YOUNGSTOWN — Shain P. Widdersheim, 43, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2013 for allowing her ex-boyfriend to abuse her three sons, including the one he killed, has asked for the third time to allow her to leave prison early.

Widdersheim, who is housed in the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville, has an expected release date of Aug. 22, 2027, but she is asking to be released about three years early. Marysville is northwest of Columbus.

The last time she asked to be released early was in August 2023. She asked for judicial release, which is a type of early release requested from the sentencing judge, in this case Judge R. Scott Krichbaum of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.

According to court records, Mahoning County prosecutors opposed her release. But Krichbaum did not rule on the matter within 60 days. As a result, Krichbaum was “without jurisdiction” to rule on the matter, according to the judge’s Jan. 1, 2024, judgment entry. The entry noted that Widdersheim “retains the right to file for judicial release in the future. The judge denied Widdersheim’s earlier request for judicial release Jan. 24, 2022.

Widdersheim’s son, Teddy Foltz, 14, was killed in January 2012, five days after a beating he received from her boyfriend, Zaryl Bush of Struthers.

Krichbaum sentenced Widdersheim, of Struthers, after she pleaded guilty to four counts of child endangering and one count of obstructing justice. The last of the two child-endangering counts were related to her twin sons who survived.

Krichbaum sentenced Bush, then 43, of Creed Street in Struthers, to 33 years to life in prison during the summer of 2013 after he pleaded guilty to aggravated murder in Teddy’s death, plus four counts of child endangering, two counts of intimidation and one count of tampering with evidence. Bush, now 54, is eligible for his first parole hearing in December 2045, according to prison records.

Prosecutors and police said Widdersheim kept family and others from seeing Teddy and his twin brothers, then 11, and that Bush abused all three for a significant period of time, including forcing the twins to beat Foltz as well as beating all three himself.

“It’s just so foreign to me that a mother wouldn’t stand up for her own child in the face of relentless cruelty,” Krichbaum told Widdersheim during her sentencing hearing in 2013. “You don’t deserve the title of mother. Mother is a sacred title nobody should call you.”

In Widdersheim’s newest request for judicial release, which was filed in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court Monday, she wrote that “My past behaviors of allowing myself to fall prey to abusive relationships has cost me and my sons a great deal of grief.”

She continued, “My abuse began as a child, and as I grew into adulthood I never changed that destructive pattern. Instead, I chose abusive relationships to fill the voids in my life.”

She said “Coming to prison has changed my life and the way I think. I will no longer allow myself or anyone I’m around to be involved in a domestic violence relationship. My prison stay has helped me to identify red flags that will make my decision making easier to leave at the very first red flag I see.

“I have worked on myself diligently over the almost 12 years,” she said. She was admitted into the state prison system on Oct. 21, 2013, but she was arrested in the case Jan. 30, 2023, and housed in the Mahoning County jail, according to court records.

As part of Widdersheim’s hand-written request for judicial release filing, she included certificates showing the many education programs she has completed while in prison and letters of support for her.

Though news coverage of the case by various news media consistently spelled her last name Widdersheim, court and prison records spell it Widdershaim. Her handwritten court filing appears to spell it both ways, Widdershaim when she printed it, Widdersheim when she wrote it in cursive.

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