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Frank Freshwaters spent 56 years on the run from the law before the U.S. Marshals Service tracked him down and arrested him last May at his Jones Road trailer, on Melbourne’s marshy western outskirts.
Thursday, Frank Freshwaters — who turns 80 in April — may win his freedom during a parole hearing in Columbus, Ohio.
Frank Freshwaters wasn’t at the hearing before the full state parole board in Columbus. But his attorney, Gordon Beggs, told the board that Freshwaters has lived a clean life and never forgot the accident that led to his case.
Investigators who tracked down Freshwaters last May say he was living off Social Security benefits under an alias at a weathered trailer in rural Brevard County, Florida. They found him living as a retired widower under an old alias, William Harold Cox.
The 79-year-old was returned to Ohio and had a closed parole hearing in August.
Frank Freshwaters had pleaded guilty to a manslaughter charge for fatally striking a 24-year-old pedestrian while speeding in a vehicle in July 1957, and 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 the 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 Frank Freshwaters had a “flawless 16-year residency” there.
Agencies/Canadajournal
