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Parole board denies release for Badilo killers
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Mark Badilo and Jeff McClure, both 44 and both convicted of killing Badilo’s brother Tim Badilo in 1988, will spend at least the next four years in prison.
The Ohio Parole Board made the decision Wednesday after a hearing in Columbus at which testimony was heard from Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins and members of the Badilo and McClure families.
Watkins said he told the board McClure’s remarks regarding his remorse were contradicted by statements he made while a friend recorded a conversation in 1991.
McClure recently told the parole board: “I cannot in words express to you the remorse that I feel and have felt over the last 25 years.”
But in 1991, 22 years ago, a friend of McClure’s and Tim Badilo’s who helped convict the killers came forward to police, then wore a recording device to get incriminating statements.
The friend, who knew about the killing beforehand and later saw Tim Badilo’s body, asked McClure some questions about the killing in a restaurant parking lot, prompting anger from McClure.
“Why did you bring that up again?” McClure said in the recording. “I had that out of my mind already.”
But later in the conversation, McClure said, “Don’t worry. We covered our tracks. We professionally planned it. We ... should have never done it in the first place. But I didn’t really do it. Basically all I did ... was torch the car.”
McClure added later, “I hit him once in the back of the ... head with a pool stick.”
He also said, “I’m not going to spend the rest of my life in prison. They have no evidence. They lost all the evidence in that case. They have nothing. It don’t even bother me anymore. I can read that in the newspaper all day long.”
McClure and Mark Badilo killed Tim Badilo at McClure’s house on Broadway Street in Weathersfield Township, but Tim Badilo’s body was discovered a few days later in a burned car in Hubbard Township.
The case went unsolved for three years until the friend came forward.
Watkins said Thursday the family members of Badilo and McClure are “very nice people,” and he feels sorry for them, but Tim Badilo and Mark McClure deserve to spend more time in prison for killing “a brother and a friend.”