Topeka ? For a seventh time, the family of a park worker who was abducted, raped and stabbed to death in 1974 are fighting to keep her killer behind bars.

Frank J. Pencek was married with a child and serving as a soldier at Fort Riley when he stopped at the toll booth at Milford Lake, northwest of Junction City.

There he met his victim, Elizabeth Bush, a 20-year-old Kansas State University student who was working at the park.

Pencek, now 59, offered an insanity defense but was convicted in 1975 and sentenced to two life terms plus five to 20 years.

“If there would have been a death penalty, we wouldn’t be here,” Geary County Sheriff Jim Jensen told the Kansas Parole Board during a hearing Friday on Pencek’s latest request.

The state’s previous death penalty law was struck down in 1972 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled capital punishment unconstitutional.

Eight others opposed the release, including former Geary County Sheriff Bill Deppish and Bush’s elderly parents, Don and Norma Bush.

“All of us believe that if he gets out, he will kill again,” Deppish said.

No one spoke Friday in favor of parole for Pencek, who is now an inmate at the Wichita Work Release Center.

Pencek, whose last prison disciplinary violation was for disobeying orders in 1996, is to meet Dec. 15 with parole board members.

A decision from the board is expected two to three weeks later.

Six other requests for parole have been denied.

Bush’s sister, Carol Coffman, said a letter of apology Pencek sent two years ago to Bush’s family shows he is still making excuses.

In the letter, Pencek wrote that he felt a deep sense of sorrow and shame for his crimes, which were committed on a day when he had just been humiliated at Fort Riley and wanted to lash out at someone or something.

“Nothing was planned,” he wrote. “It was on the spur of the moment originating from a burst of anger and not having a release mechanism in place to curb the anger.”

After abducting Bush and having “sexual relations” with her, Pencek wrote that she three times refused his request that she not tell anyone.

“I couldn’t have her tell everyone and expose me, I had my family to think about,” he wrote. “About that time, I saw the knife on the dashboard in the front of the car and momentarily decided what I needed to do. She was going to tell on me and I couldn’t let that happen.”

Coffman said the family also plans to speak against Pencek’s release during parole board hearings Monday in Wichita and on Nov. 27 in Kansas City, Kan.