Sunday, February 27, 2000
Cop killer wants freedom
Parents of slain offcier wage war on parole effort
BY SHEILA McLAUGHLIN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
In a split-second, with a loud, fiery blast, the lives of Tony McIntosh and rookie police Officer Jeff Phegley collided.
Officer Phegley, 22 years old and six months into a new career, tragically entered local law enforcement history — the first police officer killed on duty in Warren County in five decades.
Mr. McIntosh, petty criminal, small-town badboy, gained a notorious brand — cop killer.
Thirteen years after the rural traffic stop that ended in a lethal spray from a sawed-off shotgun, the Ohio Parole Board prepares, for the first time, to consider Mr. McIntosh's release on March 7. To Barb and Joe Phegley, of White Oak, it's another twist in a painful connection to Mr. McIntosh that began the day their son died.
“You find no comfort zone,” Mrs. Phegley said as she prepared for a trip to Columbus to meet with a parole board member last week.
To Mr. McIntosh, the alcohol-hazed, knee-jerk squeeze of a trigger that ended Officer Phegley's life was an unforgiveable action that gave him a stigma he can't shake.
“I try not to dwell on it so much every day,” Mr. McIntosh told The Enquirer Tuesday in the North Central Correctional Institution in Marion. “But it's there and it will always be there.”
Fatal patrol
Officer Phegley wasn't supposed to be working at 2:10 p.m. on Jan. 21, 1987.
But he offered to fill in for then-Chief Dick Kilburn, who needed to attend a meeting in Columbus.
The arrangement allowed the freshman patrolman to make a morning hospital visit to his 89-year-old grandmother on the way to the station. Officer Phegley was the youngest grandchild, and his grandmother doted on him.
Around noon, Officer Phegley checked in at work. He hopped in his cruiser, stopped at a local store, grabbed a Mountain Dew and went whistling out the door, ready for patrol.
Two hours later, he spotted a speeder on Morrow-Rossburg Road.
He was about to meet Mr. McIntosh.
Eight or nine beers into the day and with a sawed-off shotgun he said he bought to “show off” under the front seat of his car, Mr. McIntosh pulled over when he saw the flashing lights of the Morrow cruiser.
He didn't want to go to jail.
Officer Phegley clicked on the tape recorder in his breast pocket. He walked toward the car and ordered Mr. McIntosh out.
A scuffle erupted when Mr. McIntosh refused Officer Phegley's six orders to place his hands on the car. Mr. McIntosh said he shoved Officer Phegley to the ground after the officer pushed him in the back.
From there, what happened is unclear.
In a trial that spared Mr. McIntosh, then age 20, from the death penalty, prosecutors said Officer Phegley's tape — spliced back together after being severed by the shotgun blast — showed that Mr. McIntosh fired first.
The blast of pellets, 158 of them, struck Officer Phegley. Two pierced his heart.
Officer Phegley fired off four rounds from his service revolver before he collapsed alongside his cruiser.
“It was clearly a brutal crime with a vicious weapon,” said Warren County Prosecutor Tim Oliver, who tried the case with an assistant.
However, Mr. McIntosh maintains to this day that he ran for his car, and peeled out under gunfire. He said he shot blindly from the driver's window in Officer Phegley's direction after being shot in the shoulder blades.
“I'd never been shot before. I knew it hurt. I reacted,” Mr. McIntosh recollected last week. “I didn't know if I did hit him. It doesn't make it right.”
After hiding the gun in a creekbed, Mr. McIntosh was captured by police as a friend drove him to the Ohio State Highway Patrol Post in Lebanon to turn himself in.
At least one juror had doubts about the prosecutor's case.
Eleven others were prepared to convict Mr. McIntosh of aggravated murder, a charge that could have put him on Death Row.
Rather than cause a mistrial, jurors compromised and convicted Mr. McIntosh on a murder charge. The sentence: 15 years to life.
“The officer's mistake in using deadly force, and McIntosh's mistake in being a punk, led to circumstances that got out of both of their control,” said John D. Smith, a Springboro lawyer who represented Mr. McIntosh in the 1987 trial.
“Somebody died, and somebody went to prison. The result was disaster.”
Keep him in "forever'
The Phegleys have been preparing for March 7 for three months, after they learned about the parole hearing from a victim's advocate.
The couple, nearing their 40th wedding anniversary in June, say they are exhausted, emotionally spent. They say they are fighting to make sure their son's death was worth something.
“We should not have to suffer living a life every day knowing that the system that Jeff died to protect frees the man that killed him, didn't care enough to keep him in prison,” Mr. Phegley said of their efforts to keep Mr. McIntosh in prison “forever.”
They have recruited friends, relatives, neighbors, the Fraternal Order of Police and local and national survivor's groups to help them make their case before the parole board.
As a result, more than 1,600 letters objecting to Mr. McIntosh's release have flooded the parole board. Three people have written in support of Mr. McIntosh, corrections officials said.
Last Tuesday, the Phegleys, a family friend, Mr. Oliver, Morrow Officer Keith Kilburn, former chief Kilburn, and the first paramedics to arrive on the scene traveled to Columbus to tell a parole board to keep Mr. McIntosh in prison.
“It's real simple. If you kill a police officer, you should not be released, ever,” Mr. Oliver said.
Armed with a scrapbook, Mr. Phegley spoke of his son's love for volunteerism, his desire to be a police officer and his aspiration to be in politics.
A week before the trip, Mrs. Phegley carefully sorted through family pictures, selecting photographs that showed what she and her husband, and their oldest son, Kevin, lost in 1987:
Officer Phegley's first baby picture; early years in school; a ski outing with friends in Colorado a month before his death; a childhood fishing trip with his father and grandfather; attending the 1985 Inaugural Ball with his parents and grandparents — a reward for working on the the Reagan-Bush Inaugural Committee.
For the final photograph, Mrs. Phegley chose one of her son's grave in Belleville, Ill.
“I'm going to end it with this one,” she said. “All we have left now is the tombstone.”
"A tragedy on both sides'
Almost 125 miles away, two weeks before he is to meet with the parole board, Mr. McIntosh goes about his job as a clerk in a program that prepares inmates for release.
His upcoming meeting with the parole board is never far from his thoughts.
Mr. McIntosh will have the opportunity to plead his case before a hearing officer and a single member of the board, who will consider the crime that put him there, his criminal background, discipline and accomplishments in prison — and the Phegleys' feelings.
The panel can decide to release him or extend his sentence for up to 10 more years before a second review.
“I want them to understand my side of this. I understand there was a tragedy involved. My perspective is it was a tragedy on both sides. I was young and immature when everything happened,” Mr. McIntosh said, seated at a square formica table in the prison's visitation room.
“People change. People do change, and I've done that over the years since I've been in prison.”
But, he fears no one will look past the fact that he killed a police officer.
“I guess all I've ever wanted was some understanding. For someone to say "Hey, look. You're convicted of this. You're gonna do this time. But we understand.' Not just quote, unquote, "He's a police officer. We automatically don't believe you,'” Mr. McIntosh said.
He said he's come a long way from the wayward, long-haired tough guy who grew up in Morrow and South Lebanon, dropped out of Little Miami High School as a sophomore, had little family direction, and took up drinking, drugs and petty crime.
He has worked his way to a better place at North Central, a medium-minimum security prison, a far cry from the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, where some of the state's toughest criminals are sent. Mr. McIntosh was one of them until 1994.
He said he hasn't been in trouble in prison for six years, a contrast to life at Lucasville, where he was involved in several fights. Mr. McIntosh said they were necessary for survival there.
He also was at the prison for Ohio's bloodiest and longest prison uprising, when 446 inmates seized a cell block in April 1993.
He lost a television and radio — gifts from his father — during the siege. The state paid Mr. McIntosh a $600 settlement as a result. Warren County is now suing to take the money to apply to Mr. McIntosh's court costs.
While in prison, Mr. McIntosh has obtained his General Equivalency Diploma and taken correspondence courses on heating and air conditioning.
He even got married. In a ceremony in the visitation room on Jan. 26, he wed a Marion girl, the friend of another inmate.
If released, Mr. McIntosh said he may return to Warren County, where he could work for an uncle building pole barns. But he said he doesn't think he can stay, because of what he did 13 years ago.
“Eventually, I'd like to move out of the state, start over, start fresh,” he said.
Realistically, he thinks he will spend at least another five years in prison.
“That's okay with me, because I understand there are things that people expect and they want and they are vindictive. That's not going to bring Jeff back. It's just destroying another life,” Mr. McIntosh said.
An apology
This fall, Mr. McIntosh asked for permission to write a letter of apology to Officer Phegley's parents. The Phegleys wanted no part of it.
If he had the chance, Mr. McIntosh said, he would tell them “just how very sorry I am for everything.
“It's not enough. It's never going to be enough. What I say or do will never be enough. I'd just like them to try to have some kind of forgiveness so they can heal, go on, be happy as best they can. I'm trying to do it and it tears me up every day.
“I don't blame them. I don't blame them at all,” added Mr. McIntosh, his eyes beginning to tear.
Mr. Phegley questioned the timing of an apology letter.
He also did not want to hear what Mr. McIntosh told The Enquirer during the hourlong interview.
“It would be an absolute mistake for me to have any contact, direct or indirect with him,” Mr. Phegley said. “I feel strongly if that were to happen, he could be clever enough to turn that around and say we were forgiving.
“We're not. And we never will be.”
HAVE YOUR SAY
To write to parole board members regarding Officer Jeff Phegley or inmate Tony McIntosh, send letters to:
Ohio Parole Board,
1050 Freeway Drive North,
Columbus, OH 43229.
Include Mr. McIntosh's name and his inmate number, 198370, on correspondence.
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