FIEND TO BE FREED
Parole is granted to convict in ’77 double rape-slay
A man who beat, raped and murdered two mothers in a Westchester County home invasion as their young children listened to their screams is about to be freed by the state parole board.
Samuel Ayala — one of the three men convicted in the horrific attack on Bonnie Minter and her friend Sheila Watson at Watson’s South Salem home in 1977 — is set to be released as early as Sept. 3, the board and Minter’s son, Jason, said on Monday.
“Six years ago, when the board asked Ayala if he hadn’t run out of bullets, would he have killed the four young children present so that there were indeed no witnesses, he did not answer,” Jason Minter recalled in a lengthy Facebook post.
“His silence said it all.”
Minter was 6 years old on March 2, 1977, when his mom, 32, and Watson, 38, were raped and shot by Ayala and his accomplice Willie Profit, while Minter, his little sister and Watson’s young son and daughter cowered in a nearby room. A third man, James Walls, remained outside for most of the attack.
Minter and his sister Maggie had successfully fought every two years to keep Ayala, now nearly 70, behind bars since he became eligible for parole in 2002.
But this year, the coronavirus struck, and the siblings believe it hurt their case when Ayala came up for parole again in March, as officials were pushing to release inmates early and communication was limited to teleconferencing.
“We were also unable to meet with a board member due to their rules regarding COVID on this last parole hearing cycle. We were willing to meet anyone we needed to speak with, even through Zoom,” Minter wrote in his post, which included a clipping of a 1978 Post article on Samuel and Profit’s conviction on all 56 counts in the case.
“It occurred to us that our statements might have less power without being able to meet face to face. Yet, we continued to hope for the best. We can only speculate that COVID and the lack of in-person accessibility might have impacted our ability to resonate with the board as it had in previous years.”
A rep for the board confirmed on Monday that it had voted on July 20 to release Ayala as early as Sept. 3.
The board refused to release a transcript of the hearing, saying The Post would to have to file a request through the Freedom of Information Act to get it.
In his Facebook post, Minter recounted particularly heinous details of the crime.
“We know the board was aware that Ayala joked and laughed at his prowess during the rapes,” he wrote.
“They also knew that we very vividly remember his cackling laughter as he raced down the stairs and through the house that day after personally firing the multiple bullets that killed both my mom and her friend as they crawled away.
“Children saw this. Children heard this. Children do not forget these kinds of details.”
He recalled to The Post in 2014 how Profit threatened him with a gun when he tried to intervene.
“I tried to save my mother — I was 6 years old,” Minter said.
“The last words I heard my mother say were her begging for the life of her children.’’
Ayala could not be reached for comment.