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Budd William Miller will stay locked up for a 1981 double murder, board rules
COLUMBUS
The Ohio Parole Board has denied parole to an 80-year-old inmate who fatally shot his estranged wife and her boyfriend before opening fire on a Youngstown police officer in 1981.
The board acted after a Wednesday hearing for Budd William Miller, who is serving 20 years to life in the Pickaway Correctional Institution.
The board decided to keep Miller in prison until Dec. 1, 2016, at which time his case will come back before the board, according to Mike Davis, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
The hearing followed an October letter of opposition to Miller’s release from Mahoning County Prosecutor Paul J. Gains, who spoke to the board at Wednesday’s hearing.
“This individual would indeed pose a danger or threat to anyone he comes in contact with. This is particularly true if he is not in a controlled environment, such as a penal institution,” Gains wrote.
Gains wrote to the board a few days before what had been Miller’s scheduled release date, and the board then delayed his release pending Wednesday’s hearing.
After an Aug. 22 hearing, the parole board had decided to release Miller in October, but it reserved the right to change its position as long as Miller remained locked up.
Miller’s unspecified medical condition “makes any risk more manageable in the community. His condition can’t be surgically corrected due to other medical problems, which will limit his mobility,” the parole board said this past summer.
Miller was to have been paroled to a Scioto County nursing home and was to have been under Ohio Adult Parole Authority supervision for five years.
After killing his wife, Linda, and her boyfriend, Lawrence Turley, on Easter 1981, Miller suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his chest during a gun battle with Police Officer Tom Parry, who is now a detective sergeant.
When he committed the double murder, Miller was free on bond after a Christmas eve 1980 incident, in which he inflicted a serious head wound on his 17-year-old stepdaughter, Dixie Ray, while trying to shoot his wife, the ODRC said.
Miller’s stepson, Alan Gregory Ray, of Mishawaka, Ind., said in October that he didn’t condone Miller’s violent past, but believed Miller should be released because he’s not likely to be a threat at this point.
However, in remarks prepared for delivery to the parole board at Wednesday’s hearing, Ray was noncommital and said family members were divided on the issue.
“I am here to leave this decision in your hands,” he told the board.
“I lost my mother, and my sister will never be the same person I knew before her being shot. Enough has been lost. My faith rests on this parole board knowing all things will be considered,” he concluded.