RALEIGH, N.C. — A man who served nearly 30 years in prison for a murder-for-hire killing in Guilford County was paroled Friday.
Leroy Wentzel was the triggerman in a plot to kill his brother-in-law back in 1991. He was sentenced to life in prison on second-degree murder charges.
A change in laws
His parole eligibility comes due to a change in sentencing laws back in 1994. Attorney Joel Oakley said life sentences were parole eligible prior to the change.
"He would have to have been sentenced under the old law that we had where everybody was eligible for parole. Being eligible for parole doesn't mean you will necessarily get out early but you have the possibility," Oakley said.
North Carolina now uses structured sentencing, which mandates a minimum and maximum amount of time an offender can serve for their time. The law change only applies to crimes committed after October 1994.
Since the murder happened in 1991, it meant Wentzel remained parole eligible.
Ben Finholt is the Director of the Just Sentencing Project at Duke University School of Law. He said there are 1,500 people left in the state who are parole eligible and many of them are people whose crimes were committed before 1994.
Finholt said under structured sentencing, it's not possible for someone to be sentenced to life in prison for second-degree murder anymore.
"People's sentences would often be reduced by half or more. As we move towards more truth where people would serve the amount of time it was actually written on the piece of paper on the judge's sentence, the North Carolina legislature enacted structured sentencing," Finholt said.
The case
Court records said Wentzel was hired by his wife's sister, Patricia Brown, to kill her husband, Fred Brown for $30,000.
In April of 1991, Wentzel lured his brother-in-law to a stretch of Highway 68 in High Point where he shot him three times. He staged it to look like a robbery before fleeing to Alabama.
The case was unsolved until a few years later when Wentzel was arrested on other charges. Investigators found letters he wrote that detailed the crime and connected Brown's wife to the case.
Wentzel and his wife, Shelia Wentzel, plead guilty in the case. They both testified against Patricia Brown at her trial in 1995.
Shelia Wentzel served 11 years of a 50-year sentence before being released from prison. Patricia Brown was sentenced to life plus 30 years. She died in 2010.