ST. CLAIRSVILLE — The Belmont County Prosecutor’s Office issued its official argument last week imploring the Ohio Parole Board to deny three-time murder convict Eugene Blake his freedom, and a final decision on the parole hearing is now forthcoming.

Blake appeared before the Ohio Parole Board on Thursday after serving just 12 years of a sentence handed down in 2010 of 20 years to life in prison for the 1982 aggravated murder of Mark Withers in Bridgeport. Late last month, Belmont County Prosecutor Kevin Flanagan vowed to provide the state parole board with a strong argument against granting parole to Blake, who Flanagan described both last month and in the opening of his letter to the parole board as “the epitome of evil.”

“Granting him parole would be a reckless act of monstrous proportions,” Flanagan said in his letter dated Tuesday, May 31, two days prior to the parole hearing. “It would be an act that endangers anyone that has the misfortune of making his acquaintance.”

According to JoEllen Smith, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections, the parole board has not yet rendered its decision on the parole hearing.

“The hearing was held last Thursday, June 2,” Smith said. “However, quality assurance process has not been completed on this case, so a final determination is not available at this time.”

Last month, Smith explained that under Ohio sentencing law, Blake would be eligible for parole after serving 70% of his minimum sentence because at the time of sentencing in Belmont County in 2010, the entry did not state “20 full years to life.” Seventy percent of a 20-year sentence would be 14 years behind bars. However, Blake’s 202 days of earned credit toward his first hearing day, plus 391 days of jail time credit earned put him in front of the parole board this month, with a possible release date in August, according to the ODRC.

Family members of Withers and the Belmont County Prosecutor’s Office had questioned the state’s announcement that Blake would be eligible for his first parole hearing this year instead of in 2030. Blake is 77 now and would be 85 years old in 2030.

“Predicting the road that lies ahead for Eugene Blake, if released, is easy,” Flanagan said in his argument to the parole board. “One only needs to look at the path that he has traveled to get to this point. It is a path strewn with bodies by a cold, calculating and premeditated murderer.”

The prosecutor outlined Blake’s known history in which he was convicted of three separate murders.

“His conduct of ending innocent lives began in 1967 in Wayne County, W.Va., when he purposefully forced Donna Jean Ball’s vehicle off of the roadway and then stabbed her in an unprovoked attack,” Flanagan wrote.

Although Blake was captured, convicted and sentenced to “life without mercy” in the Ball case, his sentence was later commuted to “life with mercy,” which made him eligible for parole. He did, in fact, receive parole three years later … and would soon kill again.

“Instead of cherishing the most precious gift and miracle that a person could receive — that being freedom — Mr. Blake proved, when he received parole for his murder conviction, that he was incapable and undeserving of such a gift,” the prosecutor argued. “His subsequent actions would prove deadly and prove that he has no ability to control his conduct.”

In March of 1982, Blake approached Mark Withers and a 17-year-old female companion who were sitting in a parked car in Gould Park in Bridgeport. Blake shot Withers in the head, killing the 21-year-old Lansing native.

“His only purpose for this heinous act was so that he could rape the remaining female, which he did,” Flanagan stated.

Because Blake had no association with Withers or the victim he sexually assaulted — nor did he have any ties to the area, he was never considered a suspect or even known to local law enforcement agencies at that time, the prosecutor explained.

The Winters murder case went cold for decades, leaving the family of Withers as well as the rape victim to wait in anguish for a lead to break in the case, while assuming the perpetrator was still lurking somewhere in the community, the prosecutor indicated. It turned out that Blake would kill again just two years after Withers was murdered, and it would take a total of 26 years before he would be pegged as a suspect in the Withers cold case.

“In October of 1984, Blake raped and murdered 13-year-old Maryann Hope Helbright of Wheeling. After taking her to Wheeling Island, Blake reportedly shot the child in the head, then transported her body and dumped it in a rural area outside of Morgantown.

Witnesses in Wheeling saw Blake with the young girl that night, and he was arrested and eventually convicted of Helmbright’s murder in Ohio County. He was serving a sentence of 15-years to life in West Virginia in that case when modern DNA technology provided a hit on Blake in 2008 for the Withers case. He reportedly had been approaching eligibility for parole in West Virginia in 2011.

Instead, he was charged in connection with the Belmont County cold case, eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced — with local authorities and family members of the victims believing that he would never again see the light of day outside of an Ohio prison.

Blake is currently incarcerated at the Chillicothe Correctional Institution.

Flanagan argued to the Ohio Parole Board that Blake’s pattern of behavior “will not change with his release.

“To this honorable board, how many murders are enough?” Flanagan asked. “If he is granted his freedom, this spree will not end. He is callous, calculating and unrepentant. His history proves that. Having this knowledge, I — with the utmost respect — urge this board to find Mr. Blake unsuitable to ever be considered a free man again.”