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Belmont County Common Pleas Judge Frank Fregiato on Monday denied a motion from serial killer Eugene Blake made in an effort to vacate a 2010 conviction and sentencing on a rape offense.
The problem, Fregiato found, is that Blake had never been charged or convicted of that crime.
On March 29, 2010, Common Pleas Judge Jennifer Sargus sentenced Blake, 69, to 20 years to life for aggravated murder during the commission of a rape after he admitted to killing Mark Withers, 21, of Lansing, and raping a 17-year-old female who was with Withers at Bridgeport’s Gould Park on March 19, 1982.
When the 28-year-old case came to light, then-prosecutor Chris Berhalter did not file a rape charge against Blake because Ohio’s statute of limitations on rape had passed. No such statute exists for murder.
Monday’s hearing was in response to Nov. 14 motions filed by Blake asking the court to “vacate sentence” and to “resentence” on a supposed rape charge. Fregiato said he overruled the motions because there is no basis for them.
Prosecutor Dan Fry said Blake’s latest motions made no sense. “The fact is, he was never convicted of a rape charge,” Fry said. “He was convicted of murder while committing a rape, so his argument does not apply.”
In addition to killing Withers, Blake served time in West Virginia for two other murders.
He killed Donna Jean Ball, an 18-year-old telephone operator, on Jan. 15, 1967, in Wayne County, W.Va., and he murdered 13-year-old Hope Helmbright in Wheeling on Oct. 24, 1984.
Blake had been serving life without mercy for the Ball murder until having his sentence commuted to life with mercy, and he later was granted parole. In the Helmbright murder, Blake was sentenced to 15 years to life after pleading guilty to a lesser offense. He would have been eligible for parole in 2011 had he not been convicted in the Withers case.
He is incarcerated at the Chillicothe Corrections Institution and did not make the trip to Belmont County for Monday’s hearing. Attorney Thomas Ryncarz was appointed to represent him.