YOUNGSTOWN — About 14 years after Bennie Adams was convicted of the 1985 killing of a 19-year-old Youngstown State University student who lived downstairs from him on Ohio Avenue, the Ohio Parole Board at an Aug. 26 hearing will consider releasing him from prison.

The Mahoning County Prosecutor’s Office is opposed, saying Adams’ “terrifying pattern of criminal behavior” demonstrates that setting Adams free now would endanger society.”

Adams, 65, was originally sentenced to death after being convicted in 2008 in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court of the murder of Gina Tenney of Ashtabula County. But an appeals court threw out the death penalty, and Adams was later sentenced to life in prison with parole eligibility after 20 years.

Tenney was a YSU sophomore who complained just before she was killed that Adams was harassing her, staring through her window and trying to talk to her. Adams was convicted of aggravated murder following a trial.

Tenney’s body was found Dec. 29, 1985, floating in the Mahoning River by a muskrat trapper under the West Avenue bridge. An autopsy at the time found she was raped and strangled before she was thrown into the river.

Adams had always been a suspect in Tenney’s murder, but evidence directly tying him to the murder was not obtained until more than 20 years after Tenney’s death.

In 2007, the Ohio Attorney General’s Office invited police departments to submit cold-case evidence for DNA testing. The Youngstown Police Department submitted evidence it had retained from the investigation.

Ohio’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation analyzed those items and concluded that Adams could not be excluded as the source of a DNA found on Tenney or a piece of her clothing.

Adams was convicted of a separate October 1985 Boardman rape prior to the murder trial. For the rape, he served 18 years and three months in prison. He has served 13 years and 10 months on the murder, according to the Mahoning County Prosecutor’s Office.

Ralph Rivera, assistant chief of the criminal division of the prosecutor’s office, wrote to the parole board that Tenney’s “terrifying pattern of criminal behavior in 1985 justifies his continued incarceration.”