathan Isaacs, said the family should have been preparing for the birth of her baby and her birthday, not arranging funerals. He said the decision not to call for help and to leave her body in a tub for days suggested far more than fear and demanded accountability.
Investigators have said Fuhr-Storms died on or around July 18, 2025, in the Middletown home. Early state court filings and later federal reporting described the death as an overdose, and more recent court records cited by local news outlets said both Fuhr-Storms and her unborn child died from a fentanyl overdose. Some later reports added that people in the house attempted CPR and gave Narcan before deciding not to call 911 after she resumed shallow breathing. Those details, however, were not part of Rothenbusch’s conviction. He was not sentenced for causing her death. Instead, the plea and sentence addressed what happened afterward: keeping the body in the residence, helping move it, and concealing evidence. That distinction has remained central to the case, because it separates the conduct already proved in court from the still-developing questions about who did what before and after Fuhr-Storms died.
The public record has painted a grim picture of the condition in which the body was found and the steps prosecutors say followed. Law enforcement officers said the tote had been ratchet-strapped or otherwise secured, and that towels, a tarp and screws found during the investigation matched items tied to the disposal. Investigators also recovered narcotics and drug paraphernalia from the Logan Avenue residence, according to multiple local reports from the initial search. Two other men were charged in state court: Rick Sheppard, 47, and Walter Wade, 44. Sheppard and Rothenbusch were accused of leaving the body in the home for days. Wade was later accused of helping conceal and move the tote. Authorities have repeatedly said all three men knew Fuhr-Storms was pregnant. The Montgomery County Coroner’s Office identified the remains, and local reporting later said the fetus was delivered post-mortem during the autopsy process.
For Fuhr-Storms’ family, the case has become both a criminal proceeding and a public account of a death they say was met with indifference. Isaacs’ remarks at sentencing gave the hearing its sharpest emotional turn. He said his sister died in Rothenbusch’s house “with my nephew,” referring to the unborn child she was carrying. He told the court that whatever chaos or drug use was happening inside the residence, someone still had time to make decisions in the days that followed, including the decision not to call police, not to notify family and not to treat her remains with dignity. The family also spoke in the weeks after her body was identified, describing her as a loved daughter and sister whose death left relatives grieving two losses at once. That grief has remained at the center of every public court appearance in the case.
The legal path has since grown more complicated. At the time of Rothenbusch’s sentencing, Sheppard and Wade were set for March 2026 trials in Butler County, with Wade scheduled first and Sheppard a week later. But in the days that followed, federal prosecutors stepped in. By March 11, 2026, local outlets reported that Sheppard and Wade had been charged in federal court with conspiracy to obstruct justice and related counts tied to concealing the death and disposing of evidence. Those filings led to the state trial dates being vacated. Reporting on the federal case also added new allegations, including that efforts were made to conceal the overdose scene and impair future proceedings. As of March 15, 2026, the federal case appears to be the next major stage for Sheppard and Wade, while Rothenbusch’s sentence stands as the first completed punishment in the matter.
The case has unsettled both Butler and Montgomery counties because of the distance between the place where Fuhr-Storms died and the place where her body was found, and because nearly every update has added another layer of detail. What began as the discovery of a tote along a quiet rural road became a multi-agency investigation involving sheriff’s deputies, township police, Middletown officers, prosecutors and later federal authorities. In court and in public statements, officials have described a slow chain of decisions after Fuhr-Storms died, not a single moment. That has helped explain why the proceedings have stretched across months and across court systems. For now, the known facts are these: Fuhr-Storms died in July 2025, her body was found Aug. 3, Rothenbusch was sentenced on Feb. 12, 2026, and the cases against the remaining two men are now moving forward in federal court.
Author note: Last updated March 15, 2026.