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COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A man who disappeared from a prison camp in 1959 while serving time for manslaughter and was found in Florida last year was granted parole Thursday.
Frank Freshwaters wasn't at the hearing in Columbus, but his sons were. They were relieved and overjoyed at the board's decision to release Freshwaters on April 24, about a week after his 80th birthday. One son, who was born months after the accident that got Freshwaters in trouble, said he's hoping to get to know him better.
Exactly where Freshwaters will go hasn't been settled, but the conditions for his release include five years of supervision.
Freshwaters' attorney, Gordon Beggs, told the board that his client never forgot the accident that led to his case. Freshwaters was speeding when he fatally struck 24-year-old pedestrian Eugene Flynt in 1957.
Investigators who tracked down Freshwaters last May said he was living off Social Security benefits under the alias William Harold Cox at a weathered trailer in rural Brevard County, Florida. The 79-year-old was returned to Ohio and had a closed parole hearing in August.
The Summit County prosecutor's office recommended against parole, saying Freshwaters had changed his name, avoided accountability and never paid the restitution ordered for Flynt's family. Flynt's son, Richard, told the board that Freshwaters should be held accountable for what he did, but he said the specifics of how were up to them.
Freshwaters' son Jim Cox said his father had been haunted by the accident. Another son, Jeff Lloyd, extended his sympathies to the victim's family.
"I'd like to apologize to Mr. (Richard) Flynt for the loss of his father because I can relate," said Lloyd, who reconnected with Freshwaters because of media coverage of the case.
Shirl Cheetham, a friend of Freshwaters', got choked up as she told the board he had become like family to her and would be welcome to live with them in Florida.
After he pleaded guilty to manslaughter, his initial sentence of one to 20 years in prison was suspended. He violated his probation by driving and getting a driver's license, and, at 22, he was imprisoned in February 1959 at the Ohio State Reformatory, according to U.S. marshals and old court documents they provided.
He was soon moved to an honor camp near Sandusky, where he was reported missing on Sept. 30, 1959, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
He was first caught in West Virginia in 1975, but the governor refused to extradite him, concluding Freshwaters had a "flawless 16-year residency" there.
CLEVELAND (AP) — Surgeons in Cleveland say they have performed the nation's first uterus transplant, a new frontier that aims to give women who lack wombs a chance at pregnancy.
In a statement Thursday, the Cleveland Clinic said the nine-hour surgery was performed a day earlier on a 26-year-old woman, using a uterus from a deceased donor.
The hospital had long been planning for such a surgery, announcing last fall that it would attempt 10 such transplants in a clinical trial. The hospital said it wouldn't release any more details about the transplant until a press conference next week.
Other countries have tried womb transplants — and Sweden reported the first successful birth in 2014, with a total of five healthy babies so far.
BAILEY, Colo. (AP) — Authorities brought numbers this time in case of trouble, but they never expected a long-delayed eviction would turn into a deadly shootout with a Colorado man who peacefully refused to leave his foreclosed home two years earlier.
Martin Wirth was acquitted of killing a man over a chess game more than 20 years ago, and he had recently threatened police.
But the officers who followed him into his mountain house were more concerned he would run away than turn his rifle on them. When the smoke cleared, three deputies had been shot, one fatally, and Wirth was dead.
"We did not force a violent confrontation yesterday," Sheriff Fred Wegener said Thursday. "Mr. Wirth did."
Wirth, 58, was a political activist whose life was pocked with violent outbursts and run-ins with the law that culminated in Wednesday's bloodshed.
The shootout shocked the community of Bailey, where the slain deputy, Cpl. Nate Carrigan, was a familiar face. It also stunned some of Wirth's friends, who recalled him as a well-intentioned activist worn down by years of fighting for his home.
"He definitely had an angry streak," said fellow activist Chris Mandel, who shot a video of Wirth posted on the website of the Colorado Foreclosure Resistance Coalition, an organization aligned with the Occupy Denver movement. "He was very idealistic. He really hated the injustice of the world."
In the video, Wirth said he refused to pay his mortgage because he claimed lenders were criminals who defrauded homeowners. The government-controlled mortgage company Fannie Mae took ownership of his home in 2014.
It was unclear why Wirth was allowed to remain for two more years. Wegener said a previous attempt to evict Wirth in 2014 ended peacefully after he talked to the sheriff's office. Deputies finally posted the eviction notice on his door Feb. 16, the sheriff said.
Eight officers returned Wednesday, instructed to remove Wirth and his belongings.
The sheriff said they were aware of Wirth's prior confrontations with law enforcement, including his January arrest for eluding a police officer, obstructing a law enforcement animal and driving without insurance and a license. Wirth told an insurance agent "I should just get my gun and shoot the first cop I see!" after he was denied insurance due to a traffic ticket, according to a police report.
Later, Park County deputies tackled him in the driveway of his home when he ignored their commands. Wirth denied making the threat and told deputies he did not own a gun, the report said.
He also was acquitted of second-degree murder in 1994 after fatally shooting his 24-year-old neighbor during an argument over a chess game.
Wirth testified that the man provoked him and lunged for his revolver before he shot him twice in the chest in Fort Collins, The Coloradoan newspaper reported.
He wrote disparagingly of the government and police in seething posts on his Facebook page.
"He was a person who was constantly saying the government was out to get him. Nothing was his fault, it was always someone else's," said Dan Spykstra, who got a protection order against Wirth in 2005 after he made violent threats at a court-ordered drug and alcohol counseling program.
Spykstra, who was running the program at the time, said he confronted Wirth after Wirth went off on an employee. Wirth threatened to put a bomb in Spykstra's mailbox and said, "I have you in my crosshairs," according to Spykstra.
"I did not think they were jokes," Spykstra said.
Wirth extended his activism to a state Senate campaign in 2014 as a Green Party candidate. He lost.
If Wirth had an aggressive side, Andrea Merida said she never saw it. He had been stressed in recent weeks about the possibility of eviction, but he "never took it out on people," the co-chair of the Green Party of Colorado said.
Many people in the rural neighborhood where Wirth lived keep guns to fend off wildlife, which is probably why he had one, she said.
Merida said Wirth would often let homeless people stay in his house when they had nowhere else to go.
Another friend, Tim Holland, who knew Wirth through their work with the Occupy movement, called him "a sweet man, a Bernie Sanders-eqsue populist with a gun who was willing to die for what he believed."