Eight times Posteal Laskey Jr. — known 35 years ago as the Cincinnati Strangler — has requested his freedom.

        Eight times the Ohio Adult Parole Authority has said no.

        Now the man police believe was a serial killer who raped and strangled older women has his best chance to see the outside of a state penitentiary.

        Mr. Laskey, who turns 65 in June, was convicted of one murder, but thought to have been responsible for six more in a 1966 killing spree that petrified Cincinnatians.

        As he faces the Ohio parole board next week, his release rests on two questions:

        • Is he still a threat to public safety?

        • Is 35 years behind bars punishment enough?

        His age and failing health may lead the parole board to conclude he is no longer a threat.

        The tougher question for the parole board, people who remember that terrible year and local law enforcement officials, is whether Mr. Laskey has paid his debt, especially when he was originally sentenced to die in Ohio's electric chair.

Frightening year

               The killings began in December of 1965. Women ranging in age from 51 to 81 were raped and strangled, some steps from their homes. In one year, there would be six stranglings.

        Hardware stores couldn't keep dead-bolt locks in stock. Gun sales spiked each time a new body was found. Cincinnati was so shaken that in the fall of 1966, Halloween trick-or-treating was moved to the daytime.

        At least five of the women were sexually assaulted and all had either been strangled with a rope or a piece of clothing. Coming a year after the Boston Strangler cases, the series of killings here were attributed to an at-large Cincinnati Strangler.

        The murder that sent Mr. Laskey to prison happened in August of that year.

        Shortly before 2:30 a.m. Aug. 14, Barbara Rose Bowman was found lying in the rain-drenched intersection of Grand Avenue and Ring Place in East Price Hill. The 31-year-old secretary had been stabbed repeatedly in the neck. Her right foot was nearly severed at the ankle and she'd been choked with a piece of rope.

        She was found next to a disabled Yellow Checker Cab. Witnesses told police the cab driver had gone to get help but never returned.

        Mr. Laskey was arrested in December and identified in a line-up as the cab driver who picked up Ms. Bowman. He also fit a description of the Cincinnati Strangler and drove a car similar to one seen prior to at least two of the killings.

        According to court testimony, Mr. Laskey was a one-time cab driver who had stolen the cab so he could pick up fares to supplement his income. He picked up Ms. Bowman at a Corryville tavern and while driving to her apartment attacked her in the cab. She jumped out and ran, but Mr. Laskey, police said, hit her with the cab, breaking her ankle, and then stabbed her with a knife.

        Mr. Laskey said he was at a Madisonville bar the night Ms. Bowman was killed and had gone home to bed. After deliberating for two days, the jury convicted him of murder. He was sentenced to die in the Ohio electric chair.

        He was never officially charged with the six other killings. However, police said even though the cases were technically never solved they believe they had caught the Cincinnati Strangler.

        “The killings stopped when (Laskey) went to prison,” says Frank Sefton, who works for Cincinnati's Office of Municipal Investigations.

        Back in 1966, he was the first uniformed officer on the scene at Grand Avenue and Ring Place, where Ms. Bowman's body was found.

        Mr. Sefton thinks 35 years is not punishment enough for Posteal Laskey Jr. “These are the type of guys you can't let back on the street.”

Measured justice

               If not for a suspension of the Ohio death penalty, Mr. Laskey would have been executed by now.

        In 1972, the state of Ohio banned the death penalty. Mr. Laskey's sentence was commuted to life with the possibility of parole. Once an inmate's death sentence has been commuted, it cannot be reinstated.

        By the time Ohio reinstated the death penalty in 1981, Mr. Laskey's first request for parole had already been denied.

        Parole is granted or denied on a variety of factors.

        Board members consider the severity of the crime, and to what lengths the person went to commit the crime. They gauge an inmate's progress inside prison, whether he has participated in rehabilitative programs, caused trouble, or furthered his education. The board also reviews correspondence from the inmate's supporters and detractors.

        Each inmate presents a plan for parole, including where he'll live and work. Age and health matter, too.

        Ultimately, the parole board has to decide whether the inmate is still a threat to public safety. And it's this overarching question that provides Mr. Laskey with his best chance of release in more than 20 years of appearances before the board.

        “Statistics prove that as offenders age their risk of re-offending decreases,” says Margarette Ghee, chair of the state parole board.

        Among Ohio inmates older than 60, the recidivism rate is 8.2 percent, compared with 32.5 percent of younger inmates, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections.

        Mr. Laskey's age and failing health fit the profile. He is now in Orient Correctional, a minimum security facility, and has a good prison record. In a 1997 parole request, he said he'd live with his brother in Indianapolis.

        Prison officials wouldn't reveal details of Mr. Laskey's health.

        Ms. Ghee refused to speculate on the outcome of Mr. Laskey's upcoming hearing, but said, “Eventually, he is going to get out of prison. One day he will be released, if he doesn't die first.”

Punishment enough?

               Mr. Laskey's record and ill health may make him less a threat to society in the eyes of the parole board. But the question remains as to whether he has paid his debt after 35 years in prison.

        Punishment is a subjective term, says Frank Cullen, a professor with the University of Cincinnati's Department of Criminal Justice. “The hard thing with someone who has committed murder is that there is always a chance that they might murder again. There are never any guarantees.”

        Still, rehabilitation is one of the goals of the corrections system, says Alphonse Gerhardstein, a civil rights attorney who is president and founder of the Cincinnati-based Prison Reform Advocacy Center.

        “There has to be an end to punishment,” Mr. Gerhardstein says. “What is the benefit of keeping someone who has probably gone through program after program ... and is now a sickly old man? I'm not trying to deflect from the seriousness of the crime, but what benefit is there in that?”

        In 1982, with Mr. Laskey up for parole a second time, Barbara Bowman's 80-year-old mother, Edith, said he should never be released.

        “Barbara was all we had,” she said at the time. Her husband, John, died in 1971. “He never recovered from Barbara's murder.”

        Greg Hollandsworth of Price Hill was 10 at the time of Ms. Bowman's murder. He lived near the scene of the crime and even helped investigators search for evidence on Grand Avenue. He found one of her earrings.

        Thirty-six years later, he believes Mr. Laskey should stay behind bars. “I think he murdered more women and they just got him on the one.”

        When the strangler terrified many women in Cincinnati, former Mayor Bobbie Sterne worried about her two teen-age daughters. She'd stand outside and watch as they walked to friends' houses down the block.

        “I don't know that you rehabilitate serial killers,” she says. “I'd be a little apprehensive about him being out.”

        Hamilton County Prosecutor Mike Allen thinks a life sentence should mean life.

        He has sent the parole board a letter urging them not to release Mr. Laskey. He is asking Hamilton County residents to send similar letters and e-mails to his office, which he will forward to the parole board, in the hopes of keeping Mr. Laskey behind bars. (E-mail can be sent from the prosecutor's Web site, www.hcpros.org/parole.)

        About 13 when the strangler terrorized Cincinnati, Mr. Allen says he remembers his grandmother (“no shrinking violet”) having multiple locks on her front door. “It took her half an hour to get her door open.”

        When a convicted killer is sentenced to death, he adds, and that sentence is commuted to life, “they have not finished their time until they have died in prison. Period.”

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