Mr. Beasley appeared in court on the drug charge on Thursday, and on Friday he is to be arraigned on the prostitution charges.

Mr. Rafferty has been charged with the attempted murder of Scott Davis, 48, of South Carolina, the aggravated murder of David Pauley, 51, of Norfolk, Va., and two counts of complicity in those crimes. Prosecutors want the teenager, a tall youth who towered over the police officers escorting him from the courthouse in Caldwell this week, to be tried as an adult, something that is virtually routine in Ohio for crimes this serious. Judge John W. Nau of Noble County Common Pleas Court has issued a gag order in the case; he will take up the issue on Dec. 15.

Image Bodies were discovered on property in Noble County. Credit... The New York Times

Neither suspect has been charged in the murders of the other victims, Timothy Kern, 47, of Massillon, Ohio, whose body was found last week buried near a mall in Akron, and the unidentified man, whose body was found on the rural property in Noble County, where officials also found Mr. Pauley’s body on Nov. 14.

In a phone interview, Carol Beasley, Mr. Beasley’s mother, insisted that her son was innocent, and said that he had spent hundreds of hours in charitable work, like taking food to the poor, and had taken Mr. Rafferty — “a nice young man” — under his wing. “We never saw anything in Richard that was violent,” said Ms. Beasley, a retired secretary at Buchtel High School in Akron. “I hope the courts will see the truth.”

Yvette Rafferty, Mr. Rafferty’s mother, has said that if he was involved, he must have been in thrall to Mr. Beasley, a family friend. Ms. Rafferty, a striking woman, tall and rail thin, paced in front of the courthouse in Caldwell on Tuesday, waiting for a chance to talk to her son.