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Jury and victim’s parents: Killer Adams should die
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Avalon, left, and Lucian Tenney, parents of slain YSU student Gina Tenney, talk about verdict of Bennie Adams shortly after verdict on Wednesday.
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Bennie Adams sentenced to death for the 1985 murder of Gina Tenney.
The brutality of this murder justifies the death penalty, a detective says.
YOUNGSTOWN — Judge Timothy E. Franken should impose the death penalty on Bennie Adams, according to the parents of the young woman Adams was convicted of murdering almost 23 years ago.
“He took a life, and I think anyone that takes a life should be ready to pay for it with their own. That’s not asking too much,” said Avalon Tenney of Ashtabula, mother of Gina Tenney, who died by strangulation on Dec. 29, 1985.
Judge Franken, of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, will sentence Adams at 9 a.m. today.
“We’re grateful to anyone involved in helping to put Bennie Adams where he belongs. I hope he can never do that to anybody else,” she said.
“He deserves it,” said Lucian Tenney, father of the murder victim, citing “the torture that Gina went through ... It’s hard to think that somebody could do that and not give their own life.”
Prosecutors said Adams robbed, raped and kidnapped Tenney and burglarized her apartment in conjunction with murdering her.
The Tenneys made their comments Wednesday afternoon after a jury of eight women and four men returned its verdict recommending that Adams receive the death penalty for their daughter’s murder.
After more than 10 hours of deliberations, the jurors chose death over three prison sentence options: 25 years to life, 30 to life, and life without parole.
The same jury that made the penalty recommendation had convicted Adams Oct. 22 of aggravated murder with a death-penalty specification.
Tenney, a 19-year-old Youngstown State University student, was Adams’ upstairs neighbor in an Ohio Avenue duplex. Her frozen body was found floating in the Mahoning River near West Avenue the day after her death.
“Gina studied hard and worked hard and wanted to get through college,” her father said.
Adams, 51, was indicted in the case last year after a DNA match was found in evidence police had preserved for 22 years.
Dawn Cantalamessa and Martin P. Desmond, assistant county prosecutors, said they will ask Judge Franken to adopt the jury’s death-sentence recommendation.
“What Gina went through here, there’s no mitigation for that. I don’t care how many years have passed,” Desmond said.
“We’re just very glad that we were finally able to bring it to a guilty verdict,” said Detective William Blanchard, who investigated the case.
Adams deserves the death penalty because of the brutality of Tenney’s death, he said. “You had a young girl that had her whole life ahead of her, and it was just snuffed out in a violent way,” he added.
“This case typifies good solid police work with modern-day science,” said Capt. Kenneth Centorame, chief of detectives.
Defense lawyers Lou DeFabio and Tony Meranto did not respond to a request for comment.