Delgros denied parole for 10 more years

Staff report

WARREN

Judith Delgros, the 62-year-old former Vernon Township woman convicted in 1993 of killing her husband and 5-year-old son in 1978, will spend at least 10 more years in prison.

The Ohio Parole Board has denied parole to Delgros and set her next hearing for 2023, the maximum time allowed under Ohio law. It was Delgros’ first parole hearing after 20 years in prison.

“Obviously, we’re very happy that the board has given her the maximum reconsideration period,” said Dennis Watkins, Trumbull County prosecutor, who wrote to the parole board asking that parole be denied.

Delgros was 27 at the time she killed Donald Morris, 41, by stabbing him and Christopher Styles by setting fire to the trailer where the family of five lived on Orangeville-Kinsman Road.

The coroner ruled the deaths accidental and failed to perform autopies on the two bodies at the time of the murders.

It took 15 years for a detective with the Trumbull County Sheriff’s office to reopen the case and receive a statement from Edward Bridge, one of the children who survived the fire, regarding what he saw.

Bridge, who was 9 in 1978, told Dan D’Annunzio that his mom and Morris argued that evening, Delgros hit Morris in the head with something and then stabbed him in the back with a steak knife.

Bridge passed a lie- detector test, and an autopsy performed on Morris’ exhumed body indicated he died from stab wounds.