That should have been the end of the story where Blake is concerned. However, over the next six years, Blake gained the confidence and favor of local prison officials to the point he was named a prison trusty, possibly the first life without mercy prisoner to be granted such status.
He also gained enough favor that he was allowed to live outside the prison’s walls, taking up residence first in the guards’ barracks and then, for a month, in the Warden’s residence.
In 1974-75, Blake took part in plays at Towngate Theatre, Wheeling College and Bethany College. He also claimed to have had the freedom to come and go from the prison as he pleased, unchaperoned, in a state-owned vehicle.
Blake never attempted to escape, as he pointed out in an October 1976 letter to then-Gov. Arch Moore asking for his sentence to be commuted to life with mercy. From 1972 until 1976, Moore followed the West Virginia Board of Probation and Parole’s recommendation against granting Blake any form of executive clemency. However, on Dec. 23, 1976, near the end of his term as governor, Moore went against the parole board and commuted Blake’s sentence. This came after an extensive letter writing and petition campaign to the governor by many prominent members of the Ohio County/Marshall County community.
Blake was granted parole in February 1979, with stipulations he would later violate, but he was not sent back to prison. After residing in Morgantown, he returned to Wheeling in 1982.
He killed 13-year-old Maryann Hope Helmbright on Oct. 24, 1984, a crime for which he currently is serving another life sentence — this time with mercy, with parole a possibility in 2011.
And now he stands accused of the March 19, 1982, murder of Mark Withers in Bridgeport.
Starting Thursday, Investigative Reporter Fred Connors, who has been looking into the Withers case for the past six years, will detail, in a three-part series, just how Blake was able to gain his freedom — both as a convicted murderer who roamed unchaperoned outside the prison walls and then as a paroled convict — and then return to the local area to kill again.
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Illustration by Scott Hanson