ROSSFORD — The murder of Cathryn Lambert was the first case for new Det. Craig Revill and he presented it as a study, to the students of the Rossford Citizen’s Police Academy on Wednesday.

“If you do this job long enough, you will have a case that sort of defines you as an officer,” Rossford Police Chief Todd Kitzler said.

For Revill, now a lieutenant, that is the Lambert case. He took over the role of detective, from Kitzler, only hours before Cathryn Lambert was bludgeoned with a hammer on May 15, 2015. She had just come home from work at a new job and was attacked by her husband, Daniel, while still in the garage of their Rossford home.

Both Revill and Kitzler worked on the case, but it was presented to the class primarily by Revill as an example for the week covering investigation and prosecution. It fit well with Revill’s learning the new position from Kitzler, who was taking a new job as deputy police chief in Whitehouse.

Revill said that he would show enough to illustrate educational points, but warned the class that it was “gruesome and brutal.”

Revill said he would not sensationalize the case, out of respect for Cathryn Lambert and the family, leaving out evidence like autopsy photos.

He presented photos, audio and video from the case, including both the 911 call, interviews and the confession from Daniel Lambert. At each stage the class was asked to find the red flags Revill found between the 911 call and Daniel’s sentencing, which was nearly a year.

Initially Daniel Lambert suggested that there might have been a stalker. Cathryn Lambert was prominent in the local Northwest Ohio art community and had a Facebook following of more than 5,000. Lambert also suggested that she might have fallen and hit her head, Revill said.

The investigation was essentially wrapped up as a murder in less than a day, he said.

The crime scene had a lot of blood, with it pooling in the two-car garage drain and spatter on the car and garage walls, even though she had clearly fallen toward the center of the room.

Revill had also called in the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, which had photos with measuring tool for the spread of the spatter and the type of droplets.

The coroner’s report gave an extensive list of injuries, covering 11 categories. They included blunt force trauma to the head and neck, six patterned lacerations to the right side and back of head, multiple contusions and abrasions to various parts of the face, depressed skull fractures, a subarachnoid hemorrhage and other blunt force trauma to the hands, feet, left wrist and right shoulder.

At one point Daniel Lambert said that he had held his wife’s head after he found her, but when first responders showed up there was little blood on him. That was a red flag.

He also had abrasions surrounding his knees that seemed to indicate a struggle. Investigators had another red flag.

“All through this thing there was a touch of arrogance to him,” Revill said.

He played audio of an interview he did with Daniel Lambert, at the hospital. During the interview someone called Daniel’s cell phone, which he answered.

“I’m an emotional guy. Right?” Revill recalled. “So maybe I’m on one end of the spectrum, but if my wife was in the hospital, fighting for her life, I could not be on the phone with somebody and describing it. ‘Yeah, she was lying on the floor, with blood gushing out,’ with no emotion at all.”

The investigation really came together prior to the confession, when Kitzler noticed a clean hammer, in an open toolbox full of dirty tools.

The luminol search also found blood around the sink. Luminol emits a chemiluminescence, when it interacts with blood.

“I know, as an investigator, when you spray it on something and it lights up, chances are, it’s valuable evidence,” Revill said.

What they didn’t have were Daniel’s clothes, a bloody piece of fabric, the pattern for which was found in a print on the car, something missing from a golf bag.

It was during the confession that they got admission of the use of a hammer, but also a golf towel, that he admitted to using to try to suffocate Cathryn and followed by plastic wrap, to complete the suffocation. All of that was found in the attic.

The class asked about how those items could have been missed.

Kitzler said that the officer assigned to investigating the attic claimed that there were cobwebs indicating the attic had not been recently used. In fact, all of the missing items had been hidden under insulation.

The search required its own warrant. The lesson was avoidance of potential “fruit of the poisonous tree,” also called the exclusionary rule. As Revill explained it, without a separate warrant, if the confession were tossed out of court, then everything found with that confession would have also been inadmissible.

They found the bloody T-shirt, her handbag, the bloody missing golf towel and the plastic wrap.

Gloves, with a matching sample pattern to the print on the car, were also found. Daniel Lambert tried to explain them away as having had them on for cleaning out the house gutters.

Revill showed the class his photos of the gutters, which had clearly not been cleaned out in a long time. Putting on of the gloves was proof of pre-meditation, he said.

“You have to continue to investigate, if you lose the confession,” Revill said. “We wanted to show pre-meditation.”

For an investigation that is not considered lengthy, there were 98 items logged into evidence, seven search warrants were served and 13 witnesses statements. The investigation portion took more than a month and the case lasted 11 months, from arrest to conviction.

Lambert is up for parole in 2035, but Revill doubts it will be given on the first attempt, likely making for another five years, as a 77-year-old. He was admitted to the Marion Correctional Institution on April 28, 2016. His sentence was 20 years to life.

“We’re not going to welcome him back to town. That’s for sure,” Kitzler said.