Murderer serving life could walk free

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) - Thirty-seven years after her husband was shot and killed in a robbery, a Grand Rapids woman is fighting to keep the killer in prison.

"Prison is too good for him," Margaret Werra-Towner told 24 Hour News 8 on Wednesday. "Once he took a life, he shouldn't expect a commutation. He should be strung from a tree if Governor (Jennifer) Granholm wants to save money."

It is Terry L. Cole who is asking for his freedom -- after he was sentenced in January 1975 to life in prison without parole.

He shot and killed pharmacist Russell Werra -- a 42-year-old father of three young children -- at Butterworth Pharmacy, 944 Butterworth St. SW.

Cole was 21 at the time. He and his accomplice, both from Kentucky, got $40 in the robbery.

"He put me and my family through a lot of devastation," Werra-Towner said. "My grandchildren don't know who their grandfather is; my youngest son doesn't know who his dad is. He wasn't around to teach the kids to hunt and to fish."

Now, 58-year-old Cole is asking Granholm to commute his sentence.

Werra's survivors are fighting the early release. They've written the governor and read statements at an Aug. 26 parole board hearing in Ionia.

"If the panel thinks that I am going to forgive Cole for murdering my husband, you're badly mistaken," Werra-Towner read to the board.

"If he took a life for $40, then he can rot in jail."

State prison spokesman Russ Marlan said it's not unusual for convicted killers to ask for a governor's commutation.

But it is unusual for it to get this far -- to get to a parole board hearing -- unless the prisoner is gravely ill, he said. Prison officials can't discuss whether he has a medical condition, but say it would have come up at the parole hearing.

The victim's family says Cole's health never came up at the hearing. They were told Cole was trying to take advantage of the state's goal to empty prison beds.

State officials say Cole's case is not about saving money.

It was Cole who requested the commutation, Marlan said.

The state has worked since 2005 to cut into its $2 billion a year prison budget -- cutting the prisoner count from a record 51,000 in 2006 to 46,600.

Marlan said new prison-alternative programs, such as the Michigan Prisoner Re-entry Initiative, have made the parole board feel more comfortable releasing prisoners.

Last year, the number of prisoners released on parole jumped by 3,000 compared to the year before.

This year, he said, paroles are down slightly.

Marlan said the state's dropping crime rate is proof it's working.

Werra's daughter, Mary Beth Werra, was 9 at the time her father died, but vividly remembers when the police came to the door. She's 46 now.

"It ruined my life," she said. "I didn't have a father anymore. I had a couple breakdowns later in my life from this."

She also testified at the parole hearing.

"It's been a long time," she told 24 Hour News 8. "They say time heals everything, but sometimes, it doesn't."

Marlan said it could be several months before the parole board makes a recommendation, and before Granholm decides whether to commute Cole's sentence.

Kent County Circuit Judge Mark A. Trusock has joined the family's fight. He wrote a letter to the parole board in July.

"As the successor sentencing judge in this matter, please be advised that I am very strongly opposed to any reprieve, commutation or pardon for the defendant, Terry Louis Cole," he wrote. "I am of the opinion that the original sentence of life imposed was appropriate."