William Wieland sat before the Oregon Board of Parole on October 21 seeking release for a third time in the 1986 killing of his mother-in-law, Katherine Kimbrel, and for a third time, the board said no. The panel unanimously found that Wieland was not likely to be rehabilitated within a reasonable period of time, closing out his latest attempt to walk free from a Benton County murder case that has now stretched across four decades.
According to KEZI 9 News, Wieland was convicted of murdering Kimbrel in 1995, a case the Benton County District Attorney's Office has tied to a 1986 killing. Prosecutors said Wieland killed Kimbrel and then attempted to burn down a house where his wife, children, and Kimbrel were sleeping, in what investigators described as an effort to stop her from reporting his likely involvement to police. Kimbrel's body was found on July 15, 1986, and an autopsy determined she had died of multiple stab wounds, according to koin.com.
Accounts of Wieland's sentence differ. KEZI reported he was sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole for 30 years, while koin.com reported his sentence was a minimum of 30 years with the possibility of parole. Either way, this was not Wieland's first chance to make his case for release: the parole board had already denied his requests in 2019 and 2022, the station's report notes, and a governor rejected his petition for clemency in 2020.
Family Members Spoke Out Against Release
Several people connected to the case turned out or dialed in to oppose Wieland's bid for freedom. Benton County District Attorney Ryan Joslin and investigator John Chilcote both appeared remotely to object to the parole petition, while Kimbrel's grandchildren, Jody Wieland-VanHulle and Joshua Wieland, appeared in person to speak against his release. Chilcote had served as the lead detective on the case for the Benton County Sheriff's Office before later joining the district attorney's office as an investigator, per the same account.
The parole board did not mince words in evaluating Wieland's testimony. The district attorney's office said the board described his explanations for his actions as “ridiculous” and found his statements completely lacking in credibility. Joslin said that a tremendous amount of work went into obtaining the original conviction in the case, crediting the late Ken Osher, a former chief deputy district attorney who worked the case before his death.
Appeals Upheld the Original Conviction
Wieland's conviction has already survived legal challenges at both the state and federal level. The Oregon Court of Appeals affirmed his conviction, and a 1994 opinion from that court, hosted by Justia, addressed pretrial evidentiary rulings in the case charging him with the 1986 aggravated murder of his mother-in-law. Years later, the Ninth Circuit took up the case in William Wieland v. S. Thompson, filing its disposition on July 25, 2014, and affirming the lower court, according to the opinion hosted by CourtListener.
For Joslin, the latest denial reinforced what he described as the stakes of keeping Wieland behind bars. He said justice demanded that Wieland continue serving his life sentence without parole for the sake of community safety and the peace of mind of Kimbrel's surviving family. With this third denial now on record, Wieland remains in custody, and no new parole hearing date has been reported.
