JUST IN: Thomas Knuff Sentenced to Death for Killing His Pen Pal and Another in Ohio

Thomas Nuff sits on Ohio’s death row waiting to die for stabbing two people a combined 21 times. The same two people who picked him up from prison and gave him a place to stay. He’d been free for exactly 30 days. But how does a man go from walking out of prison a free man to becoming a condemned killer in just one month? To understand that, we need to go back back to a prison cell, a stack of letters, and a woman who believed that everyone deserves a second chance.

Thomas Eugene Nuff Jr. was no stranger to the inside of a prison cell. Born on August 11th, 1974 in Ohio, Nuff had spent most of his adult life on the wrong side of the law. His criminal history read like a catalog of violent offenses. armed robbery, safe cracking, breaking, and entering. In one case, enough held a man at gunpoint while robbing him at an ATM machine.

 In another, he used a box cutter to threaten a convenience store clerk during a robbery. These weren’t crimes of desperation. They were the calculated actions of a career criminal who had no regard for the safety of others. By 2001, the law had finally caught up with Thomas Knuff. He was convicted of aggravated robbery with a firearm and sentenced to over 15 years in an Ohio state prison.

 At 42 years old, enough would spend what should have been the prime years of his life behind bars. But prison didn’t break Thomas enough. If anything, it gave him time to plan, time to scheme, and time to find people on the outside who might be useful when he finally walked free. Sometime around 2005, while serving his sentence, Thomas Nuff signed up for a prison pen pal program.

 These programs connect inmates with people on the outside. Sometimes for friendship, sometimes for romance, and sometimes for something else entirely. That’s when Regina Capobiano entered his life. Regina was 50 years old, and like Nuff, she had her own troubled past. She’d struggled with drugs and alcohol since her 20s.

 At one point, her addictions landed her in the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Mary’sville. She understood what it was like to make mistakes. She understood what it was like to be judged. And perhaps that’s why she felt drawn to writing letters to a man she’d never met. For the next 10 years, Regina and Thomas exchanged letters week after week, month after month, year after year.

Regina talked about Thomas constantly to her family. Her sister Tony Bender would later testify that Regina had mentioned Thomas enough for 10 to 15 years before they ever met in person. What did they write about? What promises did Thomas make? What version of himself did he present in those letters? We may never know the full contents of their correspondence, but one thing is certain.

 Regina Capabiano came to believe that Thomas Nuff deserved another chance at life. Meanwhile, Nuff was working another angle. While exchanging letters with Regina, Thomas Nuff managed to catch the attention of someone else, someone who worked inside the prison itself. Her name was Alicia Stoner. She was 42 years old and worked as a social worker at the Trumbull Correctional Institution where Kuff was incarcerated.

 Her job was to help inmates prepare for re-entry into society, to counsel them, to guide them toward rehabilitation. Instead, she fell in love with one of them. The relationship between Alicia Stoner and Thomas Nuff crossed every professional boundary imaginable. A prison employee engaging in a romantic relationship with an inmate is not just unethical, it’s illegal.

 But Stoner didn’t care. She was so invested in enough that she eventually resigned from her job at the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction just to be with him. By the time Nuff’s release date approached in 2017, he had two women on the outside waiting for him. Two women who believed in him. two women who would do almost anything to help him succeed.

 Thomas Nuff had played his cards perfectly. In 2014, three years before his scheduled release, Thomas Nuff appeared before an Ohio parole board. He told them exactly what they wanted to hear. He was a changed man, he said, reformed, rehabilitated. He had completed anger management courses, victim awareness programs, life skills training, family skills workshops.

 He had even taken classes on what the prison system called criminal thinking errors. Nuff told the board he wanted to become a productive member of society. He wanted to take care of his family. He wanted to prove that the system had worked, that he had been transformed from a violent criminal into a law-abiding citizen.

 The parole board believed him. On April 11th, 2017, Thomas Nuff walked out of the Noble Correctional Institution a free man. He had served 15 and a half years of his sentence. He was 42 years old and he had less than 30 days to live as a free man before he would kill again. On the morning of April 11th, 2017, two people drove to the Noble Correctional Institution to pick up Thomas Nuff.

 One of them was Regina Capabiano, his pen pal of 10 years. The other was her boyfriend, 65-year-old John Man. This was the first time Regina and Thomas had ever met in person. 10 years of letters, 10 years of building a connection through words on paper. And now, finally, they were face to face. John Man was a quiet man who lived in a small house on Nelwood Road in Parma Heights, a suburb of Cleveland.

 The house was modest, some might say run down. It had been the target of several police investigations over the years for suspected drug activity and prostitution, though no charges were ever filed. The home was also facing foreclosure. But John Man had a kind heart. When he learned that Thomas Nuff had nowhere to go after his release, he offered to help.

 Regina was already living with him. What was one more person? After picking up Nuff from prison, Regina and John drove him to a friend’s house in Hamilton, Ohio. From there, Alicia Stoner, the former prison social worker, picked him up and drove him to a motel in Strongsville. One of the conditions of Nuff’s parole was that he had to live in Kyahoga County.

 Stoner paid for his motel room out of her own pocket. She gave him money for food and expenses. She believed she was helping the man she loved get back on his feet. For the next few weeks, Knuff bounced between the motel and visits with various people. But the motel arrangement wasn’t sustainable. He needed a more permanent place to stay.

That’s when John Man stepped up again. In early May 2017, John Man invited Thomas Nuff to move into his home on Nelwood Road. It was a generous offer, perhaps too generous. Man barely knew enough, but Regina had vouched for him. 10 years of letters had to count for something, right? There was just one problem.

 Regina Kappo Biano had a felony record. She had served time in prison and under the terms of Guff’s parole, he was not allowed to live with anyone who had a criminal history. If his parole officer found out that Regina was living in the same house, Knuff could be sent back to prison for a parole violation. On May 10th, 2017, Nuff’s parole officer, Mark Fiser, conducted a routine check.

 He had discovered that enough wasn’t actually staying at the motel in Strongsville as he had claimed. The motel manager said he hadn’t seen enough in 5 days. When Fiser confronted Enough about the lie, Nuff admitted he had been staying with John Man. Fiser visited the house on Nelwood Road and spoke with Man directly.

 Man said he lived alone and agreed to allow unannounced home visits and warrantless searches as a condition of enough staying there. But man wasn’t living alone. Regina Capo Biano had been living with him for about a year and she was still engaging in prostitution sometimes right there in the house. Fiser didn’t discover this deception.

 He approved enough’s living arrangement with man and sanctioned Nuff only for lying about the motel. Nuff was officially cleared to stay at the house on Nellwood Road. He had been there for less than 24 hours when everything fell apart. The tension in the house on Nellwood Road had been building for days. Thomas Nuff knew that if his parole officer discovered Regina was living there and that she was actively committing crimes, he would be sent back to prison.

After 15 years behind bars, the last thing Nuff wanted was to return. He needed Regina gone. On the evening of May 11th, 2017, at approximately 8:00, Nuff sent a text message to Alicia Stoner. The message was urgent. We have to get Regina out of the house now. He asked Stoner to send him $80 through Western Union so he could pay Regina to leave.

 Stoner, ever loyal, wired him the money. Then Thomas Nuff went silent. From 8:19 p.m. on May 11th until the following afternoon, Alicia Stoner tried desperately to reach Kuff. She called him. She texted him. She called John Man. She texted John Man. No one answered. Something had happened inside that house. Something terrible. What exactly happened inside the house on Nelwood Road on the night of May 11th, 2017 may never be fully known.

 Thomas Nuff would later claim self-defense. He would tell multiple different stories to multiple different people. But the physical evidence told a much darker tale. At some point that evening, an argument erupted. Prosecutors believe that John Man made a decision. He chose to let Regina stay in the house instead of Nuff. This enraged Nuff.

 After everything he had done to secure his freedom, after all the manipulation and planning, he was about to be thrown out onto the street. Thomas Nuff grabbed a knife. He attacked Regina Capobanko first. He stabbed her six times in the neck, the abdomen, the clavicle, and the back. The woman who had written to him for 10 years.

 the woman who had picked him up from prison, the woman who had believed in his redemption. Then he turned on John Man. Man was 65 years old. He had opened his home to a stranger out of kindness. He had vouched for Enough to the parole officer, and now he was fighting for his life. Enough stabbed John Man 15 times. The wounds were concentrated in his neck, abdomen, hands, and legs.

 The defensive wounds on man’s hands suggested he had tried desperately to fight off his attacker, 21 stab wounds in total, two people dead, and Thomas Nuff had been a free man for exactly 30 days. With Regina and Jon lying dead on the floor, Thomas Nuff faced a choice. He could call the police and claim self-defense. He could flee.

 Or he could try to hide what he had done. He chose to hide it. Nuff wrapped the bodies in blankets and dragged them into a back bedroom. He covered them with garbage bags. Layer after layer of black plastic meant to contain the smell of death. Then he got to work cleaning the crime scene. He scrubbed the walls. He tore up the bloodstained carpet in the living room and cut it into pieces, stuffing the fragments into garbage bags.

 He used so much water cleaning the house that the Parma Heights water department would later flag the unusual spike in usage. But enough wasn’t just trying to clean up the blood. He had a more gruesome plan in mind. On May 13th, 2 days after the murders, Nuff confided in his son, Tommy. He told Tommy that there were two dead people at the house.

 When Tommy asked if his father was responsible, Nuff admitted that he was. Then Nuff told his son something chilling. He wanted to chop off the victim’s fingers and throw them into a sewer. He wanted to dismember the bodies so police couldn’t identify them. Just like in Dexter, he said, referencing the television show about a serial killer who disposes of his victims by cutting them into pieces.

Two days later, Tommy drove his father to a store. Nuff bought super strength glue for his injured finger, which he had hurt during the attack, and a box of large contractor garbage bags. The next day, Alicia Stoner drove enough to another store. He bought two hacksaws and two blades. He also shoplifted an Xacto knife.

 He told Stoner he was going to use the hacksaws to dismember the bodies. But Thomas Nuff never followed through with his Dexter inspired plan. The bodies remained in the back bedroom, decomposing under piles of garbage bags while he continued living in the house. By May 17th, Thomas Knuff was running out of money and options.

 The bodies in the back bedroom had been decomposing for nearly a week. He needed cash and he needed it fast. That night, Nuff stole his son’s white SUV and drove to Parma Heights. He broke into two businesses, Classic Hair Studio on Pearl Road and Spa and Nails on York Road. Security cameras captured him entering Classic Hair Studio and driving away in the stolen SUV.

 He made off with a cash register from one business and cash from the other, stealing over $1,000 in total. The next day, May 18th, something inside Thomas Nuff finally broke. He drove his son’s stolen SUV to Interstate 71 near Brunswick Hills and parked it in the emergency lane. Then he put a gun to his head. It appeared to be a suicide attempt, or at least a cry for help.

When Ohio State Highway Patrol officers arrived, they found enough walking back and forth along the highway, muttering the same words over and over. Just kill me. I don’t want to live anymore. The officers noticed that one of Nuff’s fingers was severely injured and badly infected. They called for emergency medical transport.

 Because Nuff had threatened self harm, he was taken to Medina Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. At the hospital, Kuff told a nurse yet another version of how he had injured his finger. He claimed he had stabbed two people in self-defense. It was perhaps the closest thing to a confession he would offer. 2 days later, Nuff was released from the hospital.

 His son picked him up and dropped him off at a friend’s apartment in Brunswick Hills. Meanwhile, back on Nellwood Road, the bodies of Regina Capabiano and John Man continued to rot. Tony Bender hadn’t heard from her sister Regina in weeks. This wasn’t entirely unusual. Regina had struggled with addiction for years, and there had been periods of silence before, but something felt different this time.

In late May, Tony drove to the house on Nellwood Road. The grass was overgrown. Garbage was strewn around the backyard. No one answered when she knocked. Tony found a broken window and reached through to unlock the door. She stepped inside and looked around. The house was cluttered and dirty, but she didn’t see Regina or John anywhere.

 She didn’t think to check the back bedroom. Tony called the Parma Heights Police Department and filed a missing person’s report. Officers came to the house and conducted a brief search. They didn’t find anyone. On May 31st, 2017, police finally caught up with Thomas Nuff. He was arrested at his friend’s apartment in Brunswick Hills on charges related to the beauty salon burglaries.

 While in custody, detectives asked him about Regina Capo Biano and John Man. Nuff lied. He told them Regina and John might be staying with friends in Canton. The police had no reason to disbelieve him. Nuff was booked into the Medina County Jail on the burglary charges. He was safe behind bars, but the bodies were still in the house, and Thomas Nuff knew it was only a matter of time before someone found them.

Sitting in the Medina County Jail, Thomas Nuff hatched one final desperate scheme. He couldn’t dispose of the bodies himself, but maybe someone else could. He wrote a letter to a man named Robert Lugo, someone he referred to as big bro. The letter was detailed and chilling. So now I’m really in a jam, Kuff wrote.

Because before I get out, some evidence will be discovered. I’ll probably die in prison. I need someone I can trust to go start a fire at the house I was staying at. He continued, “I have some trash bags in a back bedroom with clothes and papers that when discovered, my life is over.” Nuff instructed Dugo to burn down the house, starting in the bedroom with what he called the most incriminating [ __ ] a reference to the decomposing bodies of Regina and John.

 He even arranged for Alicia Stoner to pay Dugo and buy materials to help start the fire. But Robert Glugo never followed through. Whether out of fear, morality, or simple self-preservation, he refused to commit arson to cover up a double murder. Meanwhile, Alicia Stoner received her own letter from Nuff. When she read about his plan to burn down the house, she finally realized the full horror of what she had been helping to conceal.

She went to the Parma Heights Police Department and handed over the letter. On June 21st, 2017, 41 days after the murders, neighbors on Nelwood Road called the Parma Heights Police Department. A foul smell had been emanating from John Man’s house for weeks. It was getting worse. Officers returned to the house they had visited before during the missing person’s investigation.

This time, the smell was overwhelming. They searched the kitchen and found raw meat rotting on the table. Assuming this was the source of the odor, they disposed of the meat and prepared to leave. But one detective wasn’t satisfied. He remembered something from the missing person’s report.

 Regina Capabiano’s height. If she was in this house, they might have missed her in all the clutter. The detective walked to the back bedroom. The room was piled high with garbage bags. He began moving them aside. That’s when he saw it, a human skull partially visible beneath the debris. The detective had found Regina Capabiano. Further searching revealed John Man’s body nearby.

 Both victims had been wrapped in blankets and covered with garbage bags. They had been decomposing in that back bedroom for over 5 weeks. The scene was so disturbing that Parma Heights Police Chief Daniel Teal would later say it was one of the toughest crime scenes his detectives had ever encountered. Not just because of the crime itself, but because of the time and conditions in which the victims were found.

 With the bodies finally discovered, investigators began building their case against Thomas Nuff. The evidence was overwhelming. Nuff’s DNA was found on items recovered from the house. Cell phone records placed him at the scene around the time of the murders. The Parma Heights Water Department records showed a massive spike in water usage immediately after May 11th, consistent with someone desperately trying to clean up a crime scene.

Water usage then dropped to zero on May 16th, suggesting enough had abandoned the house. Witness testimony painted a damning picture. Enough had told multiple people multiple different stories about what had happened. He told Alicia Stoner that drug dealers had attacked man because Regina owed them money. He told his son that two black men had broken in and attacked everyone.

 He told a nurse at Medina Hospital that he had stabbed two people in self-defense. Every story was different. Every story was a lie. The autopsy results confirmed the brutality of the attack. John man had been stabbed 15 times. Regina Kappo Biano had been stabbed six times. The wounds were concentrated in their necks and torsos.

 Killing blows delivered with rage and precision. On June 30th, 2017, 9 days after the bodies were discovered, aggravated murder warrants were issued for Thomas Nuff. He was already in custody on the burglary charges. Now he was facing the death penalty. The trial of Thomas Nuff began in April 2019, nearly 2 years after the murders.

 Prosecutors sought the ultimate punishment, death by lethal injection. The evidence presented over the 7-week trial was staggering. Prosecutors called 50 witnesses to testify against NUF. They presented DNA evidence, cell phone records, water department records, security camera footage, and the damning letters Nuff had written from jail.

 They also presented testimony from Alicia Stoner, who had pleaded guilty to charges of helping Nuff dispose of the bodies. She received probation in exchange for her cooperation. On the witness stand, she described how Nuff had confided in her about the killings, how he had asked her to buy him power tools to dismember the bodies, and how he had referenced the TV show Dexter as his inspiration.

Nuff’s defense team tried a different approach. They argued self-defense. According to the defense, Nuff had walked into the house on the night of May 11th and found Regina Capabiano stabbing John Man. He grabbed the knife from her and tried to help Man, but Regina grabbed another knife from the kitchen and attacked Enough, cutting his finger.

 Enough killed Regina in self-defense, and Man died from the wounds Regina had inflicted. The defense acknowledged that Nuff had covered up the killings, but only because he feared he would be sent back to prison for a parole violation, even though he had done nothing wrong. The jury didn’t buy it. On June 14th, 2019, after two days of deliberation, the jury found Thomas Nuff guilty on all major counts: aggravated murder, aggravated burglary, kidnapping, gross abuse of a corpse, conspiracy, attempted tampering with evidence, and more.

The trial moved to the sentencing phase. On July 22nd, 2019, the same jury that convicted Thomas Knuff was asked to decide his fate. Should he spend the rest of his life in prison, or should he be executed for his crimes? The deliberation took approximately 3 hours. The jury recommended death. On August 14th, 2019, Thomas Knuff stood before Judge Dena Calibracy for sentencing.

 The courtroom was filled with family members of the victims, prosecutors, and media. Prosecutor Anna Faraglia addressed the court first. She expressed disgust at how the defense had treated the victims during the trial. The manner and fashion that their names were disparaged in this courtroom is disgusting to me,” Paraglia said. Judge Calibracy agreed.

 She described the crime scene as like stepping into a horror movie. Then came the victim impact statements. Tony Bender, Regina’s sister, addressed the court directly. He’s had a chance to plead for his life, she said. And I’m sure my sister pleaded for her life. But the most surprising statement came from Jonathan Man, the son of John Man.

 Jonathan told the court that while he believed the death penalty was necessary to help him heal, the tremendous cost of legal appeals would be better spent elsewhere. Then he said something no one expected. I will beg to anyone who will listen to spare his life. It was a stunning moment. The son of one of the victims was asking the court to show mercy to his father’s killer.

 But Judge Calibracy had heard enough. She looked at Thomas enough and delivered her verdict. As a defendant in my courtroom, I have hardly seen someone with so little remorse as you. She sentenced Thomas Nuff to death on both counts of aggravated murder. She also sentenced him to an additional 37 years in prison for his other crimes.

 As sheriff’s deputies placed handcuffs on Nuff, he addressed the court one final time. the Parma Heights Police Force and prosecutors who lied and put me on the stand and lied. Everybody’s going to have to answer for it. He showed no remorse, no acknowledgement of what he had done.

 Even facing execution, Thomas Nuff maintained that he was the victim. After his conviction, Thomas Nuff exercised his right to appeal directly to the Ohio Supreme Court. His attorneys raised 24 separate legal arguments challenging his convictions and death sentences. Among their claims, Nuff argued that he only killed Regina Capo Biano, not John Man, and that he did so in self-defense.

He argued that prosecutors failed to prove the underlying offenses of aggravated burglary and kidnapping. He argued that the trial court improperly denied his request to represent himself. For nearly 5 years, the case wound its way through the appellet system. On March 14th, 2024, the Ohio Supreme Court issued its ruling.

 In a unanimous decision, the justices rejected all 24 of Nuff’s arguments. Justice Joseph T. Daters wrote the majority opinion. The evidence, other than enough’s self-serving account, strongly supports the jury’s rejection of Kuff’s self-defense claim and its finding that he killed both man and Capabeno, Deers wrote. The court noted that Kuff had claimed innocence throughout the trial and that the only remorse he expressed was that the victims were unable to receive proper burials.

The death sentences were affirmed. In the years since his father’s murder, Jonathan Man has become an unlikely advocate, not for justice, not for closure, but for abolishing the death penalty entirely. Jonathan now works with Ohioans to stop executions, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending capital punishment in the state.

 He speaks publicly about his experience as the family member of a murder victim. Thomas Nuff, the man who murdered my father, was sentenced to death in 2019. Jonathan has written, “Nuff brutally murdered my father, and I live with the pain and grief of that violent loss every single day.” But he continues, “When enough was sentenced to death, I too was sentenced to decades of pain, excruciating uncertainty, and reliving the worst day of my life over and over again.

” Jonathan argues that the death penalty doesn’t provide closure for victims families. Instead, it extends their suffering through years of appeals, hearings, and legal proceedings. Every time Knuff’s case appears in the news, Jonathan is forced to relive the trauma of his father’s murder. “When it comes to my family and myself, I want this to be over,” Jonathan has said.

“And it’s not over.” He points to statistics showing that Ohio death row inmates spend an average of 17 years awaiting execution. For victims families, that means 17 years of uncertainty, 17 years of court dates, 17 years of wondering if and when the sentence will finally be carried out. It’s only been a few years since Thomas Nuff was sentenced to death, Jonathan wrote in 2021.

How many years will my family have to endure a process we desperately didn’t want in the first place? Today, Thomas Nuff sits in the Chilikothy Correctional Institution in Ohio, awaiting execution. He was transferred to death row on November 14th, 2019. He is now 51 years old. No execution date has been set for Thomas Nuff, and there’s a reason for that.

 Ohio’s death penalty is effectively on hold. In 2020, Governor Mike DeWine declared that lethal injection was impossible from a practical point of view. Pharmaceutical companies have refused to supply the drugs used in executions, making it impossible for the state to carry out death sentences. DeWine has said he does not anticipate any executions will take place during his term, which runs through 20,26.

Five executions that were scheduled for 2025 have already been delayed until 2028. This means Thomas Nuff may sit on death row for years, possibly decades, before facing any real possibility of execution. The man who stabbed two people 21 times, who left their bodies to rot for 6 weeks, who plotted to dismember them like a television serial killer, continues to live while his victims remain in their graves.

 Regina Capobiano was 50 years old when she died. She had struggled with addiction for most of her adult life, but she believed in second chances. She believed that people could change. She spent 10 years writing letters to a man she had never met, believing that her words might make a difference in his life.

 Her faith cost her everything. John Man was 65 years old. He opened his home to a stranger because his girlfriend asked him to. He vouched for Thomas Nuff to the parole officer. He tried to help someone get back on their feet after 15 years in prison. His kindness was repaid with 15 stab wounds. And Thomas Nuff, the man who claimed to be reformed, the man who told the parole board he wanted to be a productive member of society.

He sits in a prison cell just as he has for most of his adult life. The only difference now is that there’s a death sentence hanging over his head. A sentence that may never be carried out. The case of Thomas Nuff raises uncomfortable questions about our criminal justice system, about rehabilitation, about second chances, about the death penalty itself.

Enough spent 15 years in prison before his release in 2017. He completed every rehabilitation program the system offered. He told the parole board everything they wanted to hear. And yet, within 30 days of walking free, he had committed a brutal double murder. Was there any sign that Enough hadn’t truly changed? Was there anything the system could have done differently? Or was Thomas Nuff simply a predator who knew how to play the game? a man who used prison pen pal programs and romantic relationships to manipulate

people into helping him. The victim’s families are left to wonder. Tony Bender lost her sister Regina, a woman who struggled with addiction but still had a heart big enough to believe in redemption. Jonathan Man lost his father John, a man whose only crime was showing kindness to a stranger.

 And Alicia Stoner, the prison social worker who gave up her career for Thomas Knuff, was left to grapple with the knowledge that she had helped conceal a double murder. Thomas Knuff showed no remorse at his trial, no remorse at his sentencing, no remorse in his appeals. Even facing death, he continues to maintain that he is the victim, that the police lied, that the prosecutors lied, that everyone is out to get him.

 The judge’s words at sentencing still echo. As a defendant in my courtroom, I have hardly seen someone with so little remorse as you. Thomas Nuff sits on Ohio’s death row today. Whether he will ever be executed remains uncertain. The state’s death penalty system is broken and there’s no clear path to fixing it.

 But one thing is certain. Regina Capobiano and John Man are gone. Two people who believed in second chances. Two people who opened their home to a man fresh out of prison. Two people who paid for their kindness with their lives. They deserved better. They deserved so much