The man convicted in the brutal 1992 killing of a Groveland teenager has canceled his scheduled parole hearing.
Richard Baldwin was sentenced to life no-parole in 1994 for killing his 15-year-old ex-girlfriend Beth Brodie with a baseball bat.
Recently, the SJC ruled life sentences without the possibility of parole unconstitutional when it comes to teen killers due to the development of the teenage brain.
Baldwin had a parole hearing scheduled for April 30, but Brodie's family told Boston 25 News' Bob Ward that Baldwin canceled his own parole hearing.
Groveland Murder Victim Beth Brodie's family is telling me her teen killer has just cancelled his own parole hearing. This week I reported an original juror was outraged Richard Baldwin was up for parole. Beth was 15 when she was killed with a baseball bat. @boston25 #truecrime pic.twitter.com/xEKLhn5yc2
— Bob Ward Boston 25 (@Bward3) March 22, 2019
Sean Alyward said he's relieved that Baldwin cancelled his own parole hearing. He believes the renewed attention pressured Baldwin to cancel.
There's barely a day that goes by, that Sean Aylward doesn't think about his sister Beth. He even keeps an empty chair for Beth near the kitchen table.
"He was sentenced to life, we didn't have to think about him at all," Alyward said. "He didn't deserve any of our thoughts and he still doesn't deserve our thoughts."
This week, Ward interviewed a man who was on the jury that convicted Baldwin in 1994.
"We were comfortable with the decision we made, putting him away for life with no parole. It was the only thing we could arrive at considering the facts," said Kerry Bertrand.
Those facts included how Brodie was beaten to death with a baseball bat, something that still haunts Bertrand.
"He said to Beth Brodie, 'Do you want to turn around for this?' and she's like, 'For what?' He pulls out the bat and takes a full cut, right into her face. How do you do that? And she goes down and he hits her again," Bertrand said.
"That was brutal, that was just outrageious. And someone like that does not belong on the streets."
>> MORE: Juror who put teen killer behind bars 'outraged' ahead of parole hearing
Brodie's family has been fighting to keep her killer behind bars, even petitioning for change at the State House.
Right now, it's unclear why Baldwin canceled the hearing.
Cox Media Group
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/cmg/7QOJU3BNCJERBNKJC5LWTBYFLU.png)
