A trial date has been set for the man Youngstown police believe raped and strangled an Ashtabula girl in their city more than 20 years ago.
Bennie Adams, 50, will face a jury May 5 on charges of aggravated murder, rape, kidnapping and aggravated robbery in connection with the death of 19-year-old Gina Gay Tenney.
A trapper checking his traps found the Edgewood Senior High School graduate’s body floating in the Mahoning River in Youngstown on Dec. 30, 1985.
Tenney was a student at Youngstown State University when her parents, Lucian and Avalon Tenney of Ashtabula, received the terrible news.
Today, the Tenneys are in their 80s, but they are going to the trial. Avalon Tenney will be the first witness for the prosecution.
“She was the last person to speak to Gina,” said Gina’s father, Lucian Tenney. “The prosecutors want to set the stage with her testimony.”
Police detectives always believed Adams, who dated the girl who lived in the apartment below Gina Tenney, raped and strangled her, but in 1985 they couldn’t prove it with certainty, Youngstown City Prosecutor Jay Macejko said.
“Bennie Adams is a predator,” he said. “I expect it was a crime of opportunity.”
In 1985, crime laboratories performed blood-typing tests, but the evidence investigators believed was related to the rape didn’t single out a suspect, Macejko said.
The case was given new life 20 years later, when Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann invited law-enforcement agencies to resubmit cold cases, especially sex offenses, for review now that DNA testing is available, Macejko said. Detective Sgt. Joe DeMatteo quickly thought of Gina Tenney. He was on the job when they pulled her from the river, and the circumstances of her death stuck with him for years, he said.
“She was here as a young college student,” DeMatteo said. “The totality of her death bothered all of us.”
DeMatteo gave credit to detectives Mike Lander and William Blanchard, and retired investigator Ray Petrus, for their determination. The detectives kept the evidence of the crime until science advanced to the point where DNA testing now singles out a perpetrator, using blood or other body fluids.
Adams is a registered sex offender who spent 18 years in prison for the murder, rape and kidnapping of a school principal. He was released in 2004.
Adams was arrested in early October on his way home from work in Struthers.
He’s being held on a $1.75 million bond set by Judge Elizabeth A. Kobly in Municipal Court.
Nearly two weeks after Tenney’s body was discovered, the Mahoning County coroner ruled she died of asphyxiation, likely caused by strangulation. She likely was killed a short time before her body was found, police said at the time.
Adams had long been on the radar of Youngstown police in connection with the crime, according to news reports of the time. Adams was held after he was found in possession of Tenney’s bank card, but linking him to the murder proved difficult. He later was charged with possessing stolen property.
The Tenney family last spoke with their daughter at 6:30 p.m. Dec. 29, 1985, when Tenney said she was on her way to meet a girlfriend.
For the Tenneys, Adams’ trial means justice finally may be served.
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Family awaits justice
Suspect in death of Ashtabula student in 1985 will finally get his day in court
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