Published: October 22, 2008 08:57 am      

Judge imposes 10 year sentence for ’80 garage assault

Kroll, diagnosed a sexual sadist, jailed in ’70s for attacking teens

CUMBERLAND — Fifty-nine-year-old John Leroy Kroll was sentenced Tuesday in Allegany County Circuit Court to a 10-year prison term for assault, thus ensuring that the clinically diagnosed sexual sadist will remain jailed for several more years.

Judge Gary G. Leasure imposed the maximum sentence — as requested by State’s Attorney Michael Twigg and as recommended in the presentencing report filed by the Maryland Department of Parole and Probation — for the March 1980 assault of Jennifer Eck in the parking garage of Memorial Hospital.

Cumberland attorney Raymond Weston asked the judge to impose the minimum sentence of six months to two years on the misdemeanor assault charge, of which Kroll was convicted by a jury on July 31, 2008. Weston noted that Kroll was found not guilty of attempted kidnapping in the same trial.

Twigg said he was “happy with the court’s decision.”

“It’s unfortunate that we have to be in this scenario some 28 years after these offenses occurred. But I do take comfort in the fact that we went from a situation where Mr. Kroll would have been walking the streets in 2005 to now protecting the community by keeping him incarcerated for another four years,” he said.

Twigg said he determined that Kroll will remain incarcerated at least until March 2012, based on his informal conversations with state prison officials.

After the sentencing, Weston declined to comment, just as he has done at other times Kroll has appeared in court.

Leasure ordered for the sentence to be served consecutively to any other sentences now being served by Kroll, who has been imprisoned since 1980.

Kroll made no statement to the court when afforded the opportunity before the sentence was imposed.

Escorted to and from the court room by a correctional officer of the Allegany County Detention Center, Kroll was taken in handcuffs and leg chains back to the county jail to await his return next month to the custody of the state Division of Correction.

In his remarks to the court Tuesday, Twigg noted that there are six victims from criminal acts committed by Kroll.

Kroll, diagnosed by a state psychologist as a sexual sadist, was convicted last month in Washington County Circuit Court of kidnapping a 9-year-old girl in 1980 as she walked toward her rural home from an Allegany County school bus.

Judge John McDowell presided in the jury trial, which was moved to Washington County after a change of venue was granted in Allegany County Circuit Court due to pretrial publicity in the case.

McDowell sentenced Kroll to the maximum of 30 years in prison for the kidnapping conviction.

Kroll served eight years in prison in the 1970s for offenses that included driving his car into a 13-year-old girl, slashing her with a knife, sexually abusing her and beating her with a tree limb. Kroll also acknowledged chasing and cutting a 15-year-old girl, Twigg said.

Six years of Kroll’s eight years in prison in the 1970s were spent in a state mental institution.

Kroll was released from prison in November 1979. He was arrested March 7, 1980, for the assault of Eck in the Memorial Hospital parking garage. Eck was 25 years old at the time of the assault.

The charges in the case were dismissed in a plea agreement in conjunction with the convictions in the case involving the 9-year-old Flintstone girl.

Those convictions and a life sentence for first-degree assault, plus 15 years for kidnapping, were voided in 2005 by a court ruling that the sexual assault occurred just over the state line in Bedford County, Pa.

The ruling set the stage for the retrial of both cases, which led to jury trials and the recent convictions against Kroll in both cases.

Contact Jeffrey Alderton at jlalderton@times-news.com.