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WARREN -- Three Trumbull County inmates were unsuccessful in their bids for parole as the Ohio Parole Authority extended their stays in prison after hearings in December and January.
Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins said his office recently was notified of the results of the three hearings for inmates Timothy M. Gaut, Joel Patterson and William Judson.
Here are their cases:
• Gaut, 47, a former Hubbard resident, was sentenced by Common Pleas Judge W. Wyatt McKay in 2008 to 15 years to life in prison after being convicted of 21 counts of rape, gross sexual imposition, importuning and pandering obscenity of a minor. Watkins said the inmate will not have his next parole hearing until October 2031.
"I'm especially pleased that the parole board will keep Gaut in prison for at least 10 more years," Watkins said, noting in a recent letter to the parole board that Gaut is one of the worst sexual predator / human traffickers his office has ever seen.
Gaut had met with three parole board members outside his cell at the Marion Correctional Institution for his first chance at parole since pleading guilty on Sept. 12, 2008, to the multiple offenses.
• Judson was denied parole and will have his next hearing in November 2025, Watkins said.
Judson, 55, who more than two decades ago lived in Champion, Fowler and Girard, was convicted in 1993 of two counts of rape and was given consecutive indefinite prison terms from 15 to 50 years. The crime was the repeated rape of a child between the age of 5 and 9, but Watkins said there was additional evidence that he had raped another young girl who was related to him when she was 9 or 10.
Watkins noted that Judson was released once before -- in 2009 -- on parole, and that didn't turn out well.
After release, Judson had lived in halfway houses in Cincinnati. On March 12, 2010, he was arrested for theft of a watch and gold cross at a Sears store in Cincinnati. Instead of returning to prison, he was given another chance by attending an anti-theft class at the University of Cincinnati. He then moved to Youngstown and battled depression, heavy drug use and suicidal thoughts. Judson was returned to prison in 2011 as a parole violator.
• An inmate at Marion Correctional Institution, Patterson, 66, received a life sentence in 1996 on charges of second-degree murder and attempted murder, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections. Watkins said the parole board decided to keep him behind bars at least until his next hearing scheduled for October 2024.
Patterson's 1996 sentence came after he was paroled from prison after serving time for a murder in 1972, Watkins said.
"He has shown by repeated bad conduct that he is incorrigible and beyond rehabilitation," Watkins wrote to the parole board about Patterson, whom he called a "super-spreader" of crime.
On Dec. 15, 1995, Patterson shot James Thomas III of Comstock Avenue in Warren twice in the chest, twice in the back and once in the right wrist.