SERIAL KILLERS ARE OFTEN RELEASED FROM PRISON

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The success or failure of parole generally depends on the following factors: the purpose of parole is not intended to be  leniency towards the prisoner but to seek his or her rehabilitation in their future life. Like probation and other forms of clemency, parole is a rehabilitative phase of the treatment of imprisoned criminals.   

Alas, many times it is also a failure and as a result, many persons are murdered by some of these so-called reformed released parolees.

Many years ago in the Canadian city of Montreal, a child molester murdered two young boys. He was sentenced to death. He was retrieved and sentenced to prison for life. Years later, the parole board presumed that he was no longer a danger to society so they set him free. He later killed two more young boys. He was again sentence to life in prison. Several years later. he was killed by prison inmates.

Conditional release is among the most controversial and misunderstood areas of the criminal justice system. By addressing and dispelling a number of widely-held misconceptions and popular myths about parole, this article  is intended to help my readers better understand how parole works and how it hopefully contributes to the protection of society by facilitating as appropriate, the timely reintegration of offenders as law-abiding citizens.

Parole only affects the way in which a sentence will be served. It allows offenders to serve their sentences in the community under strict conditions of release and the supervision of a parole officer. If they abide by their conditions of release, they will remain under sentence in the community until their sentence is completed in full, or for life in the case of offenders serving life or indefinite sentences.

In Canada by law, federal offenders are normally eligible for full parole after serving one-third of their sentence, or seven years, whichever is less. Different eligibility rules apply for offenders serving life sentences for murder or indeterminate sentences. The fact that offenders are eligible for parole, however, does not mean parole will be granted. The protection of society is the overriding consideration in any release decision.

Because an offender is eligible for parole does not mean that it will be granted. In fact the Parole Board of Canada -PBC denies full parole to approximately 7 out of 10 offenders at their first parole review date. In some cases with respect to dangerous offenders, they will never be released.

The law gives PBC absolute discretion in decisions to grant or deny parole. In arriving at a decision, Board members consider the risk that the offender may present to society if released and determine if, and to what extent, that risk can be managed in the community. The protection of society is the overriding consideration in any release decision.

The Board also makes parole decisions for offenders serving sentences of less than two years in provinces that do not have their own parole boards since only the provinces of Quebec and Ontario have their own parole boards.

Parole of prisoners plays an important part in the reformation of convicted prisoners because it lessens the risk of releasing prisoners at the end of their sentences which can result in angry prisoners thrust onto society who want to get even to society for punishing them so harshly.

According to the US Department of Justice, parole, the supervised release of convicted criminals from prison into the community at large, helps prisoners adjust to normal life, “protects the community” by reducing recidivism, and prevents unnecessary imprisonment. To be paroled in the US, prisoners must have exhibited good behavior (e.g. following prison rules), the parole mustn’t suggest the offenses weren’t serious or constitute a “disrespect for the law,” and the prisoner’s release mustn’t threaten public safety.

                                                                                                                 On the surface that seems appropriate. But many murderers are smart enough to fool the parole board members into thinking that they won’t commit any more crimes again. 

Since 1950, (date of last kill),  there are as many as 2,883 serial killers in the United States in prison.  Out of f those 2,883 serial killers, as many as  478 of them killed again while on parole for murder.

Two nagging questions are: Should someone guilty of mass or serial murders be sentenced to death or to life in prison? Alternatively, should they be released if they appear to have been reformed?

My answer to the first question is, “Yes.” My answer to the second question is,   DEFINATLY  “NOT”

While one country’s conditions for parole may differ from those of another, it’s clear that all nation’s justice system should have the safety and welfare of its citizens in mind in deciding whether or not convicted mass or serial criminals are released from prison.

When convicted serial killers or mass murderers are being considered for parole, it’s obvious that their offenses are serious and their release could jeopardize people’s safety, no matter how well they followed the rules during their incarceration.

T0 many parole members, there would seem to be no chance that such offenders should never be released from prison to prey upon the public again. But, in fact, such incidents do occur, often to the detriment of the public who believe that the prisons are supposed to protect them. The killer’s release occurs when careless parole members believe that the killers have reformed and subsequently after their release from prison, they turn their murderous horror on innocent victims who are at the mercy of the mass or serial killers.

Here are some examples of such killers who were released from prison by their foolish parole boards.

Kenneth Allen McDuff was paroled, not so he could adjust to life, not to reduce recidivism, and certainly not because he no longer posed a threat to public welfare. He was paroled to reduce prison overcrowding.

From 1966 to 1992, he committed between 9 and 22 murders in Texas. McLennan County sheriff Parnell McNamara described McDuff as “a cold-blooded, psychopathic killer” who was “more evil than the Devil himself,” concluding “he never should have been released.” McDuff was on death row for murdering three teenagers in 1966, but his sentence was reduced to life with the possibility of parole in 1972. He was released in 1989.

In 1990, the parole board had a chance to send him back to prison after McDuff was arrested for chasing and threatening black teenagers. But neither his actions nor the “racial invective” he expressed at his parole hearing returned him to a prison cell, and so he killed at least three women between his release on parole and his return to prison in 1992, for abducting and murdering convenience store clerk Melissa Northrop and accountant Colleen Reed. He never expressed remorse for any of his crimes.^[1] McDuff was executed by lethal injection in 1998.

California “Speed Freak Killer” Loren Herzog’s last victim appears to have been himself. After having committed a number of murders with Wesley Shermantine, a friend of his since childhood, Herzog was sentenced to 78 years to life for murdering and raping Cindy Vanderheiden. In 2004, an appeals court found that Herzog’s confession may have been coerced and ordered a new trial for him. When offered a plea deal, Herzog agreed to plead guilty to manslaughter in exchange for a 14-year sentence. He was paroled in September 2010.

Two years later, the parole agent who monitored him continuously using GPS technology found Herzog’s tracking bracelet had a low battery. When Herzog failed to answer his telephone, the agent notified police, who found Herzog dead inside the trailer he inhabited “on fenced-off property grounds outside the prison.” Police investigated his death as a possible suicide.

The motive for Herzog’s apparent suicide seems to have been his knowledge that Shermantine intended to tell police where the bodies of their victims were located. Sacramento bounty hunter Leonard Padilla had relayed this information to Herzog shortly before Herzog killed himself. It’s possible he and Shermantine might have faced charges for additional homicides, depending on the number and identities of the bodies authorities recovered based on Shermantine’s information.

Career criminal Michael Keith Moon had several chances to reform. In 1981, he was convicted of stabbing a woman to death in Reno, Nevada. After his release from prison in 1991, he was convicted of attempted murder for repeatedly stabbing a man in bar in Woodstock, Illinois. He was released in 2005. Three years later, he was convicted of second-degree murder after killing a 24-year-old man in Escondido, California. In 2014, he was again granted parole and began living in a halfway house in downtown San Diego.

Escondido detective Chuck Gaylor believes Moon committed other murders between his time in Reno and his latest arrest and is most likely a serial killer.

In 1992, South African serial killer Louis van Schoor was sentenced to 20 years in prison for committing seven murders and attempting two others. He was released in 2004, after serving only 12 years, and walking straight into the arms of his fiancee, lawyer Eunice de Kock of Cape Town. Responding to silent alarms in businesses, van Schoor, a member of the police K-9 unit and a security guard at the time of the murders, said he shot as many as 100 people between 1986 and 1989.

Van Schoor said he was glad to be back in society and hoped people would judge him by his future behavior, rather than his past crimes. Initially, he had nothing to say to his victims’ families, but he later conceded he’d appreciate their forgiveness which was unlikely he would receive.

Calling himself “The Phantom,” serial killer William Huff murdered seven-year-old Cindy Clelland and six-year-old Jenelle Haines and targeted a third girl before he was arrested. The murders took place in Sierra Vista, Arizona. On April 30, 1967, Cindy had been collecting bottles to exchange for candy at her neighborhood store. Following the discovery of Cindy’s naked body on May 2^nd , the police received a handwritten note: “I am The Phantom. You have found my first victim. My next victim lives on Steffan Street. 9 yrs old. (Fools!!!)”

When police provided the targeted girl with 24-hour protection, Huff apparently decided to kill Jenelle instead. A colonel’s daughter, she was playing by a pond near the Lakeside Officer’s Club on June 22 when Huff abducted her. Later that day, Jenelle’s body, like Cindy’s, was found naked. Police had already suspected Huff, a neighborhood teenager at the time. Following Jenelle’s murder, Sierra Vista police chief C. Reed Vance saw Huff leaving the Army post at which the officer’s club was located. A handwriting sample obtained from Huff matched the note from The Phantom.

Upon conviction for the girls’ murders, Huff was sentenced to 15 years for one homicide and 40 for the other murder. In 2005, the parole board voted unanimously to grant him parole. In 2006, he began living under house arrest in a halfway house in Tucson. Ellen Kirschbaum, who chaired the parole board, said she couldn’t predict whether Huff might murder someone else Then why did she return him back into society?

Arthur Shawcross began his career as a serial killer at age 27 in 1972, when he killed a ten-year-old boy he’d lured into the woods on the pretext of going fishing with him. The same year, he sexually assaulted and murdered an eight-year-old girl whom he led to a deserted area as he showed her a new bicycle.

Arrested after eyewitnesses identified him as the man they’d seen with the children, Shawcross confessed to both murders, but in a plea deal, he was charged with only one count of manslaughter.

Because he was a “model prisoner,” he was paroled after serving 14 years of his 25-year sentence, and his criminal records were sealed. Settling in Rochester, New York, in 1988, Shawcross resumed murdering victims, by asphyxiating and also mutilating prostitutes. A helicopter pilot spotted him near a murder scene, and he was arrested. He admitted to committing ten murders and was sentenced to 250 years in prison. Will stupid parole board members release him from prison?

In my opinion, murderers should never be paroled.  The cases described in this article proves the validity of my opinion on this subject.