Friends, family seek justice 35 years after sheriff’s murder
It was early MARYSVILLE — afternoon on his 19th birthday, and Steve Wolfe was still in bed, having worked the overnight shift guarding the jail in the county where his father was sheriff.
The sirens screaming through the countryside woke him. There were just so darn many of them. His mother asked him to call the sheriff ’s office. Union County Sheriff Harry Wolfe had been delivering an inmate to a state prison that day.
“Mom said, ‘Just call and find out if your Dad has made it back,” Wolfe, 54, recalled recently. It was then, over the phone, that Wolfe learned his father was dead.
Sheriff Wolfe, on his way back from the prison, had heard a radio call about a residential security alarm at a house along a rural road near Plain City. He responded alone and encountered burglar Stanley Penn, who grabbed Wolfe’s own Model 66 .357-Magnum revolver from his side holster and shot and killed the sheriff in the driveway.
Everything changed that day, Jan. 21, 1982.
“You’re just numb,” said Wolfe, now a retired police officer himself. “My mom, she was devastated for a very, very long time.”
Now, after all these years, the memories are stirred up again as Wolfe tries to make sure his father’s killer stays behind bars. Penn, 68, imprisoned on aggravated murder and other charges since 1983, was first denied parole a decade ago. Now, he has his second chance at freedom with an Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction parole board hearing scheduled for Dec. 11. Wolfe, local prosecutors and law enforcement, and sheriffs from across the state, oppose it.
“He doesn’t deserve to ever be back in society,” Wolfe said. “A man like that can’t be rehabilitated.”
Harry Wolfe had already spent a career with the State Highway Patrol when he was appointed sheriff in early 1974. In Union County law-enforcement circles, his name is revered not just for how he died in the line of duty but for how he lived.
“Sheriff Wolfe walked tall and carried a big stick,” current Sheriff Jamie Patton said with a laugh. Patton is only 47 and didn’t join the sheriff ’s office until the early 1990s, so he never knew Wolfe personally. “I feel like I’ve come to know him through the years because anyone who was around this county back in those days has a story about him. He’s just always been larger than life in this office.”
The wanted poster that sought Penn — who went on the run after the shooting, first to Cleveland and then to New York — hangs in a frame on the wall of Patton’s office. While reminiscing with Steve Wolfe one day this week, he pulled a stack of pencil etchings he had made of Wolfe’s name the last time he visited the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington. He gave one to Wolfe for the scrapbook about Sheriff Wolfe’s career that the two had been looking over. Patton said Union County deputies have always tried to emulate Wolfe’s style — to treat others kindly and with respect — but the lessons from his death shape them, too.
“Those scenarios run through your mind each and every day. Be alert. Be on top of your game,” he said. “Anything can happen at any moment.”
The day Wolfe died, then-Columbus police detective Chet DeLong was offduty and at home in Union County. He heard about it almost immediately, used a vacation day to get out of his evening shift with the city and went to the sheriff’s office to help. Soon, with the Columbus police chief ’s blessing, he found himself assigned on special duty as an integral part of the months-long hunt for Penn. He personally brought Penn back from New York, where he had been in jail under an alias.
“Harry Wolfe was a great sheriff .... What I liked about him was if he had something on his mind, he told you,” said DeLong, now 80 and retired from the Columbus Division of Police. “Losing him hurt the community a lot.”
DeLong, along with Patton and Steve Wolfe, is among those who have met with a parole-board representative in advance of Penn’s hearing. “Stanley Penn had a choice that day when he got caught. He could’ve given up. He didn’t. He took out the sheriff instead,” DeLong said. “He should never walk the streets again.” Patton said that when he met with the state official, he did it not only with justice for Wolfe on his mind but he also carried with him the memory of at least 116 other law-enforcement officers killed across the country in the line of duty so far this year. “To let Penn go free now? That would be devastating for the profession,” Patton said. “That would send a very clear message that blue lives don’t matter. And I’ll carry that torch forever,...for all of those who have gone before us.”