Trumbull County man convicted of multiple 1973 murders returned to Ohio to face parole board

Staff report

WARREN

Former Trumbull County man John B. Tidwell, 70, recently completed 42 years in the California prison system for a Dec. 13, 1973, murder in Orange County, Calif.

He also pleaded no contest in 1980 to one count of second-degree murder in the July 1973 Trumbull County shooting deaths of wealthy Warren industrialist C.C. Walter Holmquist and his wife, Dorothy, during a burglary in their Cortland home.

He was transported from California to Warren, where he was placed in the Trumbull County jail Friday until he could be transferred Monday to the Ohio prison system regarding the Trumbull County murder.

He will be held in the Ohio prison system until an Ohio parole hearing can take place to determine whether he will be released.

An April 25, 1980, agreement signed by then-Trumbull County Prosecutor J. Walter Dragelevich says Tidwell would serve his 15-years-to-life Ohio prison sentence at the same time as his California sentence.

The document says Trumbull officials also promised not to influence the parole boards in California or Ohio regarding the length of time Tidwell should serve for either murder.

Current Trumbull Prosecutor Dennis Watkins said Monday he cannot comment on the case because of the agreement.

Tidwell was first tried in the Holmquist murders in January 1978 in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court with Don Hanni Jr. and Samuel Petkovich as his attorneys, according to Vindicator files.

The high-profile case, prosecuted by Dragelevich and then-assistant prosecutor Watkins, ended in a hung jury. A retrial was going to take place in Steubenville, but Tidwell agreed to Dragelevich’s plea agreement instead.

A 1990 Los Angeles Times article says Tidwell’s December 1978 California murder conviction was for shooting to death Harold Reinhart, 18, while robbing Reinhart of his share of money acquired during an earlier robbery.