Douglas Prade

Douglas Prade, a former Akron police captain spent nearly 15 years in prison for his ex-wife's killing before a judge released him. That decision was tossed out by an appeals court this week and he was ordered back behind bars on Thursday. He is pictured here in 2013 after being released from the Madison Correctional Institution in London, Ohio.

(AP/Jay LaPrete)

AKRON, Ohio -- A Summit County Common Pleas judge ordered former Akron police Capt. Douglas Prade back behind bars for the 1998 of killing his former wife, Margo.

Judge Christine Croce placed Prade, 67, in the county jail, a day after the Ohio Ninth District Court of Appeals reversed retired Judge Judy Hunter's decision that allowed Prade out of prison in January 2013. Croce took the case over for Hunter.

"If he had told the truth in the beginning it would have been over a long time ago," said Veronica Sadler, Margo Prade's sister. "I feel for their kids. They got a chance to see their dad for awhile, but I won't see Margo."

County Prosecutor Sherri Bevan Walsh's office had sought Prade's arrest, based on the appellate ruling. Walsh's office wanted Prade returned to prison. Prade's attorneys appealed the decision to the Ohio Supreme Court.

Croce set a hearing for 10 a.m. April 4 to determine whether Prade is entitled to bail. Meanwhile Prade's attorney Lisa Gates asked that he be placed in protective custody "due to threats made to him."

Prade had been serving a life sentence in the Madison Correctional Institution, where he was serving a life sentence for the 1997 slaying of Dr. Margo Prade. A Summit County jury convicted him in 1998 of aggravated murder and other charges.

Hunter released Prade based on a new DNA analysis. In her ruling, she said test results made on Margo Prade's lab coat and other items, as well as evidence from the trial, had excluded Douglas Prade and convinced her that no reasonable juror would convict Prade.

The appellate court, however, threw out Hunter's ruling and said the judge abused her discretion.

"Given the enormity of the evidence in support of Prade's guilt and the fact that the meaningfulness of the DNA exclusion results is far from clear, this court cannot conclude that Prade set forth clear and convincing evidence of actual innocence,'' appellate Judge Beth Whitmore wrote in a unanimous opinion.

Whitmore said the trial's testimony and a post-conviction-relief hearing included testimony that portrayed Douglas Prade as a jealous, obsessed man who tapped his wife's phones and videotaped her in public. The couple divorced several months before Margo Prade's death Nov. 26, 1997.

The ruling Wednesday noted that the new tests clearly excluded Douglas Prade as a contributor of the DNA on the bite mark of Margo Prade's lab coat. But the ruling said that it was possible that such a low level of DNA may have been left behind that it was not detected.

“Having conducted a thorough review of the DNA results and the testimony interpreting those results, this court cannot say with any degree of confidence that some of the DNA from the bite mark section belongs to Margo’s killer,’’ the opinion said. “Likewise, we cannot say with absolute certainty that it does not.

Sadler, who wore her sister's medical name badge to the hearing, said she would not know what to say to Prade if they met. She had seen him earlier this year in a grocery store, but said nothing. "My mother is gone, my sister is gone and I'm tired," she said. "I have feelings for him, he was my brother-in-law."