A man convicted in 1989 of killing his wife and encasing her body in concrete in the Dayton Daily News downtown building has died.

Theodore “Ted” Sinks, age 77, died Saturday morning at the Ohio State Medical Center, according to Ohio Department of and Rehabilitation and Correction Spokeswoman Jo Ellen Smith. He had been housed at the Pickaway Correctional Institution.

Sinks died nearly 30 years after he reported his wife’s disappearance, according to Smith. The body of Judy Sinks was found months later on the seventh floor on the newspaper’s former building on Ludlow Street.

The former Dayton Daily News maintenance supervisor last year was denied parole while serving a 15 years to life term a Montgomery County court handed down for beating and strangling of Judy Sinks, 44, in 1987.

Sinks reported his wife missing Nov. 23, 1987. He was arrested April 26, 1988, after Dayton police, based on evidence from a newspaper maintenance worker, found the body of Judy Sinks.

She had been a clerical worker in the newspaper’s circulation department.

Ted Sinks had placed his wife’s body in a plastic barrel and had a subordinate, who did not know the contents, help him move it up elevators and stairs to the top of the building at Fourth and Ludlow streets.

Ted Sinks died at 2:53 a.m. Saturday, according to Smith. The cause of death is pending the receipt of the death certificate, she stated.

Sinks lost his first bid for parole in 2005.

“I sure am tickled to death with that,” Judy Sinks’ younger brother, Larry Harmon, said at the time. “I want him to die there.”

He was again rejected five years later and again last year.

“I think it’s important that the parole board understand the brutality of the murder,” Judy Sinks’ daughter Amy Matney said last year. “Our goal is for him not to be released and, it doesn’t really matter, his age at this point, or how long he’s been in there. Our goal is to simply keep him behind bars.”