By R.G. Dunlop
Special to NKyTribune
Part one of a two-part series
Steve Martin has spent 53 years in prison for murdering a 10-year-old Northern Kentucky girl in 1972.
Now 83 years old, Martin has been denied parole 11 times, most recently in May 2021, when he was ordered by the state parole board to serve out his life sentence.
Charles McDonald has been confined for more than 52 years after being convicted of several sex-related offenses in Jefferson County in the early 1970s. McDonald, who is now 80 years old, has been denied parole four times, including last February. His next parole hearing isn’t scheduled until 2030, when he’ll be 85.
Martin and McDonald have plenty of company. They are just two of the 32 inmates at least 80 years old and detained in Kentucky state prisons. Two more are in county jails.
James Carl Renn, Sr., 92 years old and the oldest state prison inmate, died of natural causes at the Kentucky State Reformatory on November 14, according to the chaplain there.
Renn was found guilty in August 2017 by a Jefferson County jury on five counts of rape, incest, and other sexual offenses. He was sentenced to 71 years in prison and wasn’t eligible for parole until 2031, when he would have been 98 years old.
The many decades that Martin and McDonald have been incarcerated, coupled with their and Renn’s advanced age and the minimal danger they likely would pose to the public, are key factors that have led many corrections authorities to conclude that older inmates serving long sentences should be released from custody.
“There’s no reason to keep them locked up,” said Judah Schept, a professor in the School of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky University. “Take care of them in the community. Let them finish their lives at home, and with their families, where they can access the kinds of medical care that everyone should have access to.
“By god, these people should not be incarcerated.”
Greg Belzley, a Louisville attorney specializing in inmates’ rights, agrees.
“It makes no sense for the state to continue to incarcerate persons past the age when they could pose any risk to the public. It is a needless waste of taxpayer dollars,” Belzley said.
And Wandra Bertram, communications strategist at the nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative, said she doesn’t think there is “any compelling reason to keep elderly people locked up. By the time someone has spent decades behind bars, the punitive goals of prison have been exhausted.
“Victims might feel otherwise, but criminal justice policy is meant to serve the public,” Bertram said. “And I don’t think most people feel safer – or think justice is being served – knowing that someone in their 80s or 90s is in prison decades after committing a crime.”
As of mid-September, a total of 139 current or former Kentucky inmates at least 80 years old were either in prison or on parole or probation, according to state Department of Corrections records.
Eight of the 139 are women; 19 are Black. The lone woman more than 80 years old and currently in a Kentucky prison is Barbara Schambon. She is 81 and has been incarcerated for more than 35 years after being convicted in Warren County in July 1990 of multiple counts involving sodomy, criminal abuse, and cruelty to animals.
Last April, Schambon was denied parole at least until 2030, when she’ll be 86 years old. It was the 10th time she had been turned down for release.
Her husband, Floyd Schambon, now 83 years old, was found guilty on similar charges and also has been in prison for more than 35 years. He has been denied parole 11 times, most recently in October. His next parole hearing is scheduled for December 2030, when he’ll be 88 years old.
According to a 1991 Kentucky Supreme Court opinion, the couple’s six-year-old son testified at his parents’ trial that they “forced him to engage in deviate sexual intercourse,” that his mother “placed her mouth on his ‘privates a whole lot,’” and that “she had him place his mouth on her ‘privates more than ten times.’”
The six-year-old son also testified that his father took him to a park to meet men and women “by a tree,” the opinion states, and that at the park, Floyd Schambon “would tie him up with a rope and force him to perform oral sex on men and women and allow the men to perform anal sex on him,” according to the opinion.
Although Barbara Schambon is the only woman more than 80 years old now serving time in a Kentucky prison, the state has one of the world’s highest incarceration rates for females, according to a September 2025 report by the Prison Policy Initiative.
“As a whole, the U.S. incarcerates women at a higher rate than any country other than El Salvador,” according to the article. “In fact, women in Kentucky face almost the same incarceration rate as women in El Salvador — a country that has been described as an authoritarian police state.
“Kentucky is among the handful of states that incarcerate women at a staggering rate of more than 6 times that of our closest international allies.”
Kentucky’s incarceration rate of 238 per 100,000 women is more than double the number for the U.S. as a whole, according to the article; more than six times the rate of the United Kingdom; and approximately 20 times the rates of countries including Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, Norway, and the Netherlands.
Older inmates – a threat?
Older inmates are far less likely than their younger counterparts to commit other crimes if they are released from prison, studies show.
According to a July 2021 report by the U.S. Department of Justice, 81 percent of inmates ages 24 and younger were rearrested within five years of their release from custody in 2012. The figure dropped to 61 percent for inmates 40 and older, and to 26 percent among inmates who were 65 and older when released.
And an August 2023 article by Emily Widra of the Prison Policy Initiative found that 30 percent of inmates serving life sentences nationwide were at least 55 years old, “with more than 61,400 older adults sentenced to die in prison.” And Widra referred to the “steep costs of incarcerating older people.”
The U.S. criminal-justice population is aging at a much faster rate than the country’s overall population. And older adults represent a growing portion of people arrested and incarcerated each year, according to Widra’s article. “While prisons and jails are unhealthy for people of all ages, older adults’ interactions with these systems are particularly dangerous, if not outright deadly.
“A robust body of research shows that incarceration itself accelerates aging. Prisons are “gearing up to become nursing homes, but without the proper trained staff and adequate financial support,” Widra wrote.
“It doesn’t make much sense to spend so much money locking people up in places that are not only dangerous to their health but more costly to care for them — especially when there is little public safety argument to justify doing so.”
Damon Preston, head of the Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy, said that while there is widespread concern about releasing inmates from prison too soon, “there should also be an interest in releasing people too late (i.e. years after they were any threat to safety).”
“At a time when DOC (the Department of Corrections) can’t keep prison employees, how many full-time state employees are necessary to push wheelchairs, distribute medicine, transport to medical facilities, monitor health status, and otherwise care for the constant needs of geriatric inmates?” Preston said.
Prisons as nursing homes
From 2001 through 2019, 950 state and federal inmates died in Kentucky, according to a December 2021 report by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. Nationwide, the state had the fourth-highest average annual mortality rate per 100,000 state and federal prisoners, by cause of death and jurisdiction. Only West Virginia, Tennessee, and Louisiana had higher rates.
Ninety-five percent of Kentucky’s inmate deaths during that period resulted from illnesses, primarily heart disease and cancer, according to the federal report. Twenty five of the deaths were suicides, six were homicides, three were from drug/alcohol intoxication, and five were listed as “accident.”
More recently, a total of 101 inmates who were at least 70 years old died while in state custody between January 1, 2020, and October 7, according to data provided by the Department of Corrections. Twenty-six of those inmates were at least 80 years old.
KDOC provided the dates for each of the 101 deaths, 80 percent of which occurred at the Kentucky State Reformatory, a medium-security prison in Oldham County. But the department redacted all causes of death on the grounds that sharing them would violate state law prohibiting the disclosure of “medical information.”
Among the 26 Kentucky inmates at least 80 years old who died in custody during the past six years: Sharon Greer and Freddie Green, both of whom were 89 years of age.
At the time of his death last July, Greer had been locked up for more than 17 years following his 2008 conviction in Lincoln County for assault and wanton endangerment. He would have been eligible for parole in January 2028.
Green was serving a life sentence for murder and other offenses committed in Jefferson County in 1993. Green had been incarcerated for more than 30 years when he died in March 2024.
Nearly as old as Greer and Green at the time of his death was James Timmons, who died last April at the age of 87 after spending more than 49 years in prison for a McCracken County murder.
“Nobody needs to die in prison unless you’re being executed,” said John Rees, a former commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Corrections. “You need to be in a place meant to house older, infirm people. I want them to be in a nursing home. It shows that we as a society are concerned, caring people who want to deal with offenders in their last years in a more humane manner.
“I don’t care who he killed or raped, it ain’t going to happen at 75; they’re not a threat, they’re a cost,” Rees said. “I just don’t think prison is a place where somebody else has got to tie your shoes.”
But some corrections professionals, current and former legislators, and family members of crime victims think justice can be done only by requiring inmates – especially those imprisoned for violent crimes including murder and sexual assault – to serve their entire prison sentences, no matter long are the sentences or how old and frail are the inmates.
“Regardless of their age or infirmity, the first question is whether or not the sentence that was imposed by a jury, or the sentence that the defendant themselves agreed to in a plea agreement, has been served,” said attorney and former state senator Whitney Westerfield of Christian County.
“They’re ultimately going to be on the taxpayer’s dime inside the walls or out. And I don’t pretend to think that the prison is the most therapeutic environment for them. It’s not as comfortable as outside of prison.
“But they broke the law, and our justice system demands that the sentence imposed be the sentence served.”
Westerfield said crime victims and their family members also should have a say.
“They don’t get to control the process, but they ought to be heard,” he said. “There might be as many victims that are okay with an 80- or 70-year-old inmate being released as there are victims who are adamant that they never be released. But the victim still deserves to be heard.”
Don Turpin, whose son, Michael Turpin, was stabbed to death in Lexington in February 1986, said he thinks the three people convicted of killing him and who are serving sentences of life without parole should “rot in jail. It was just a senseless act.”
All three defendants, now in their late 50s or early 60s, have been incarcerated for nearly 40 years apiece. But Don Turpin doesn’t think that’s nearly long enough.
“They’re still living,” he said. “And in a way that’s probably better, because they can just sit there and rot, and think about it for all these years.”
Belzley, the Louisville attorney, offered a different argument for keeping older inmates in prison. He thinks that had they been released, many who died in custody would not have lived as long or received the end-of-life care that they got at the Kentucky State Reformatory.
“Most inmates in this age category have served long or life sentences,” Belzley said. “The prison has become their home and their fellow inmates their only social circle. Releasing them when they can no longer work, and with the few if any reentry services available in this state, would impose a significant and perhaps unsustainable burden on any family members that might be willing to take them in.”
Some family members who are caring for aging parents and who may sacrifice financially for them “may wonder why the one group of people who are spared from this responsibility all the way until death are those serving a prison sentence,” said Preston of the Department of Public Advocacy.
“When they can’t even walk, much less reoffend, why does the state pay someone to push their wheelchair to the bathroom? In many ways, we’re treating people in prison better than the poor (or even lower middle class) who are not in prison and who have to figure out what Medicaid/Medicare provides.
“I think we have a duty to care for the infirm and the elderly, whether in prison or out, but I personally know many people who struggle with what to do with and for their parents,” Preston said. “I think they may be offended at the notion that someone who committed a crime 30 years ago just gets it all taken care of.”
The state Justice and Public Safety Cabinet, which includes the Department of Corrections and the Division of Probation and Parole, did not respond to numerous questions posed in three emails about older offenders being in prison, or on probation or parole, including whether their cases are being handled appropriately.
Those emails, to cabinet spokesperson Morgan Hall, generated some documents and this reply from Hall: “I have received all three emails and am looking into your questions.” She did not respond to a fourth email sent to her two weeks later, and also did not address a request to interview parole board Chair Ladeidra Jones and parole board Director Angela Tolley.
Paroled — and then?
In addition to the currently incarcerated elderly inmates, at least three former Kentucky inmates now on probation or parole are at least 100 years old, according to state records.
At the top of the list is Floyd Adams, who – if information provided by the state is correct – is 128 years old and on parole. Documents provided by the Department of Corrections show that Adams was born in 1896, and incarcerated in 1950 after being convicted in Greenup County of involuntary manslaughter.
The records also show that Adams was paroled in April 1954. According to one of the documents, Adams was assigned to the LaGrange office of the state Division of Probation and Parole. But an employee in that office said recently that Adams is not on parole there.
The Department of Corrections did not respond to questions seeking confirmation of Adams’s age and if he is alive, whether he is still on parole.
According to Wikipedia and other online sources, the oldest living person in the United States is Naomi Washington Whitehead, who is 115 years old and resides in Greenville, Pennsylvania. The oldest American ever was Sarah Knauss, also of Pennsylvania, who died in 1999 at the age of 119, according to Wikipedia and other online sources.
If Floyd Adams was indeed born in 1896 and is still alive, he would eclipse them both.
Second on the list of old parolees is Billy Joe Allen, who is 110 years old and has been on parole since April 1980, state records show. Allen was convicted of murder in Larue County in 1962 and sentenced to life in prison. As a parolee, he’s been under state supervision for more than 45 years, according to the records.
The third centenarian allegedly on parole in Kentucky is Orville Nolan, who is 100 years old. Nolan was convicted of murder in Harlan County in 1976 and sentenced to life in prison, the records show. He was paroled in 1982.
Just slightly younger is Austin Pogue, who is 98 years old and was initially paroled in 1966 after being convicted in Laurel County of rape in 1948. Pogue was returned to prison after violating his parole, then paroled again in December 1979 – nearly 46 years ago, according to state records.
Robert Lee Bailey is 97 years old. He was convicted of armed robbery in Jefferson County in July 1971 and was sentenced to life in prison. State records show he was paroled in February 1981 – more than 44 years ago.
The state did not respond to questions about whether and why Allen, Nolan, Pogue, and Bailey are still on parole, requiring supervision and the expenditure of state tax dollars at their advanced ages.
Just a year younger than Bailey is Franklin Thomas Slay, who was convicted in June 1950 of a Christian County murder and sentenced to life in prison. Following his release on parole in May 1964, Slay “absconded from parole supervision,” and his last known address was in Paducah, according to an arrest warrant issued by the parole board in February 1968.
More than 57 years later, according to the state’s Kentucky Offender Online Lookup, or KOOL, the 96-year-old Slay continues to be listed as “absconded,” escaping suddenly and secretively to avoid apprehension or legal consequences.
The state did not respond to questions about Slay’s current status, including whether he has been apprehended since absconding and whether he is still on parole.
Part two of this series tomorrow