PRAIRIE VILLAGE — Parole has been denied for a school janitor who subdued a 13-year-old girl with chloroform more than 40 years ago as she walked home from a suburban Kansas City pool and then killed her.
The Kansas City Star reports that the Kansas Prisoner Review Board has ruled that 71-year-old John Henry Horton will have to wait until 2023 for his next chance to be released from prison.
He wasn’t arrested until 2003 for the 1974 death of Liz Wilson. She vanished while cutting through the parking lot of Shawnee Mission East High School. Her remains were found six months later.
Horton was sentenced to life in prison. But life, under Kansas law in force at the time of Liz’s death, meant serving only 15 years before being eligible for parole.
