Reject parole, state urged

By ED RUNYAN

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

On Aug. 15, 1988, Christopher W. Daniel and Andre Williams entered a home on Wick Street Southeast and killed George Melnick, 65, and nearly killed Katherine Melnick, 64.

Williams is on death row for the murder. Daniel was convicted of involuntary manslaughter regarding George Melnick and attempted murder for throwing a brick that hit the head of Katherine Melnick, then assaulting her with an ax handle until she was unconscious.

Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins has twice in the last four years written to the Ohio Parole Board opposing parole for Daniel, 50, who comes up for for parole next month.

In letters both times, Watkins has discussed a secretly recorded conversation that Daniel had with a friend one month after the crimes in which Daniel described his assault on Katherine Melnick after the friend asked why the kitchen window of the Melnick home was broken.

Daniel said he threw an 8-pound brick at Katherine Melnick’s head.

“The window got broke because that bitch was standing by the window,” Daniel said. “It ricocheted off her head and went out the window.”

Watkins said the photographs of Katherine Melnick’s injuries are “horrifying.” It took 24 hours after the attack before she and her dead husband were found.

The attack left Katherine Melnick permanently blind and caused numerous facial fractures and a brain injury. Watkins said Katherine Melnick spent the next 24 years of her life in a nursing home, dying at age 88 in 2012.

Despite what happened, “she always kept a smile on her face,” Watkins told The Vindicator.

The trial judge, Mitchell Shaker, who is now deceased, sentenced Daniel to 37 to 100 years in prison after Daniel was convicted of attempted murder, involuntary manslaughter, aggravated burglary and aggravated robbery.

The judge also wrote a letter to the parole board in 1989 saying he hoped the parole board would not consider parole for Daniel “until he has served 37 years of actual incarceration.” Daniel has served just over 30 years.

After the killing of George Melnick and assaults on Katherine Melnick, Williams and Daniel took $2,000 in cash, credit cards and a VCR from the Melnick home. Williams also raped or attempted to rape Katherine Melnick, Watkins said.

“On the Richter scale of violence and suffering, these crimes are off the charts, which in my view, means no punishment can be too great for inmate Daniel,” Watkins said in his letter this month.

Williams, meanwhile, sought relief from the death penalty for the 1988 crimes. But in April a Trumbull County Common Pleas Court judge found Andre Williams failed to definitively prove that he’s intellectually disabled enough to escape death for his crimes.