More than 50 years after Cincinnati police officer David Cole was shot and killed in the line of duty, his widow is again asking the public to help keep his killer in prison. Cheryl Cole-Candelaresi spoke at a press conference on Thursday, November 5, ahead of a January appearance by Roland Reaves before the Ohio Parole Board, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. WXIX-TV in Cincinnati also reported she is asking residents to send letters to the board ahead of the hearing.
Cole-Candelaresi was 23 when her husband was killed. "We have spent a lifetime trying to keep him in jail," she told reporters at the November 5 press conference, in remarks reported by the Cincinnati Enquirer. "And he needs to stay there." Reaves, now 75, has had numerous earlier parole bids denied since his 1974 aggravated murder conviction, the Enquirer reported.
Cole, a 24-year-old patrolman, was killed early on July 17, 1974, in Walnut Hills. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, citing a 1976 Ohio Supreme Court opinion, Reaves and another man, Ricardo Woods, had planned to rob the manager of a United Dairy Farmers store on Florence Avenue. Cole responded after a concerned citizen spotted someone on the store’s roof, and an exchange of gunfire followed in which Cole was shot multiple times. He later died at a hospital.
Both men were arrested within days and convicted at trial about three months later, the Enquirer reported. They were initially sentenced to death, but those sentences were reduced to life in prison after Ohio’s death penalty law was deemed unconstitutional. Cincinnati police union president Ken Kober said, in remarks reported by the Cincinnati Enquirer, that because Ohio law did not include a life-without-parole sentence at the time of Reaves’ conviction, Reaves has repeatedly been able to petition for early release. Woods was paroled in 1994, the Enquirer reported.
The Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office has long opposed parole for Reaves. In a statement on its website, the office said it "strongly opposes any type of parole or release of Roland Reaves for the rest of his natural life," arguing a jury recommended a death sentence and that Reaves should at minimum serve his full life sentence.
Hamilton County Prosecutor Connie Pillich is urging the public to submit letters online to the parole board opposing Reaves’ release, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. "He’s a cop killer. I believe he’ll do it again," Pillich said, in remarks reported by the Enquirer. Kober, also quoted by the Enquirer, said officers hear a message when a person convicted of killing an officer is released.
Reaves has been an inmate of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction since January 1975 and is currently housed at the Pickaway Correctional Institution in Orient, Ohio, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. What happens next is the January parole board proceeding. Letters can be submitted through the prosecutor’s office website and the Cincinnati police union’s website, the Enquirer reported.