Froman enters guilty plea, sentenced to life
By John Wright
Murray Ledger and Times
MAYFIELD — An Illinois man already sentenced to death in Ohio for the killing of a Mayfield woman in the fall of 2014 entered a guilty plea Monday for killing her son in Mayfield.
Graves Circuit Judge Tim Stark sentenced Terry Froman of Brookport, Illinois to life in prison in the death of Eli Mohney, who was 17 and was apparently attempting to protect his mother, Kim Thomas, when Froman shot him on the morning of Sept. 12, 2014, inside a house. Law enforcement records say Froman then took Thomas out of the office and eventually drove her to southern Ohio, where he shot her to death as law officers closed in on his vehicle. Reports from Ohio say Froman shot himself before being taken into custody.
Monday afternoon, Graves Commonwealth Attorney David Hargrove said he is glad that this case has now reached its conclusion.
“The main reason for that is because the family has said that they didn’t want to go through another trial,” Hargrove said. “We were set for trial in May 2019, but the family has said that they felt all of the evidence that needed to come out had already come out in the first trial (last year, which resulted in an Ohio jury recommending the death penalty). They didn’t want to rehash all of that.
“Our case was different, though; in the Ohio case, they had used some of our evidence.”
The Graves case carried charges of murder for the death of Mohney and kidnapping and forced imprisonment of Thomas. After Froman had driven the pair to Paducah after killing Mohney, Thomas temporarily escaped the vehicle and was attempting to obtain help when Froman recaptured her and left the scene, police said. Froman also was charged with tampering with physical evidence.
It was at that point that Paducah police were alerted to the situation. Later, a man who Paducah police have said is someone they had used as an informant in drug cases, came to them, explaining that he had heard about the situation in Mayfield. He had said he was a friend of Froman.
Testimony in Froman’s case in Graves showed that the informant attempted to assist Paducah officers in tracking Froman’s movements and were recording conversations the informant as having with Froman that day. Froman’s defense had objected to this, filing motions to keep the recording from being used as evidence in the trial. All of that activity ended the same way as the Ohio case.
“During the sentencing, Terry Thomas (Kim’s father and Mohney’s grandfather) addressed (Froman) and, as he was in the first trial, he was forgiving. He also told him that he needed to get on his knees and come to God about what he had done,” Hargrove said.
Froman pleaded guilty to all three charges filed against him in Graves County.
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