“Offender McGuire has served over 27 years on a life sentence. The offender’s case is aggravated by the case-specific factors of extreme violence, where the female victim was stabbed multiple times resulting in her death,” the report said.
Store clerk Ellen New was stabbed more than 60 times.
The report cited McGuire’s “extensive criminal history.”
“The offender has completed relevant programming but had some difficulty discussing ways he could abate his risk in the community. There is strong opposition to consider,” the report says. “The aggravating factors in this case lead the Board to conclude that release would demean the seriousness of the offense and not further the interest of justice.”
The parole board also noted “There is substantial reason to believe that the inmate will engage in further criminal conduct, or that the inmate will not conform to such conditions of release as may be established” under Administrative Rules.
McGuire’s next parole board hearing will be on June 1, 2025, according to the document.
Warren County Prosecutor David Fornshell said, “Our office doesn’t believe Mr. McGuire should ever get out of prison, so we would like to have seen a longer period of time before he again would be considered for parole. But we are grateful to the parole board for this decision.”
Complicity to aggravated murder
McGuire and his co-defendant, Willie Ledford, stopped at the Dairy Mart store on East Second Street in Franklin sometime after midnight Jan. 6, 1995, according to a summary from the Warren County Prosecutor’s Office.
According to the summary, Ledford went in while McGuire waited in the car.Ledford attempted to take money out of the cash register and then grabbed the clerk on duty, Ellen New, by the hair and dragged her out of the Dairy Mart into the waiting vehicle.
Ledford beat and stabbed New, then he and McGuire dumped her body on a country road and set the car on fire in an attempt to conceal evidence, according the prosecutor’s summary.
McGuire testified against Ledford, implicating Ledford as the principal offender.
After McGuire entered his guilty plea to a reduced charge of complicity to aggravated murder, the court dismissed two counts of aggravated murder with four specifications; four counts of kidnapping, two counts of aggravated robbery; and a single-count of tampering with evidence.
Interestingly, the three-judge panel who heard the Ledford case found that Ledford was not a “principal offender.” This is consistent with the opinions of law enforcement who believed at the time, and still believe, that McGuire was much more involved than he admitted, according to the Warren County Prosecutor’s Office.
Ledford died in prison in 2014.
McGuire’s brother was executed
McGuire’s brother, Dennis, was executed by lethal injection on Jan. 16, 2014 for the 1989 rape and murder of Joy Stewart, 22, of Preble County who was newly married and 30 weeks pregnant at the time of her death.
Dennis McGuire’s execution used a new two-drug combination of midazolam, a sedative, and hydromorphone, a morphine derivative. The two drugs had never been used before in an execution in the U.S. The state switched to the new drugs because pentobarbital, the single drug used before, is no longer available as manufacturers will not sell it for use in executions.
Dennis McGuire’s execution brought international attention and legal challenges after he gasped for breath and took longer than usual to die.
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