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WARREN -- Trumbull County prosecutors are opposing parole for Paul Brown, 70, when he comes up for a parole hearing in November because of his inability to stay out of trouble when he was paroled two previous times and because of the murder he committed in Warren in 1974.
Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins and First Assistant Trumbull County Prosecutor Chris Becker each wrote recent letters to the Ohio Parole Board asking for Brown to remain in prison longer in the Dec. 12, 1974, murder of Cleveland Beasley in Warren; for receiving the stolen property of a cousin who was murdered in Warren Oct. 12 ,1989, after Brown was paroled the first time; and committing illegal conveyance of drugs onto the grounds of the Trumbull Correctional Institution Jan. 22, 2004, after being paroled the second time.
Brown admitted to the 1974 murder, which occurred when Brown was 18. Brown was convicted of murder and was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison, according to the Sept. 21 letter from Watkins to the parole board.
Beasley, 63, was the owner of a Warren pool hall. Brown shot Beasley twice in the head in the front seat of Beasley's vehicle while it was stopped at a Warren intersection, the letter states. Brown admitted he also took the money bag containing the money from the pool hall hall from Beasley.
Brown's first cousin, Rebecca Sims, was murdered in her home in Warren Oct. 12, 1989. Her body was discovered the next day. Investigators determined that Brown pawned the woman's ring the day she died. He was sentenced to two to five years in prison on that conviction. But after that sentence expired, Brown was kept in prison longer on the 1974 murder conviction, Watkins' letter states. Brown was paroled again in August 2003.
But he had become acquainted with murderer Larry Dawson at TCI while Brown was there. On Jan. 22, 2004, corrections officers found footprints in the snow around the perimeter of the Leavittsburg prison. A sock also was found between two perimeter fences. It contained marijuana, crack cocaine and Black and Mild cigars.
Remarks Brown made suggested that he was the person who threw what Brown and Dawson called "laundry" that may not have cleared both fences, the Watkins letter states.
Brown was convicted at trial of the illegal conveyance in 2004, resulting in Brown being sentenced to 2 to 5 more years in prison. But he remained in prison after that sentence expired as a result of the life "tail" on Brown's murder conviction.
Watkins told the parole board of Brown, "From his initial crime of murder, through the suspicious murder of his first cousin and the beyond-coincidence of (Brown) pawning her possessions the same day as the murder, to his fueling and endangering inmates and corrections officers by attempting to deliver drugs to a state correctional institution, Paul Brown has and will always be a risk to the community."
Becker said of Brown in his letter, "Criminal history factors remain important predictors of parole success. Each time Paul Brown has been released on parole it has been months, not years, until criminal mayhem ensues." Becker also asked that Brown be kept in prison longer.
When Brown was denied parole in 2022, Becker wrote that Brown was convicted of killing one person and "in all likelihood killed another." Brown was ordered to remain in prison until his next parole hearing this year.