GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- State Attorney General Dana Nessel wants a judge to overturn a parole board decision to release one of two women involved in the 1987 Alpine Manor killings.
Nessel filed a brief in the case of 57-year-old Catherine Wood, saying the parole board abused it’s discretion in a fall 2018 ruling and that Wood should still be considered a danger to society.
Wood and Gwendolyn Graham were convicted in the deaths of five nursing home patients. The patients, generally incapacitated, were smothered.
The acts were part of a pact meant to bind their love, testimony later showed.
Wood has served 30 years of a 20- to 40-year prison sentence. Graham is serving life in prison.
Family members of the victims filed an appeal to block her parole. Attorneys for the parole board and the victims expect to make oral arguments Monday before Kent County Circuit Court Judge Joseph Rossi.
In Nessel’s brief, filed Friday, May 31, she said the parole board decided eight previous times not to release Wood because of the severity of the crime.
"Repeatedly, the parole board determined Ms. Wood to be a threat to the public,” Nessel said Friday in a written statement. “I am not sufficiently persuaded that Ms. Wood does not remain a threat to the public or that she has demonstrated true remorse for the many helpless, vulnerable victims she ruthlessly murdered while in her care. She continues to be a threat to the public and it is incumbent upon me as the state’s chief law enforcement officer to do everything possible to protect our state’s residents from those who endanger them.”
No matter what happens with the appeal from family members, Wood is set to reach her maximum discharge date on June 6, 2021. The date is short of 40 years because she was awarded some jail credit back in the 1980s, but also received disciplinary credits in prison.
Disciplinary credits were abolished in 1998 but still applied to those who received them before that time.
A spokesman for the Michigan Department of Corrections and parole board released the following statement Friday:
"After careful consideration of a number of factors in Wood’s case, including her conduct in prison, program involvement, and social support in the community, the Parole Board determined there was reasonable assurance she would not become a threat to society or public safety.
“Woods will have served her maximum sentence in two years, and a term of parole will allow us to supervise her transition into the community. The Kent County prosecutor also did not challenge her release and could not find any reason the Parole Board abused its discretion in granting her parole, noting there was no basis in her prison record to argue against her release.”