Opry star 'Stringbean' Akeman's killer gets parole, The man who killed Grand Ole Opry star David "Stringbean" Akeman and his wife in 1973 has been granted parole and will be released from prison.
John A. Brown, 63, appeared before five of the seven members of the Tennessee Board of Parole on Wednesday. Four of them voted to grant his request for parole, enough to secure his release.
Board spokeswoman Melissa McDonald said it could take several weeks before Brown gets out of the facility where he is being held.
On the evening of Nov. 10, 1973, Brown and his cousin, Doug Marvin Brown, ambushed Akeman and his wife, Estelle, as they returned home from the Opry. Stringbean was known to carry a lot of cash, and the Brown cousins had been looking for it in the Akemans' cabin in Ridgetop, 20 miles north of Nashville.
John Brown shot Stringbean as he walked into cabin. He then chased Estelle across her front yard and shot her in the back of the head as she begged for mercy.
Both men were convicted and sentenced to serve two life sentences in prison. Doug Brown died in prison in 2003.
Brown has appeared before the parole board six times in the decades since he was incarcerated for the murders that rocked Music City. Country music legends have lined up to keep Brown behind bars."Why should they turn him loose?" Country Music Hall of Famer Jean Shepard asked. "He cold bloodedly killed two friends of ours."
In the days leading to a hearing in 2011, Bill Anderson started an e-mail campaign encouraging people to write letters against his release. Opry member Jan Howard spoke.
Banjo player Grandpa Jones found the Akemans' bodies the morning after they were killed. His wife, Ramona Jones, was one of the first people on the scene.
She said she thinks about her friends each day. She wrote a letter to the parole board in advance of Brown's latest hearing.
"He still murdered two very innocent people," she said in April. "Don't let him out."
Mac Wiseman, who will be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame later this month, called the board's decision a "great miscarriage of justice."
"It makes me question the legal system," he said.
Wiseman said he did not discount Brown's contrition, but he did question how a man with two life sentences could be released.
"I fully believe that the good Lord forgives us for our mistakes," he said.
But, Wiseman added, members of the parole board "don't have the authority, spiritually or otherwise, to forgive that man, I don't think."
