Parole approval for man who killed Pelham woman in 1983 enrages family, prosecutors
Jonathan Bandler- Kenneth West, convicted of the 1983 murder of Josephine O'Keefe, was granted parole after serving only 18 years of a 25-to-life sentence due to a sentencing oversight.
- West's parole approval sparked outrage from O'Keefe's family, who fear for their safety. They criticized a parole commissioner's apparent victim-blaming during West's interview.
- Prosecutors are calling for the parole decision to be invalidated, citing the commissioner's comments and failure to acknowledge their letters opposing West's release.
When Kenneth West was sentenced in 2009 to the maximum 25 years to life in prison for the Pelham sexual assault and murder of Josephine O'Keefe, the judge called the slaying "an obscene act of brutality committed by a fiendish criminal."
O'Keefe's relatives didn't think West should ever be released and were relieved that they wouldn't have to worry about opposing parole for West until the early 2030s.
But the family, the prosecutors and the judge were unaware of a significant oversight that day. West was still on parole for another killing, and the judge did not impose the prison term consecutively, meaning West would get credit for the years he had served for the earlier conviction.
So West became eligible for parole in 2020, and this year — on his third chance after two denials — he was approved for release. Now 60, he is scheduled to get out of Fishkill Correctional Facility as early as June 25 after essentially serving only about 18 years of the 25-to-life sentence.
The victim's relatives were enraged, fearing for their safety and certain that West remains a danger to society. And they were further incensed by a transcript of a February parole interview of West in which the lead commissioner, Chanwoo Lee, appeared to engage in victim-blaming, suggesting O'Keefe was promiscuous.
"We were horrified," said Sue Huppelsberg, O'Keefe's daughter. "He's a monster who should just not be allowed to walk free among people."
She expressed particular concern that West, who lived in Columbia County 20 years ago before his arrest, was expected to live in Westchester, close to where her family lives.
Pelham's Josephine O'Keefe, 53, was killed in 1983
The 53-year-old O'Keefe, known as Cindy, was raped and strangled to death with a dog leash in the bedroom of her apartment at 88 Lincoln Ave. in Pelham on July 17, 1983. Her killer had entered the apartment through a window leading to the fire escape.
West, then known as Kenneth Jones, was working at a tackle shop on the ground floor of the building at the time. He turned 19 the day after O'Keefe's body was discovered by her daughter-in-law. West was interviewed by police at the time as a potential witness, not as a suspect.
Despite Huppelsberg's regular hounding of detectives, the killing went unsolved for nearly a quarter of a century.
"I never let it go because no family should go through what we did," she said. "And now it's even worse and people have to know who it is that will be walking among them."
Kenneth West DNA sample, after parole in another killing, tied him to O'Keefe case
Four years after O'Keefe's killing, West was a bouncer at Sue's Rendezvous, a Mount Vernon strip club. On Sept. 27, 1987, West, club manager John Gialanella and another bouncer, Allen Edwards, drove away from the club. In the car, West strangled Edwards and then shot him. Gialanella also shot Edwards and they dumped his body in Mount Pleasant.
Both men were charged seven years later, and West cut a deal with prosecutors to plead guilty to manslaughter in exchange for his testimony against Gialanella. Gialanella was convicted of murder and served 25 years in prison. West got a sentence of nine to 18 years.
When he was released on parole in 2007, West had to give a DNA sample — and it matched semen found on O'Keefe's body. When Westchester County and Pelham detectives questioned him, he denied even knowing her.
He went on trial in 2009, charged with murder not just in O'Keefe's killing but also the strangulation death of 23-year-old June Roberts in 1986, around the corner from Sue's Rendezvous. West was a suspect in her death after authorities learned of his involvement in Edwards' killing.
West didn't testify at the trial, but his lawyer argued that that the DNA was a result of West having consensual sex with O'Keefe and didn't prove he had killed her.
West was found guilty of killing O'Keefe but was acquitted of Roberts' murder, in which there was no DNA match. On April 21, 2009, Westchester Judge Barbara Zambelli sentenced him to the maximum, 25 years to life. Huppelsberg and one of her brothers gave victim impact statements and insisted they would oppose parole every time West came up for it.
Westchester prosecutors learned of sentencing mistake that would make West eligible for parole
It wasn't until 2015 that prosecutors learned of the mistake in sentencing, when the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision alerted them to the calculation of when West would be eligible for parole.
A trial prosecutor wrote to the parole board that year and again before each of West's parole interviews. They were long letters detailing West's crimes — he had convictions for sex abuse and robbery in addition to the killings — and reminding the board of the sentencing error that made West eligible for parole far too soon.
The prosecutor declined to comment this week, as did Zambelli, who retired in 2017.
The family also wrote letters each year and in November 2024 met in person with a parole commissioner, imploring them not to set West free.
But two of the three parole commissioners who interviewed West in February, Lee and Tana Agostini, voted to release him. Commissioner Elise Segarra opposed his release, as she did in 2020 when West first came up for parole.
Interview transcripts enrage O'Keefe family, prosecutors
Lee conducted the interview. When they read the transcript in recent months, Huppelsberg and prosecutors were incensed by Lee's apparent victim-blaming, when she asked West if O'Keefe "liked to hang out in bars, she liked to have sex with younger men, right?"
West told the commissioners he and O'Keefe were "friends with benefits" and reiterated his insistence that he was innocent of killing her.
The District Attorney's Office was further shocked to read in the most recent transcript that Lee told West the commissioners had not received any correspondence from prosecutors.
When asked in an email about that, Thomas Mailey, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, said it was a "misstatement" and that the letters were in the file provided to commissioners. He did not answer follow up questions about whether Lee actually read those letters.
Asked if Lee could explain her seeming disparagement of O'Keefe, Mailey responded only with a description of the makeup of the board and the statutory factors it must consider before deciding whether or not to grant parole.
Lee did not respond to a phone message left on her answering machine.
Prosecutors call for parole decision to be invalidated
In late March, DA Susan Cacace and the prosecutor wrote to the head of the parole board, Commissioner Darryl Towns, excoriating the interviewers and urging the board to reconsider the parole decision.
They called Lee's comments a "disgrace" and argued they should be the basis for invalidating the hearing. And they faulted the other commissioners for not calling Lee out for what she said.
"The Board re-victimized this innocent victim and they re-victimized each and every member of her family," they wrote. "Their treatment of Mrs. O'Keefe was shameful and a slap in the face of victims of sexual assault throughout the state."
Their letter said the commissioners appeared swayed by a letter to the board from lawyers for West, seeking to have the DA's Conviction Review Unit take a new look at West's case.
Part of that request focuses on the exclusion from the trial of evidence that West contends implicated the son of a friend of O'Keefe's in the killing. That man was a longtime suspect in the case, based primarily on statements a friend of his made that the two of them were in O'Keefe's apartment around the time she was killed. The friend died shortly before West's trial. His statements were not admitted at the trial.
The brief filed with the CRU seeks new DNA and fingerprinting testing of evidence that was earlier inconclusive to determine if it matched the original suspect.
The prosecutors wrote that West's claims had already been litigated in his three unsuccessful appeals of his conviction, but that the commissioners did not bother to check that or other claims West made in the interview.
"In our view, their behavior invalidated the entire proceeding as being nothing more than a biased affair designed to ignore facts and find a way to release the defendant," they wrote.
O'Keefe's daughter on sentencing loophole: 'Who thinks that's OK?'
When it became clear the parole decision wouldn't be reversed, Huppelsberg hoped that the state would pursue civil confinement of West. That's a process in which offenders, usually sex offenders, are kept in a secure psychiatric facility after their sentence concludes if they are determined to have a mental abnormality that makes it likely they will re-offend.
It does not appear that state officials pursued that.
West was never required to register as a sex offender because he could not be charged with rape in O'Keefe's killing, as the statute of limitations had expired and the state sex offender registry was established three years after his sex abuse conviction.
Huppelsberg said the law has to be changed to ensure that there are no loopholes that allow violent criminals to serve less than the minimum sentence, like in West's case.
"Who made that rule up?" she asked. "Who thinks that's OK?"