A Columbus man will spend at least the next two decades in prison for beating a Prairie Township man to death during a break-in last year. Anthony Kuhn, 43, pleaded guilty on Monday, November 9, to aggravated burglary, voluntary manslaughter and tampering with evidence in the May 1, 2025, death of Phillip Baldwin, 62, and Franklin County Common Pleas Court Judge Andria Noble sentenced him to 23 to 28½ years in prison, The Columbus Dispatch reported.
The plea and sentence, both delivered on Monday, close the criminal case against Kuhn roughly 18 months after Baldwin was found dead inside his home on Hall Road. Kuhn had originally been charged with murder, and he faced an additional count of aggravated robbery when he and a co-defendant were first charged in May 2025, according to Franklin County Municipal Court filings reported by The Dispatch at the time.
Baldwin’s brother found him unresponsive at the home the brothers shared in the 6500 block of Hall Road in Prairie Township and told a Franklin County dispatcher he believed Phillip had been assaulted, according to a news release issued by the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office and reported by The Dispatch. Prairie Township Fire Department medics pronounced Baldwin dead at 4:38 p.m. on May 1, 2025, and a sheriff’s detective wrote in a criminal complaint that Baldwin had suffered substantial head injuries.
The timeline laid out in that complaint, as reported by The Dispatch, begins the night before. Baldwin’s brother told detectives he left the house at 12:53 a.m. on May 1 to take a roommate to the hospital, and when he returned nearly three hours later he found the house ransacked, with several items missing. He told detectives he called the sheriff’s office to report the break-in and did not see Phillip on the ground when he made that call.
A witness who was in a trailer parked in the driveway of the Hall Road home told detectives that Nichole Adkins returned to the trailer from work at around 12:30 a.m. and went inside the house to take a shower at around 2 a.m., with Kuhn following her inside a few minutes later, according to the complaint. The witness said Kuhn came back to the trailer about 30 minutes later, “frantic,” saying he could not believe what he had just done and that they needed to leave, the complaint states.
Adkins, in her own interview with detectives, confirmed much of that account, according to the complaint reported by The Dispatch. She said she heard a commotion inside the house while she was in the shower, and when she came out, Kuhn was inside and Baldwin was dead. She told detectives Kuhn had blood on his face and was holding a baseball bat, which he handed to her while telling her to stand watch at the front door, and that he brought her several items from inside the house to hold, according to the complaint.
What happened after the killing is the conduct behind Kuhn’s tampering-with-evidence plea. According to the complaint, the three left the trailer and drove to the Wedgewood Village Apartments to buy drugs, and on the way Adkins threw Baldwin’s wallet and work hat into a sewer drain basin. At an apartment complex on Fisher Road, Kuhn threw away the victim’s baseball cards and bottles of medication, the complaint states. Detectives later retrieved all of those items, including clothing Kuhn had been wearing that had blood on it, according to the complaint.
Kuhn himself confirmed parts of the night’s movements when detectives interviewed him, telling them the group had been in the trailer on Hall Road and had gone to Wedgewood Village Apartments to buy drugs, according to the complaint. When a detective told him Baldwin had died, Kuhn asked whether Baldwin was dead and then invoked his right to a lawyer, the complaint reads.
Kuhn and Adkins, both 42 at the time, were each charged with one count of murder in May 2025, with Kuhn also facing aggravated robbery, and both were held in the Franklin County jail on $2 million bond ahead of a preliminary hearing that was set for May 12, 2025, The Dispatch reported from the municipal court filings. Monday’s guilty plea replaced the murder charge against Kuhn with voluntary manslaughter, alongside the aggravated burglary and tampering counts he admitted.
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on. Confirmed: Kuhn pleaded guilty on November 9, 2026, and Judge Noble imposed a sentence of 23 to 28½ years, according to The Columbus Dispatch. Still unanswered in Monday’s reporting: the current status of the case against co-defendant Nichole Adkins, who was charged alongside Kuhn in 2025, and any statement from Baldwin’s family at sentencing. NewsForce247 is not aware of either being reported yet, and we will update this story if they are.
Kuhn’s sentencing lands in a busy week for Franklin County courtrooms — the Pammy Maye murder trial opened in Columbus on Monday as well — and alongside continuing county enforcement work such as the Franklin County Operation Unity seizures reported earlier today.
What happens next is the prison term itself: Kuhn, now 43, will be transferred into the Ohio prison system to begin serving the 23-to-28½-year sentence imposed Monday. For Phillip Baldwin’s family, the plea ends the uncertainty of a trial in the case against the man who admitted killing him, while the separate case stemming from that same night in Prairie Township remains the open question.
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