“I leave fire and death in my path,” said the letter later read in court.
Malone was at Pickaway Correctional Institution where all three of the state’s inmate suspected COVID-19 deaths have been reported.
Charles Viney Jr., a 66-year-old Springfield native, died Saturday. The death of James Woodward, 70, an inmate serving a term from Butler County, was announced along with Malone’s death on Wednesday by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine.
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But Dayton police in 1987 said Malone intended to shoot the city’s reputed largest crack dealer, not Harold T. Norton, who was 21.
Norton was hit with a shotgun blast to the chest outside a residence on Earlham Drive the afternoon of March 16, 1987. He died shortly afterward at Good Samaritan Hospital.
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Police said Malone’s intended target was Gregory James Lathan, also known as Greg Perry, who was convicted of drug trafficking the following year and sentenced to 15 years in prison, according to a report in the Dayton Daily News.
Malone was convicted in early July 1987 and a couple weeks later amid a courtroom outburst he was sentenced, according to a Dayton Daily News report.
“You took a bribe to find me guilty,” he told Montgomery County Common Pleas Court Judge John Meagher and threw his handcuffed arms in the air and attempted to leave the courtroom.
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