Jury selected for ’85 murder case

Photo

Bennie Adams

STAFF REPORT

YOUNGSTOWN — With 12 jurors and four alternates seated, jury selection was completed Thursday for the capital murder trial of Bennie L. Adams.

The jury is scheduled to make a crime-scene visit before hearing opening statements from prosecuting and defense lawyers Tuesday morning.

The trial, for which jury selection began Monday afternoon, is before Judge Timothy E. Franken of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.

Adams is charged with aggravated murder with a death-penalty specification in the Dec. 29, 1985, strangulation of Gina Tenney, a 19-year-old Youngstown State University student who was his Ohio Avenue duplex neighbor.

Tenney’s body was found floating in the Mahoning River near West Avenue the day after her death.

Adams, 51, of Hollywood Avenue, was indicted in the cold case last year after a DNA match was found in evidence police had preserved for 22 years.

The case is being prosecuted by Martin P. Desmond and Dawn Cantalamessa, assistant county prosecutors. The defense lawyers are Lou DeFabio and Anthony Meranto.