James Rothenbusch admitted helping conceal evidence after Brittany Fuhr-Storms died and her body was moved from a house to a roadside dump site.
HAMILTON, Ohio — A Butler County judge sentenced a Middletown man to 30 months in prison after he admitted helping conceal evidence in the case of a pregnant woman whose body was later found stuffed inside a plastic tote in rural southwest Ohio.
The sentence made James Robert Rothenbusch, 52, the first defendant punished in the death investigation tied to 28-year-old Brittany Fuhr-Storms. Prosecutors did not convict Rothenbusch of killing her. Instead, he pleaded guilty to complicity to tampering with evidence, a narrower charge that focused on what happened after Fuhr-Storms died in July 2025. Even so, the case remains one of the region’s most disturbing recent death investigations because of the delay in reporting her death, the concealment of her body and the fact that she was pregnant when she died.
The investigation broke open on Aug. 3, 2025, when people walking along Fort Anthony Road in Jackson Township found a plastic tote containing human remains. Authorities later identified the body as Fuhr-Storms and said her unborn child also did not survive. Detectives traced the case back to Middletown, where Fuhr-Storms had last been staying. According to investigators, Rothenbusch later admitted she died in his home under suspicious circumstances and that her body remained there for about four days before it was moved. Public reports said her remains had been kept in a bathtub during that period before being placed in the tote and abandoned along the roadside.
The public record still leaves major questions unresolved about the death itself. Early reporting tied the investigation to suspected drug activity and suggested authorities were examining whether Fuhr-Storms died after using narcotics. But the case against Rothenbusch did not require prosecutors to prove the exact cause of death. Instead, it focused on concealment. By pleading guilty, he accepted criminal responsibility for helping hide evidence in a case where police said the body was left in a house for days and then discarded miles away. Other charges against him, including drug-related counts and failure to report a death, were dismissed under the plea agreement.
The length and nature of the concealment are what give the case much of its force. This was not a single panicked act in the immediate aftermath of a death, according to the public accounts. Investigators described a drawn-out period in which Fuhr-Storms’ body remained inside the residence while others in or around the home knew what had happened. Search warrants at Rothenbusch’s Logan Avenue address also turned up drugs, paraphernalia and items tied to the investigation, authorities said. That evidence helped police frame the matter as both a death investigation and part of a broader drug case that spread across Butler and Montgomery counties.
The sentencing hearing resolved only part of the larger case. Two other men still face allegations tied to Fuhr-Storms’ death and the movement of her body, and newer federal charges have also grown out of the same investigation. For now, though, Rothenbusch’s 30-month sentence stands as the first courtroom punishment in a case that shocked multiple communities. It punishes the cover-up, not the death itself, and leaves open the possibility that later prosecutions may add more detail about what happened inside the house before the tote was left in the woods.
Rothenbusch is now serving a 30-month prison term. The next major milestone is the progress of the remaining state and federal cases connected to Fuhr-Storms’ death.
Author note: Last updated March 15, 2026.