Man Who Killed Son-in-Law Is Denied Parole

Despite political and community support for Herman “Rock” Kreutzer’s release, a parole board refused Thursday to free the onetime Wild West theme park owner convicted of gunning down his son-in-law in 1984.

A three-member panel at the state prison in San Luis Obispo, where the 59-year-old Kreutzer is serving a sentence of 17 years to life, said Kreutzer needs to make more progress toward rehabilitation and accepting responsibility for his crime.

The panel said Kreutzer, if he behaves, can have another parole hearing in two years. It could have delayed the next hearing for up to five years if it felt Kreutzer was not making progress.

Under law, an inmate must serve two-thirds of his minimum sentence before being eligible for a parole hearing, and Thursday’s was Kreutzer’s first.

His son, Kurt, said he was pleased that the panel set the next hearing for two years instead of later. “We knew he wasn’t going to walk out the door,” said Kurt Kreutzer, 30, a landscaper. “We’re just going to be better prepared next time with more letters of support.”

A spokeswoman for the Board of Prison Terms said the three members sitting in judgment of Kreutzer were influenced by the fact he had not taken classes available to inmates on anger control, decision-making and communication skills. Kreutzer promised to take such classes.

Kreutzer was also harmed by the fact that he stuck to the story he told a San Diego jury in 1985: that his son-in-law was armed and that the shooting was self-defense.

“His stark arrogance was apparent,” said San Diego County Deputy Dist. Atty. Geoff Allard, who attended the hearing. “He still thinks he cleaned up his ranch and did the world a favor by killing his son-in-law. All the evidence showed that the son-in-law was unarmed.”

Kreutzer’s sons, Kurt and Jerome, 38, a real estate agent, have worked to gain their father’s release by gathering letters of support from local politicians and garnering job offers. Both pleaded guilty to lesser offenses stemming from the fatal shooting of their sister’s abusive husband.

Before the shooting, Kreutzer ran the Big Oak Ranch and Frontier Town, which featured mock shootouts and country and western concerts. In prison, he has taken paralegal courses, become a jailhouse lawyer for other inmates filing appeals and practiced his singing and guitar-playing skills.