Parole denied for woman convicted of killing husband, son in burning Trumbull County home
A woman who looks as if she could be someone’s grandmother won’t be getting out of prison any time soon as she continues serving a sentence for fatally stabbing her husband, and burning her Trumbull County home, killing her five-year-old son.
According to Ohio Department of Corrections records, 72-year-old Judith Morris Delgros has been denied parole following a recent hearing. Morris Delgros won’t be eligible for another parole hearing until October 2030.
Investigators say that in January 1978, Morris Delgros reported that a Vernon Township mobile home was burning with her husband and children still inside.
Firefighters found the burned body of her husband Donald in a bedroom with the door shut. Morris Delgros's five-year-old son, Christopher Styles was also found burned to death in the home.
The fire was initially ruled as accidental due to Morris Delgros's recollection of events and remained this way for 15 years.
However, due to statements by Morris Delgros's nine-year-old son, as well as investigation efforts by local law enforcement, it was later found that the fire was an arson planned by Morris Delgros.
The son told investigators that he saw his mother striking her husband in the head knocking him to the floor, before stabbing him four or five times and pouring liquid near the furnace setting fire to the home.
An autopsy later confirmed that Donald Morris's cause of death was stab wounds rather than accidental fire and ruled the death a homicide. Further investigation revealed at least seven stab wounds.
Morris Delgros was convicted for the double aggravated murder in 1993 and given a sentence of 20 years to life in prison.
Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins opposed Morris Delgros's release writing to the parole board, "There is a special place for persons who murder their own children and it is not in Ohio, the United States or any other land on earth and afterwards, it is not Heaven. It is prison and then that other place."