BY JANICE MORSE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
HAMILTON - Linda Parks thought her son, Kevin W. Walls, was close to freedom after he'd served almost three years in prison for robbery.
She has regularly visited him at Dayton Correctional Institution, where he is serving a three- to 15-year sentence. "We were trying to bring him home on shock parole," Miss Parks said Friday.
But a new computer matched her son's fingerprints to a print that was lifted from a Hamilton murder scene 13 years ago, and he became Ohio's first homicide suspect indicted as a result of the statewide fingerprint-comparison computer.
"I've been racking my brain to try to think of what he would have been doing then, where he was," said Miss Parks in an interview before her son's arraignment Friday on aggravated murder and aggravated burglary charges. "There's no way he did this. This child would never lay a hand on a female, much less an elderly one."
Authorities allege Mr. Walls broke into the Maple Avenue home of 83-year-old Ann Zwiefelhoefer in March 1985, stabbed her nine times and left her to bleed to death on her living room floor.
Butler County Common Pleas Judge Matthew J. Crehan entered not-guilty pleas Friday on Mr. Walls' behalf.
If convicted, Mr. Walls would not face execution because he was only 15 at the time of Mrs. Zwiefelhoefer's death, said Dan Eichel, Butler County first assistant prosecutor.
The judge set another hearing for Tuesday to appoint a lawyer for Mr. Walls, who stood alone in court Friday.
Miss Parks says she's eager to uncover evidence that might show her son was somewhere else at the time of Mrs. Zwiefelhoefer's death. According to a death certificate, Mrs. Zwiefelhoefer died March 7, 1985, at an unknown time. A niece found her body a day later.
Authorities manually scoured more than 2,000 fingerprints, trying to find a match with one lifted from a cash jar at Mrs. Zwiefelhoefer's home before hitting a match with Mr. Walls' prints last month.
A state crime lab technician had input the unidentified print into a computer, whose database contains prints of 1.2 million Ohio crime suspects, including Mr. Walls'. The statewide network just became available in September.
"They'd better have more than just a fingerprint," Miss Parks said, adding that it's possible her son might have had contact with Mrs. Zwiefelhoefer through a "rent-a-kid" program that paired youths with elderly clients who needed odd jobs done.
Hamilton Police Chief Neil Ferdelman, who couldn't be reached Friday, has previously declined to comment on whether authorities had any evidence other than the fingerprint match.
Mr. Walls' mother says she's convinced her son is innocent. "He was the best son a mother could ask for until 1994. He got running with the wrong crowd and got on crack," she said. "But when that happened, he admitted what he had done."
Mr. Walls pleaded guilty in late 1994 to a reduced charge of robbery, court records show. That charge stemmed from an incident at the Village Inn in the 400 block of North Second Street, where police said Mr. Walls fired a gun while he and an accomplice robbed the bartender of $397.
"He stands up for what he does wrong - and he admits it," Miss Parks said. "But he'll never admit to this (Mrs. Zwiefelhoefer's slaying), because he didn't do it. I believe him with everything I have in me."
