Staff report

WARREN — Gary Betz, who was convicted of murder in 1977, was granted parole for a fourth time after the full Ohio Parole Board voted 5-3 Friday to release him.

According to parole board chairwoman Lisa Hoying, Betz was found to be eligible for parole “because of his moderate risk score and his good behavioral record while in prison.” Betz will be released from prison March 16.

Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins, who tried Betz in 1977 and appeared in person for a third time to oppose Betz’s parole, argued that Betz has demonstrated during previous paroles that his relatively clean prison record doesn’t translate to his following the law while he is out of prison. Watkins also argued that the “cruelty shown to a helpless victim and the heinousness of the murder by shooting the victim in the face with a sawed-off shotgun at point-blank range” justifies under the law a full life sentence to be served.

In his 11th letter to the parole board since 1989, Watkins described Betz as a “depraved, heartless” murderer and heinous offender, who has a pattern of undergoing “a most successful treatment rate while at the same time, a much higher subsequent failure rate” that Watkins has ever seen in a parole candidate since Betz’s first incident of assault in school at age 11.

Betz has been serving a 22-years-to-life sentence for the Dec. 15, 1976, shotgun murder of Lake Milton tavern owner Ron Goche after Betz and a co-defendant had robbed Goche of the night’s bar receipts, which totaled $138. Goche had a second location in Trumbull County, which is why he was tried in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court.

At the time, Betz already had been paroled twice after serving prison terms for breaking and entering convictions.

In 2007, Betz again gained a full-board parole after his attorney stated he suffered from a serious medical condition. However, that parole again was violated when Betz was arrested for drunken driving three times — in 2008, 2009 and 2011 — and referred to as “super drunk” by local police.

That medical condition was again brought up by defense attorney Emma A. Dann and a report submitted by a second defense attorney, Zachuary Meranda, stated that Betz is suffering from a severe skin malady that has confined him to a wheelchair and will prevent him from driving.

The parole board learned that Betz will be staying with a sister and brother-in-law, living near Kent in Portage County, where he will be living near his counseling service. Records also showed that Betz has five different drug prescriptions, including Zoloft, to help with depression, that, according to his attorney Dann, is aggravated during the holidays.

Goche’s brother, Galen, also had time speaking before the board to oppose Betz’s parole, stating he felt that through the years that as a victim of crime, he has lost a lot of rights. Galen Goche, who had married two months prior to his brother’s death, said every time he has to travel to Columbus and fight Betz’s parole, he has to relive the tragedy.

“I lost my best man,” Galen Goche told the parole board Friday. “And I have been told the reason I have to go through this is because of the system. Well, you are the system — a big part of the system.”

Galen Goche also stated that in the past he had been able to meet face-to-face with one of the parole board members, but this time, he was not allowed to. Also, Goche’s wife was not allowed to speak during the hearing.

Watkins’ arguments included “there is substantial reason to believe inmate Betz will engage in further criminal conduct or that the inmate will not conform to such conditions of release as may be established under the rules of the Administrative Code” and “there is substantial reason to believe that unique factors of the offense of conviction significantly outweigh the inmate’s rehabilitative efforts, and the release of the inmate into society would create undue risk to public safety and / or would not further the interest of justice nor be consistent with the welfare and security of society.”