Rebecca Auborn Is Sentenced to at Least 60 Years for Four Columbus Fentanyl Murders
A Franklin County judge imposed four consecutive 15-to-life terms on the Columbus woman who admitted drugging four men with fentanyl in 2023 to rob them.
Published
Rebecca Auborn faced the families of the men she killed in a packed Franklin County courtroom on February 19, 2026, and told them she was sorry. "I pray for Wayne Akin, Robert Snoke, Joseph Crumpler, and Guy Renda Jr., and all the families," she said. "I take full accountability and responsibility for my actions." Judge Karen Phipps then sentenced the 35-year-old Columbus woman to four consecutive terms of fifteen years to life, one for each murder. She will not be eligible for parole for sixty years.
Auborn had pleaded guilty in December to four counts of murder and one count of felonious assault, and, according to NBC News, one count of theft; under the plea deal, prosecutors dropped twenty-three other counts, including trafficking and involuntary manslaughter. Authorities say that between January 15 and June 17, 2023, she met men for sex in the Columbus area, drugged them with fentanyl and robbed them. Joseph Crumpler was 30, Robert Snoke 54, Wayne Akin 64 and Guy Renda Jr. 42. A fifth man, drugged in an attack that began the series in December 2022, survived, and the judge ordered the sentence for that assault to run alongside the murder terms. Prosecutors had sought the sentence she received.
In the courtroom
Her lawyer, Mark Hunt, said she had not meant to kill anyone. She had been trafficked and sexually exploited for years, he said, and had admitted drugging the men and taking their things after they passed out. "That doesn't excuse her crimes," he said. "She pled guilty. She's taken the blame." Auborn told the court she was a heavy drug user and was being sexually exploited at the time, and that she is a different person now.
"There is no punishment that is going to be sufficient enough to bring him back," said Mark Crumpler, whose brother Joseph died in January 2023. He told the court the family was "going to get justice today."
Wayne Akin was found dead in April 2023 on his 64th birthday. His daughter, Christyn Akin-Crockett, addressed Auborn directly in her statement. "My father would have never hurt you," she wrote. "He was kind. He was gentle. He was loving. He was awkward and so tender." She added: "No matter how much torment this has caused, I want you to know that I couldn't bring myself to hate you and I never will." After the sentence she said it was what the family had wanted: first that Auborn take full accountability, then that she serve a life sentence.
Akin-Crockett has said that after her father died, she tried to pass police a tip about a woman named "becka" who was killing people, and that authorities showed little interest until a fourth man died that June. The Columbus Division of Police has said it was reviewing the matter.
Auborn pleaded guilty and was sentenced by the court; the description of how the men died is the authorities' account, which her plea accepted, and her lawyer told the court the deaths were not intended. The case was prosecuted by the Franklin County Prosecutor's Office; the Ohio Attorney General's office, whose investigators worked the case with Columbus police, called it a serial murder case.
Sources
- Ohio sex worker guilty of killing 4 men is sentenced to 4 life terms in 'serial murder' case, NBC News
- Columbus woman to spend decades in prison after admitting to four fentanyl overdose deaths, WSYX ABC 6