YOUNGSTOWN — Convicted killer Bennie Adams is closer to being denied parole by the Ohio Adult Parole Authority in the 1985 killing of a 19-year-old Youngstown State University student.

Gina Tenney of Ashtabula County had lived downstairs from him on Ohio Avenue.

The parole board heard the case Aug. 26 and issued its decision this week. But the results are going through the “quality assurance review, so they are not finalized yet,” a spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Corrections said in a Friday email.

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

Adams, 65, originally was sentenced to death after being convicted in 2008 in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court of the murder of Tenney. But an appeals court threw out the death penalty, and Adams later was 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 by a muskrat trapper Dec. 29, 1985, floating in the Mahoning River under the West Avenue bridge. An autopsy at the time found she was raped and strangled before she was thrown into the river.

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

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 her 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.