Update: Thursday, February 25 at 5:10 p.m. The Ohio Adult Parole Authority board votes that Frank Freshwaters is to be released on parole on or after April 24.
Frank Freshwaters will be released from prison on or after April 24, the Ohio Adult Parole Authority has ruled.
Freshwaters will be placed on parole for five years, and parole board members prefer that he be released in West Virginia.
“We thank God for their decision. There are probably 2,000 people praying for him across a half-dozen states,” Gordon Beggs, Freshwaters’ defense lawyer, said minutes after the announcement.
“There was wonderful support from people who knew him for many, many years. So many people wrote in, telling what a kind, generous guy he was,” Beggs said.
“That’s who he is today,” he said.
Play by play: Follow live updates of the hearing.
Update: Thursday, February 25 at 4:14 p.m.
Shortly after 4 p.m., the Ohio Adult Parole Authority board went into executive session to begin deliberating the fate of Frank Freshwaters.
During testimony, Brad Gessner, chief counsel with the Summit County Prosecutor’s Office, requested that Freshwaters serve more than four years in prison.
Board members asked Richard Flynt, the son of crash victim Eugene Flynt, his thoughts on an appropriate action. Flynt replied that the decision is in the hands of the board.
Palm Bay resident Shirl Cheetham requested Freshwaters’ release, and she offered to bring him back to her home.
Update: Thursday, February 25 at 12:55 p.m.
Frank Freshwaters’ hearing before the Ohio Adult Parole Authority board will likely begin later than the scheduled 1 p.m. starting time.
The Adult Parole Authority just finished deliberating an unrelated case that started at 10:30 a.m.
The hearing site is a conference room at the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections Operation Support Center in downtown Columbus. Snow flurries are drifting across the jail-like complex, which is ringed with metal fencing.
Gordon Beggs, Freshwaters’ defense attorney, is scheduled to testify before the board on his behalf.
Also expected to testify are three representatives of Eugene Flynt, the man Freshwaters fatally struck with his vehicle on July 3, 1957, in Akron, Ohio.
They are Brad Gessner, chief counsel with the Summit County Prosecutor’s Office; Crystal Baker, director of victim services with the Summit County Prosecutor’s Office; and Richard Flynt, Eugene’s son.
Original story
Friends, family, lawyers and prosecutors are converging on Columbus, Ohio today as a parole board determines the fate of Frank Freshwaters, the fugitive who spent 56 years on the run before authorities tracked him to Melbourne’s marshy outskirts.
Freshwaters, the 79-year-old "Shawshank Fugitive" who lived quietly in Brevard County since the mid-1980s, could win his freedom during the hearing. The case has drawn international attention along with a social media following demanding his freedom. He remains behind bars in Ohio, the state where he walked away from a minimum security work camp in 1959.
His Thursday hearing before the full Ohio Adult Parole Authority board starts at 1 p.m., said JoEllen Smith, a spokeswoman with the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. “In Ohio, pray for Bill,” posted Shirl Cheetham, a longtime friend of Freshwaters’ whose children know him as "Grandpa Bill.” Cheetham and others have sought petitions and witness statements on behalf of Freshwaters.
Back in 1957, when he was 21, Freshwaters was speeding on an Akron street when he struck and killed 24-year-old Eugene Flynt, a married father of three. Freshwaters pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter in 1958, and he was sentenced to five years of probation in lieu of one to 20 years in prison. But he violated probation and got shipped off to the Ohio State Reformatory — which later provided the setting for the classic film "The Shawshank Redemption."
PHOTOS | The 'Shawshank Fugitive'
He subsequently escaped from a Sandusky prison honor farm, then spent more than a half-century in West Virginia and Florida using the assumed alias William Cox.
Per Adult Parole Authority policy, the hearing could include testimony from prosecutors, law enforcement officers, the sentencing judge or the judge’s successor, Flynt's relatives, and Freshwaters' relatives, friends, employers, clergy and attorneys. It remains unclear whether Freshwaters will attend.
“The Summit County Prosecutor’s Office opposes parole for inmate Frank Freshwaters. Inmate Freshwaters struck and killed Eugene Flynt with his vehicle in 1957. He has spent nearly 60 years avoiding taking responsibility for what happened," Summit County Prosecutor Sherri Bevan Walsh said this afternoon.
"Freshwaters failed to comply with his probation, and did not pay a dime of the $1,500 he was ordered to pay in restitution to Flynt’s family. Freshwaters was eventually sentenced to serve between one and 20 years in prison, yet spent only seven months behind bars before escaping in 1959. Since then, Freshwaters has lived free, had a family, and even collected Social Security under an assumed name," Walsh said.
"He is clearly still avoiding his responsibility," she said.
According to limited records still available, Freshwaters struck Flynt with a 1953 Mercury while he was driving 50 mph in a 35 mph zone, Summit County Prosecutor's Office records show.
After the crash, Freshwaters told Akron police that “there was a man in front of me and then I don’t know what happened,” according to a police report.
Flynt was pronounced dead less than an hour later, and he died from shock from a fractured skull and compound fractures of both legs, a coroner's report shows.
Flynt's son Richard was 3 when his father was killed. He plans to testify Thursday against Freshwaters.
"In essence, he caused my life nothing but trouble," Flynt said this morning during a phone interview from his home in North Canton, Ohio. "I don't think they can just pat him on the back and send him home."
As of Sept. 11, the Summit County Prosecutor's Office calculated that Freshwaters owed Eugene Flynt's widow $12,660.88 in unpaid restitution, factoring for inflation.
Contact Neale at 321-242-3638, rneale@floridatoday.com or follow @RickNeale1 on Twitter
