STREATOR - Henry Hillenbrand was again denied parole this week for a 1970 Streator double murder and will not be entitled to ask again for three years.

Hillenbrand, now 60, broke into the home of George Evans, 22, with whom his ex-girlfriend, Patricia Pence, 20, was staying, Prosecutors said.

Hillenbrand shot Evans while he was still in bed and then attacked Pence with the butt of a gun, prosecutors said. He then tried dragging her down the street, but she broke away and tried to run before he shot her several times in the back, prosecutors said.

Shortly after Hillenbrand pleaded guilty to the double murder, he escaped from the LaSalle County jail before he could be transported to prison.

He was caught in 1983 when he tried to smuggle a bear skin rug into the country from Canada. He had been living in Missouri under the name Tom Elliot.

He has been in Menard Correctional Center since then, serving concurrent sentences of 150 and 240 years. Under current law he could have gotten life without parole or the death penalty, but under the old sentencing guidelines he is eligible for parole every three years.

"The lives of innocent people were snuffed out for no reason," Milton Maxwell of the Prisoner Review Board wrote of the decision to deny parole. The murders "have left a deep and indelible scar on the family."

A petition opposing parole was circulated in Streator by family members of both victims. They also testified in the parole hearing in Pontiac.

Maxwell noted that Hillenbrand had shown some improvement in behavior but "that is not enough" to overcome the brutal nature of the crime.