VIERA, Fla. – Back behind bars after 56 years on the run, rural Melbourne resident Frank Freshwaters will face an Ohio Parole Board panel during an Aug. 25 hearing.
Local 6 News partner Florida Today says Freshwaters, 79, was arrested in May at his Jones Road trailer by the Brevard County Sheriff's GAMEOVER Task Force. He escaped from an Ohio prison farm in 1959, then later moved to the Space Coast under the alias William Cox, according to the U.S. Marshal's Northern Ohio Violent Fugitive Task Force.
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The parole hearing will take place at the Southeastern Correctional Complex's annex for older offenders in Nelsonville, said JoEllen Smith, Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction spokeswoman.
Freshwaters could learn whether he will be freed, or ordered to return to a prison cell for years.
"They'll look at the individual's committing offense, or the crime for which he was convicted and sent to prison. They will also look at his behavior while he was behind bars," Smith said.
Freshwaters pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter after killing a pedestrian in a 1957 vehicle crash in Akron, Ohio. He was sentenced to one to 20 years in prison, but a judge placed him on probation for five years in lieu of incarceration.
Freshwaters violated terms of his probation, including getting a driver's license and failing to report to the probation department, and in 1959 he was sent to the Ohio State Reformatory. The iconic prison later served as the setting of the classic movie "The Shawshank Redemption."
Thanks to good behavior at the Ohio State Reformatory, Freshwaters was assigned to one of the prison's work farms near Sandusky, said Pete Elliott, U.S. marshal for the Northern District of Ohio. That's where he made his escape in September 1959.
Freshwaters' current home is the Southeastern Correctional Complex's Hocking Unit, which houses about 450 older offenders. Nelsonville is a small city about 60 miles southeast of Columbus.
Richard Flynt, 60, of North Canton, Ohio, said he is scheduled to meet with parole officials about the Freshwaters case on July 16. He is the son of Eugene Flynt, the 24-year-old Akron rubber worker who Freshwaters struck and killed.
"He should be locked down for the rest of his life. No slack. Without a doubt," Flynt said this afternoon.