In an emotionally charged hearing Monday, survivors of the former Vandalia woman asked the Ohio Parole Board to recommend that Gov. Bob Taft deny clemency to Brewer, who is scheduled to be executed April 29. But members of Brewers family told the board that despite the 1985 homicide, Brewer, formerly of Washington Township and Franklin, should be allowed to live out his life in prison without possibility of parole.
Brewer, on death row at the Mansfield Correctional Institution, was not present for the hearing. Board President Gary Croft said the board will make its recommendation to Taft next Monday.Unless Taft commutes his death sentence, Brewer is to be executed by lethal injection for the March 21, 1985, murder of Sherry Byrne in Beavercreek.
Brewer, who turns 44 a week before his execution date, was a fraternity brother of Joe Byrne, and the men and their wives socialized occasionally after college. According to trial testimony, Brewer lured Mrs. Byrne, a 21-year-old graduate of Vandalia Butler High School, to a Sharonville motel on the pretense that she would meet Brewer and his wife there to buy stereo speakers.
Brewer came to the motel without his wife, and authorities believe he raped Mrs. Byrne, then forced her into the trunk of his car and drove her through six counties during a seven-hour period. Mrs. Byrne wrote Help me please in lipstick on a piece of paper and shoved it outside the trunk, where it was seen by other motorists as Brewer drove through Beavercreek. Several motorists called police with Brewers license plate number. But help didn't come in time, and Brewer stabbed and choked her to death on a secluded lane off of Factory Road.
The next day, Brewer put her body in a self-storage locker in Franklin. During the five days between Mrs. Byrnes disappearance and Brewers confession to police, Brewer visited Joe Byrne and offered to help him circulate fliers to help find his missing bride of seven months.
Brewer has maintained that he and Sherry Byrne had consensual sex, and he killed her because she threatened to tell her husband and his wife about it. But authorities believe she was raped because her autopsy found pelvic injuries consistent with rape and because she had phoned her husband and told him she planned to meet the Brewers at the motel.
"I truly think he killed her because she had the audacity to turn him down," said Joe Byrne, who now lives in New Jersey. One of Brewers attorneys, Assistant Ohio Public Defender Joseph Wilhelm, described Brewer as an all-American boy before the crime a football star and devoted son who managed a rent-to-own store. He said Brewer is repentant and remorseful.
Beverly Brewer of Middletown, Brewers cousin, said she visited him on Death Row in Mansfield on Friday and found the same kind and caring person she knew when they were growing up.
"If ever there was a case for clemency, I think this is it," she said before the hearing. "This is not somebody who lived a life of crime. This is somebody who has something to offer."
But Sherry Byrnes mother, Myrtle Kaylor of Centerville, said Brewers crime was too heinous for him to warrant clemency. "My daughters pet name was Angel, and I'm sure thats what she is today," Kaylor told the parole board. "(Lethal injection) is much more humane than what he did to her. I wished he would be here so I could look in his eyes, and he could see a broken-hearted mother."
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