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2 who killed Niles cop in ’82 will face parole boardSFlb
By Ed Runyan
NILES
The first of two parole hearings this month for the killers of 26-year-old Niles police officer John Utlak will be Wednesday in the Toledo Correctional Institute.
Wednesday’s hearing is for Fred E. Joseph Jr., the younger of the two teens convicted of killing Utlak on Dec. 8, 1982, near Waddell Park. A similar hearing will be Oct. 11 at the Trumbull Correctional Institute for Randy Fellows.
Both men were convicted of aggravated murder and two specifications — that they killed a peace officer and that a robbery was involved. They were sentenced to life in prison with parole eligibility after 30 years.
Both men have served a little more than 29 years in prison, with Joseph now 46 and Fellows 47.
The hearing involves one or two members of the parole board offering a recommendation to the parole board on whether either man should be released.
Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins, who was chief prosecutor of the criminal division at the time Joseph and Fellows went on trial and participated in both trials, has written to the parole board objecting to their release.
Watkins tells the parole board that Joseph was the triggerman and told a hitchhiker, as Joseph and Fellows drove west after the murder, that he “would plead insanity if he was caught, and that the authorities would go easier on him because he was a juvenile.”
Joseph was 17 at the time of the murder. Fellows was 18.
The hitchhiker, Arthur “Skip” Krause, said Joseph showed Krause a handgun that he used to kill Utlak, adding that Utlak was not dead after one shot and reached for his own gun, “so I shot him again,” Watkins said.
"It is not reasonable in my opinion from the facts established in this tragedy that these police killers get paroled, after only serving their minimum eligibility time. It would demean the seriousness of the crime,” Watkins wrote.
Joseph and Fellows were arrested in Cheyenne, Wyo., three days after the murder. Police at the time said the teens lured Utlak to a parking lot off Hunter Street in Weathersfield Township to get money from him. Utlak had been working with the teens as informants for about a month and was giving them money to set up a drug buy for the purpose of catching drug dealers, police said.
Watkins told the parole board that Fellows dropped Joseph off for the meeting, and Joseph got into Utlak’s car. “Joseph was let in the car and pursuant to their plan, ambushed and shot the helpless officer twice in the head,” Watkins wrote.
Joseph then robbed Utlak of about $200 in cash, his service revolver, a shotgun and a portable radio. Later, Fellows wanted to see if Utlak was really dead so he had Joseph open the driver’s side door of Utlak’s car, “at which time John Utlak, mortally wounded, fell from the car on the cold, snowy ground,” Watkins said.
At 6:30 a.m. the next day, a Gibralter Steel employee found Utlak’s body.
The teens told Fellows’ girlfriend, Patricia Sigley, on Dec. 8 that they were going to Florida, both had firearms with them, and they would shoot a police officer if it were necessary to get away.
Utlak’s younger sister, Joanne Robbins, already has met with the parole board, said Miriam Fife, Trumbull County victim-witness advocate. Robbins also organized an online petition that received responses from law-enforcement officers asking that Joseph and Fellows be denied parole.