A parole date has been granted to a man convicted of fatally beating a Bay Area resident in a Davis park more than a quarter-century ago.
Timothy Wayne Wilson, now 49, was sentenced to 20 years to life in state prison for the second-degree murder of John Duncan O’Friel, a married father of seven, in the summer of 1993. Wilson claimed the beating stemmed from O’Friel’s sexual advances toward him.
He was granted parole following a hearing Thursday at California State Prison, Solano, where Board of Parole Hearings commissioner and deputy commissioner concluded Wilson no longer posed a public-safety risk, according to the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office.
Wilson and his accomplice, 17-year-old Joshua Coleman, dumped the 46-year-old O’Friel’s body in rural Yolo County following the fatal beating. Coleman, who was tried as an adult, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
O’Friel’s widow Carol O’Friel, who attended Thursday’s hearing with three of her children, said her family plans to seek a reversal of the parole board panel’s decision, which goes before the Board of Parole Hearings and Gov. Gavin Newsom for approval.
“Of course we are disappointed by today’s verdict,” O’Friel said, calling Wilson a “master manipulator” who faked symptoms of mental illness and blamed his victims, including those in prior assaults, for triggering his rage.
“I still don’t hear culpability. I just hear excuses. He has more work to do on his trigger issues,” O’Friel said. “I don’t want another family losing a loved one at Wilson’s hands and then coming to me and asking me why we didn’t fight harder to keep Wilson in prison.”
The homicide occurred on the night of July 8, 1993. Wilson, then 23, and Coleman then took O’Friel’s car and other property to San Francisco, where Wilson was living at the time. He was arrested about a month later.
At last week’s parole hearing — Wilson’s third — Commissioner Michael Ruff read the panel’s decision stating that Mr. Wilson was now suitable for parole due to his “low-risk” rating by a prison psychologist, the fact that he was a “youthful offender” at the time of the offense, and other factors, according to the DA’s Office.
Ruff also said after listening to Wilson that “some of his remorse was genuine,” and it’s not necessary for the panel to find that Wilson’s remorse was fully genuine.
“At each hearing, and in interviews with psychologists who prepared Comprehensive Risk Assessments, Wilson has claimed that he was physically and sexually abused as a child,” the DA’s Office noted in a prepared statement. “He has claimed that as a result of this childhood trauma, he was triggered by O’Friel trying to touch him so he ‘drew a line in the sand’ and decided to teach O’Friel a lesson.”
A California Department of Corrections psychologist who conducted the current Comprehensive Risk Assessment in May 2019 rated Wilson a “low risk” for future violence but stated on five occasions in her 18-page report that Wilson would benefit from future counseling and treatment associated with his early trauma history, prosecutors said. In prior reports, psychologists have stated that Wilson was dishonest, lacked credibility, had an antisocial personality disorder, was narcissistic, and had psychopathic features.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Jonathan Raven appeared at the hearing on behalf of the DA’s Office and argued against Wilson’s release.
“If Mr. Wilson’s trauma is his excuse for the murder, then clearly he should resolve this trauma before being allowed back out,” Raven said. “He has made progress, but has more work to do.”