Photo by Derek Redd Dwayne Herring appears in court for sentencing for the first-degree murder of his wife, Kathleen Herring.

A Wheeling man will serve life in prison with possibility for parole after being sentenced Thursday in the First Judicial Circuit Court of West Virginia for the first-degree murder of his wife on Wheeling Island.

Though parole is on the table, Dwayne Herring, 54, was sentenced by Circuit Judge Michael Olejasz on three charges — attempted first-degree murder and attempted arson on top of the murder charge — and Olejasz ruled that Herring must serve them consecutively. Ohio County Prosecutor Shawn Turak said that, with that ruling, Herring would serve at least 19 years in prison before becoming eligible for parole.

Olejasz told Herring he would serve those sentences consecutively because of the calculated nature of the attempted arson and attempted murder of his father-in-law, James Donahue.

“It would greatly diminish the the offense of your attempt to murder (Donahue) by running at the same time with your punishment for the murder of his daughter,” he said.

Herring pleaded guilty in March to the three charges, avoiding a trial and the possibility of being sentenced to life without parole. In March 2025, Herring bludgeoned his wife Kathleen Herring to death with a handheld weight in their home on South Front Street on Wheeling Island. He later turned on the five burners of the home’s gas stove in an attempt to blow up the home and kill Donahue, an attempt that failed.

During her statement, Turak described the brutality of the murder. The doctor who conducted the autopsy found that Kathleen Herring suffered seven separate blows to the head when she was killed.

“That, I would submit, was textbook malice,” Turak said. “It is so fundamentally evil and cruel.

Turak said Kathleen Herring was attacked while lying in her bed and when found by Donahue and police, she had her own hair in her hands and Dwayne Herring’s DNA under her fingernails, showing that she was defending herself at the time of her murder. Dwayne Herring also spent several days in the house with his wife’s body, leaving after the trash was picked up at the house. Turak contended that was because he threw away the murder weapon and wanted to make sure the trash was gone.

Both Donahue and Kathleen Herring’s sister Sherri Vara addressed the court during Dwayne Herring’s sentencing, describing the sorrow they have felt with the loss of Kathleen Herring. Donahue talked about how he and his daughter lived in the same duplex on Wheeling Island and how he was able to see her every day.

“She was not just my child,” he said. “She was a part of my daily life. I saw her and spoke to her and I knew she was safe under my roof. That is what a father believes. That is what I believed. I was wrong.”

It was Donahue who found Kathleen Herring in her bed days after she was murdered. He said there were not words strong enough to describe what it does to a father to see his child suffering the injuries and violence that his daughter suffered.

“That is not something that time heals,” he said. “It does not soften with time. It lives in my mind every day and will stay with me for the rest of my life.”

Vara did not see her sister in that condition but, as a longtime paramedic and now nurse, she has been to many crime scenes and seen what severe head trauma looks like. Those images projected on her sister has led to depression and anxiety.

“She did not die peacefully with any of us there to hold her hand, say goodbye, to tell her that we loved her,” Vara said. “Instead, she died violently, mercilessly and alone.”

Dwayne Herring also made a statement before the court, apologizing to his family and Kathleen Herring’s family for his actions. He said that his actions were “a direct result of many factors over several years of increasing medical problems” for both Kathleen Herring and the Herrings’ daughter, who died weeks before Kathleen Herring’s murder.

“There is no punishment that will make me feel worse than I will with the burden of what I did,” he said. “I would gladly take the death penalty if it were offered. I sincerely regret my actions.”

Dwayne Herring’s attorney Kevin Neiswonger asked the court to allow his client to serve his three sentences concurrently.

Turak challenged Dwayne Herring’s words, focusing on the part of his statement where he described Kathleen Herring’s murder as “my wife’s passing.”

“He bludgeoned her to death when she was in her bed,” Turak said. “It certainly was not a mercy killing and it certainly was not committed in a merciful way.”