The sentence addressed tampering with evidence after Brittany Fuhr-Storms’ body was hidden for days and later dumped in a tote.

HAMILTON, Ohio — A Butler County judge sentenced a Middletown man to 30 months in prison for helping conceal evidence after a pregnant woman died and her body was later found stuffed inside a plastic tote along a rural road, according to court records and local reports.

The sentence makes James Robert Rothenbusch, 52, the first of three defendants to be punished in the case tied to the death of 28-year-old Brittany Fuhr-Storms. Authorities have said Fuhr-Storms was pregnant when she died in July 2025 and that her body remained inside a Middletown home for several days before it was moved and abandoned in Jackson Township, Montgomery County. Rothenbusch did not plead guilty to causing her death. Instead, he admitted complicity to tampering with evidence, a narrower charge that still placed him at the center of the cover-up that followed.

Investigators said the case came to light on Aug. 3, 2025, when people walking along Fort Anthony Road found a plastic tote containing human remains. Police later identified the victim as Fuhr-Storms and said her unborn child also did not survive. The investigation led detectives from Jackson Township and the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office to Middletown, where they traced her last known address and began working with local police. Authorities said Rothenbusch told investigators Fuhr-Storms died in his home under suspicious circumstances and that her body stayed there for about four days. Public reports later described the body as having been kept in a bathtub before it was moved into the tote and dumped along the roadside.

The facts surrounding Fuhr-Storms’ death remain partly unresolved in public court records. Early reports said authorities believed she died from an alleged overdose, but the criminal cases that followed focused heavily on what happened afterward: the delay in reporting her death, the movement of her body and the disposal of her remains. Rothenbusch also faced additional counts involving drugs, failure to report a death and paraphernalia, but those charges were dismissed as part of the plea agreement. That left the sentencing hearing focused on concealment rather than on the original cause of death. Even so, the judge still had to weigh the seriousness of a case involving a pregnant woman whose body was hidden in a house and later abandoned in a rural area.

The setting and timeline made the investigation especially troubling. Fuhr-Storms was not found quickly after she died. Authorities said her body remained in the residence for days while other people in or around the home knew what had happened. By the time the tote was discovered in Jackson Township, the case had expanded across county lines and become both a death investigation and a broader drug inquiry. Search warrants at Rothenbusch’s Logan Avenue residence reportedly turned up narcotics, paraphernalia and other items investigators tied to the case. That evidence helped prosecutors frame the case as more than a panic-driven decision made in one moment. They described a drawn-out effort to avoid police, hide the death and dispose of the body.

Two other men still face charges connected to the case, which means the legal story is not over. Reports on the sentencing said the state agreed to dismiss several counts against Rothenbusch in exchange for his guilty plea to the tampering-related offense. The 30-month prison term resolved his case at the trial-court level, but it does not answer all the open questions about who did what, when Fuhr-Storms died and whether additional facts about the unborn child’s death will surface later in court. For now, the hearing marked the first formal punishment in a case that has shocked communities from Butler County to rural Montgomery County.

Rothenbusch is now serving a 30-month sentence in the Ohio prison system. The next major milestone is the progress of the remaining prosecutions tied to Fuhr-Storms’ death and the disposal of her body.

Author note: Last updated March 15, 2026.