COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) – A man who disappeared from a northern Ohio prison camp in 1959 while serving time for manslaughter and was found this year in Florida won’t face new escape-related charges in his home state, a prosecutor said.
Erie County Prosecutor Kevin Baxter said he decided not to pursue any escape charges for Frank Freshwaters after considering his existing sentence, potential legal limitations and what little evidence might exist to build a case against him in the decades-old escape. All that’s left is really old records, Baxter said.
The 79-year-old widower from Akron could face up to 20 years on his original charge, and that allows for “sufficient penalty” if the parole board and prisons department see fit to make Freshwaters serve that time, the prosecutor said.
“He’s serving his sentence, and I just think it might be a duplication of resources” to prosecute him again, Baxter said.
Freshwaters was imprisoned in 1959 after hitting a man with a vehicle and violating probation. He wasn’t charged when he disappeared from a Sandusky prison camp or years later when he was found in 1975 in St. Albans, West Virginia, Baxter said.