The Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole has started the process to potentially grant parole to a convicted murderer. The board has made a “tentative” grant in the case of Robert Anthony Wise, who confessed to and was convicted of murdering Kay Jean Dunn.
On April 10, 1993, the Smyrna woman was waiting for a bus when Wise and his half-brother, Lonnie Brown kidnapped, beat, sexually assaulted and choked her to death with a dog chain. In the early morning hours of April 11, 1993, the pair then dumped her lifeless body in a rural area in South Cobb County. Wise pleaded guilty to murder and kidnapping on January 5, 1994 and was sentenced to two life sentences.
The board’s decision to possibly release Wise first to a Georgia Department of Corrections work-release program and then potentially grant him parole is devastating news to Dunn’s family. In a letter to the board, Cobb County District Attorney Vic Reynolds vehemently objected to his release.
“Needless to say, this was a heinous, unmitigated, cold-blooded killing of a young woman who did absolutely nothing to warrant any such attack. I would respectfully ask the Board to reconsider any form of release to this defendant. He simply does not deserve it. He and his co-defendant are nothing but cold-blooded murderers and they do not deserve any form of leniency from this Board.”
In 1994, when Wise was sentenced, Georgia lawmakers who set the eligibility for parole required offenders given life sentences to serve seven years before they could become eligible for parole. The statute was changed in 1995, increasing the time to 14 years before becoming eligible for parole. Then it was changed again in 2006 to a minimum of 30 years before an offender given a life sentence could become eligible for parole.
Brown, Wise’s half-brother, is also eligible for parole in April 2020. Reynolds said, “I will tell you without any hesitation, in the event the board considers him for parole, then I’ll be just as vehement and adamant that they keep him as well. The price they’re paying now has not been paid fully.”
Bentheimer shared the same sentiment and vowed to fight any form of release on behalf of his Aunt Kay. “I will move heaven and earth to make sure neither of these people see the light of day again.”
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