Prosecutor opposes parole for ‘serial rapist’ and double murderer

Staff report

WARREN

Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins is again opposing parole for John Whisonant and Henry G. Rockwell, who have been eligible for possible parole a few times in the past. Both have parole hearings in August.

Watkins calls Whisonant, 64, a “serial child rapist,” who raped four girls and a boy age 4 to 10 in Howland Township in 1981 and 1984. Watkins has opposed Whisonant’s parole in 2016, 2013 and 2010.

Marcia Tiger, former director of Trumbull County Children Services, investigated the case in 1985 and called the Whisonant case “the ‘standard bearer’ for horrific sexual abuse cases in our county,” Watkins told the parole board in a letter last week.

Whisonant was sentenced to 21 to 75 years in prison in 1985. Under today’s laws, Whisonant, who lived on Niles Road, would have gotten a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole for raping a child under age 10, the prosecutor said.

Watkins said his office “believes inmate Whisonant is one of the worst of the worst child sexual predators it has seen.” Whisonant has served “less than one half of the maximum sentence given by the court,” he noted.

Watkins also opposes parole for Rockwell, 75, who shot and killed two men in his Champion Township home in 1981 in a drug-related confrontation, then put their bodies in the trunk of a car and lit it on fire to destroy evidence after the car got a flat tire on state Route 82 just east of Route 46 in Howland.

Rockwell was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison on each of two counts of murder.

Family members of the victims “have continually supported” Watkins’ opposition to parole for Rockwell, Watkins said in his letter last week.

The prosecutor said Rockwell’s “general behavioral tract and the magnitude of his cold-blooded and brutal attack on the victims, along with his hands-on approach in their subsequent mutilation and burning of the victims, evinces to me that Rockwell has a sociopathic personality and could harm others in the future.”