Parole denied for Doug Prade, former Akron cop serving life sentence for ex-wife's murder
[Watch previous FOX 8 News coverage in the player above.]
(WJW) — Doug Prade, a former Akron police captain who shot his ex-wife six times, killing her, while she was 'completely defenseless' inside her vehicle will stay in prison for now.
The Ohio Parole Board on Wednesday, June 11, chose to keep Prade in prison while serving his life sentence for the 1997 murder of Dr. Margo Prade.
'This is a case that involved his decision to fire a weapon multiple times into the completely defenseless female victim,' reads the Wednesday ruling. ' … The brutality and callousness of the crime outweighs any positive parole suitability factors in his case.
I-Team: Cleveland Heights officials asked FBI, BCI to investigate actions by mayor
The parole board also found Doug Prade did not complete any programming to reduce his risk of reoffending.
During his trial more than 20 years ago, testimony showed that after their divorce, Doug Prade continued to threaten and harass Margo Prade, a local physician.
'We were very afraid for Margo,' said Donzella Anuszkiewicz, a former federal investigator and friend of the Prade family, who spoke to FOX 8's Dave Nethers last month, before Prade's parole hearing.
The murder happened on the eve of Thanksgiving. Margo Prade was shot six times while inside her minivan, which was parked outside her medical practice in Akron.
Doug Prade maintained his innocence.
In 2013, his conviction was overturned and he was released from prison after the discovery of new evidence of a bite mark on Margo Prade's lab coat. That evidence was later rejected and he wound up back behind bars.
Prade was sentenced in 1998 to 20 years to life at Marion Correctional Institution, where he's spent more than 25 years in total, according to the parole board.
Young mother killed in at local park was shot in the head: police
The Ohio Supreme Court rejected his appeal in 2019.
'It was just a vicious murder and he deserves to serve a very long time in prison,' then-Summit County prosecutor Sherri Bevan Walsh said at the time. 'He had been harassing her, He had been illegally wiretapping her phone, threatening her and assaulting her. She was terrified of him.'
Doug Prade's next chance at parole comes in 2033, said a corrections department spokesperson.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Parole denied for Doug Prade, former Akron cop serving life sentence for ex-wife's murder
[Watch previous FOX 8 News coverage in the player above.] (WJW) — Doug Prade, a former Akron police captain who shot his ex-wife six times, killing her, while she was 'completely defenseless' inside her vehicle will stay in prison for now. The Ohio Parole Board on Wednesday, June 11, chose to keep Prade in prison while serving his life sentence for the 1997 murder of Dr. Margo Prade. 'This is a case that involved his decision to fire a weapon multiple times into the completely defenseless female victim,' reads the Wednesday ruling. ' … The brutality and callousness of the crime outweighs any positive parole suitability factors in his case. I-Team: Cleveland Heights officials asked FBI, BCI to investigate actions by mayor The parole board also found Doug Prade did not complete any programming to reduce his risk of reoffending. During his trial more than 20 years ago, testimony showed that after their divorce, Doug Prade continued to threaten and harass Margo Prade, a local physician. 'We were very afraid for Margo,' said Donzella Anuszkiewicz, a former federal investigator and friend of the Prade family, who spoke to FOX 8's Dave Nethers last month, before Prade's parole hearing. The murder happened on the eve of Thanksgiving. Margo Prade was shot six times while inside her minivan, which was parked outside her medical practice in Akron. Doug Prade maintained his innocence. In 2013, his conviction was overturned and he was released from prison after the discovery of new evidence of a bite mark on Margo Prade's lab coat. That evidence was later rejected and he wound up back behind bars. Prade was sentenced in 1998 to 20 years to life at Marion Correctional Institution, where he's spent more than 25 years in total, according to the parole board. Young mother killed in at local park was shot in the head: police The Ohio Supreme Court rejected his appeal in 2019. 'It was just a vicious murder and he deserves to serve a very long time in prison,' then-Summit County prosecutor Sherri Bevan Walsh said at the time. 'He had been harassing her, He had been illegally wiretapping her phone, threatening her and assaulting her. She was terrified of him.' Doug Prade's next chance at parole comes in 2033, said a corrections department spokesperson. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Boston Globe
a day ago
- Boston Globe
What makes for a good closing argument? Jurors in the Karen Read retrial are about to find out.
'It's equal parts art and science,' Christopher Dearborn, a professor at Suffolk Law School said. 'It's about persuasion, trying to tell a better story than the other side. And some of those basic principles of persuasion are really fundamentally no different, whether it's a barroom argument, a closing argument, or a toast or speech.' Several attorneys and legal professionals who spoke to the Globe were unanimous: one of the worst things that attorneys can do in their closing arguments is appear underhanded or insincere. Advertisement 'If you do something that loses you credibility, it really can hurt you,' Dearborn said. 'On close cases, on the margins, being the side that the jury trusts or likes the most can make a difference.' Losing credibility can happen easily by failing to mention what Dearborn referred to as 'bad facts' — ignoring evidence or threads that are detrimental to your case. Karen Read defense attorney Alan Jackson. Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff Some of those facts involve Advertisement 'In his opening statement, Hank Brennan never talked about Trooper Proctor,' Dearborn said. 'I think it'll be a mistake if he doesn't own that own that issue in his closing. Because it can look like he's trying to hide something.' Even if the facts of the case are fully and accurately addressed, attorneys still run the risk of appearing to be insincere. 'If you are not a person who raises your voice, then don't do that in the closing,' said Boston-based attorney J.W. Carney, Jr. 'Or if you are a person who's sometimes a little insecure, it's okay, you can show that. The jurors have gotten to know who you are through the trial. You don't want to change that personality.' Good lawyers balance their own personality, whether flashy or more methodological, with a measure of accessibility when speaking to jurors. 'You have to be very mindful of the jury's intelligence and be very careful not to potentially insult them or suggest that they don't have the ability to be, both individually and collectively, discerning," said attorney Brad Bailey. At the end of the day, that means delivering the argument like a regular person, clearly and articulately without being overly wordy or extravagant. Related : 'You should talk like you are at Thanksgiving dinner, talking to your grandmother,' said Jack Lu, a retired Superior Court judge and lecturer at Boston College Law School. 'Zero legalese, zero police language, and zero lawyer language.' Advertisement That's not to say there's no room for emotion, he added. 'If there is not blood on the floor, meaning rhetorically, at the end of the closing argument, you have not used raw emotion,' Lu said. Throughout the trial, attorneys from both teams have been making note of what testimony or threads of evidence resonate with jurors, Bailey said. 'You can bet there's a lot of conversation behind closed doors about what seemed to work,' he said. 'You may see direct eye contact being made with particular jurors that could have reacted to certain things.' Carney, who worked alongside Brennan while representing James 'Whitey' Bulger more than a decade ago, said the lead prosecutor in the Read case would address the jurors directly. 'Some lawyers act as if they're giving a closing argument as an orator in the Roman Coliseum,' Carney said. 'Hank talks to individuals in the jury. What he's doing is speaking to a single juror at a time. And that juror during the deliberations will remember the point that Hank gave.' Special prosecutor Hank Brennan questions an accident reconstruction expert on the witness stand during the Karen Read retrial in Norfolk Superior Court. Greg Derr/Associated Press The defense, meanwhile, will seek to convince the jury that the prosecution did not meet the burden of proof in establishing Read's guilt. 'They not only have to lay out why they believe that the crimes have not been proven and why they think the jury ought to have multiple reasonable doubts, but they also anticipate upfront and try to rebut in advance what they believe the prosecution is going to say [in the rebuttal],' he said. Carney pointed to one recent case — Advertisement 'When it was done, I spoke to my two partners and said, 'Here is the website on which you can watch [Reddington's] closing argument, it's brilliant,'' he said. Dearborn said the closing arguments from Read's first trial 'were a little too long, a little bit too scattershot.' But there were a few— particularly from the defense — that he said probably resonated with the jury. 'Those are the things that sometimes jurors talk about because there's only so much attention span out there,' he said. 'So if you're not aware of that when you're talking to a jury, you can lose the jury.' Camilo Fonseca can be reached at
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
Grosse Pointe teen to be sentenced for killing friend in 105 mph crash
A Grosse Pointe teenager with a history of excessive speeding is scheduled to be sentenced Friday, June 13 for killing his friend in a 105 mph vehicle crash that took the life of a stellar swimmer and college freshman, whose untimely and tragic death in 2023 continues to haunt and torment his family. Flynn MacKrell, 18, a Grosse Pointe freshman at the University of Dayton, was home for Thanksgiving break when a friend took him on a deadly joy ride down a residential street in Grosse Pointe Farms, hitting 105 mph in a BMW before losing control, hitting a pole and then a tree. MacKrell, who was a passenger, was pronounced dead at the scene. The driver, Kiernan Tague, who was 16 at the time, managed to walk out of the vehicle after the crash, but was taken to a local hospital with multiple injuries. The BMW had split in half. According to police reports, cellphone exchanges and Life360 app records obtained by the Free Press, in the weeks and months before the Nov. 17, 2023, fatal crash, Tague hit speeds of 127 mph, 143 mph, 102 mph, 150 mph and 155 mph — all on separate days — and also engaged in drag racing. After the fatal crash, Tague initially was charged with second-degree murder, but accepted a deal with the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office that ended with him pleading guilty last year to the lesser charge of vehicular manslaughter — a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Tague, though, has an adult designation, which means the judge has the option of sentencing him as an adult or a juvenile. The judge also could fashion a blended juvenile sentence, with the option of giving him an adult sentence if Tague is not rehabilitated over time. More: 'Slow the f--- down': Grosse Pointe mom's texts to son may come back to haunt her More: Grosse Pointe family: Judge tried to go easy on driver who killed our son The victim's family, meanwhile, wants nothing short of a maximum prison sentence. "If he gets to walk, that solidifies him as a criminal," the victim's mother, Anne Vanker, said on the eve of sentencing. "Time and time again in his life, he has not been held accountable — and now my son is dead .... no one should sit where I have sat for 18 months." Perhaps most frustrating for the victim's family is that the driver's mom knew for months that her son was driving at excessive speeds, and texted him to slow down. But she never revoked his driving privileges when he was speeding around metro Detroit in an Audi sports coupe. "Slow the f--- down!" the mother once texted her son, according to records obtained by the Free Press. "I have screen shots of you … doing 123 mph … It scares me to my bone." The victim's family also pushed for criminal charges to be filed against the driver's mother, though Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy declined their request, concluding the driver was the only one responsible for the tragedy that night, and that his mom did all she could to control her son. 'Parenting is hard in the best of circumstances," Worthy said in a statement after announcing her decision not to charge the mother. "Most parents do everything they can to mentor their children and steer them in the right direction. The juvenile respondent's mother was no different. She took consistent, active steps to try to make sure that he stayed on the right path." The driver's mom, Elizabeth Puleo-Tague, has denied numerous requests for comment. As for the driver, his attorney, Gabi Silver, said life will never be the same again for the now 18-year-old high school senior, and that the teen is "very remorseful" for causing the death of a childhood friend who grew up down the street from him. "He is so sorry and sad about what happened," Silver previously said to the Free Press. "That kid was his best friend … he spent most of his time over there. I don't think that he's ever going to be able to put this behind him." But living with guilt is not enough for the victim's family. They want Tague behind bars. "He needs to be in prison," Vanker has said. "He killed our son. Therapy is not enough. . … Now, sentence him appropriately, that's all I want." She stressed: "No one should ever, ever have to lose a child like this … I still can't believe my son — my big calm son — is gone." Tague's sentencing is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. at the Wayne County Criminal Justice Center in Detroit. Contact Tresa Baldas: tbaldas@ This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Grosse Pointe teen to be sentenced for killing friend in 105 mph crash
