OCEANSIDE -- Lucy and Frank Shivak were devastated by the murder of their adult daughter 23 years ago. And now, the killer may be allowed to leave prison.

In December, members of the state's board of parole determined that Jeffrey Langnese, who admitted that he savagely beat and killed Lisa Marie Shivak in 1986, has been deemed suitable for parole.

"I went 23 years without my daughter, my beautiful oldest daughter," said Frank Shivak, 79, last week. "And he wants to get out because he's been good?"

Langnese has been imprisoned since not long after he beat the 27-year-old woman at his El Cajon home, wrapped her body and dumped it on the Viejas Indian reservation in East County. Langnese pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 15 years to life.

Lucy Shivak said she established the first North County chapter of a national grief support group known as Parents of Murdered Children, but handed it over to others because it took an emotional toll.

It is the same feeling that washes over her each time she gets notice of a parole hearing for Langnese.

After six trips before the parole board throughout the years, Langnese was found suitable for parole at a Dec. 19 hearing at San Quentin State Prison, where he is housed. But his release must first be approved by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, which is standard for all inmates found suitable for parole if they are serving a life sentence.

The governor's office has about four months to issue a ruling as to whether Langnese can leave prison.

Langnese's attorney, Steve Difilippis, said Tuesday that his client is a good candidate for release on parole.

"This guy has had evaluations up and down for years, and the (prison) doctors say he is not dangerous," Difilippis said. "He's spent 23 years in prison doing everything he possibly can to change himself as a human being."

The attorney said Langnese is a former methamphetamine addict who immersed himself in substance abuse classes while in prison, and also became a machinist.

If he is released, Langnese plans to live in Northern California in a sober-living environment for Vietnam veterans, Difilippis said.

Prosecutors say they plan to fight his release, no matter how much progress Langnese has made while in prison.

"It was so brutal," said Deputy District Attorney Richard Sachs, who heads up the office's unit dealing with parole cases for people with life sentences. "It was one of those crimes where we think an inmate should never be released. This was a deliberate, vicious, brutal murder."

"We don't have any sympathy for Jeffrey Langnese," Sachs added. "We'd like to see him stay in prison."

Langnese was a small-time drug dealer who beat Lisa Shivak with the butt of a shotgun, said Deputy District Attorney Steve Anear, the prosecutor handling the case under Sachs.

The man then wrapped her body in a bedspread and sleeping bag, put it into the back of his pick-up truck and drove to a relatively remote area, Anear said. There, Langnese dumped her body and then backed over it with the truck.

"If the beating did not kill her," Anear said in an e-mail, "getting run over certainly did."

The young woman died of massive head injuries. Her body was found a few days later by two little girls collecting firewood, the Shivaks said.

A small tattoo helped to identify Lisa Shivak's body. Her family had to keep her casket closed at her funeral.

"He brutally, savagely beat that girl to death," Frank Shivak said.

Prosecutor Anear said a true motive for the killing is unknown. But, he said, Langnese claimed Lisa Shivak had ties to a drug robbery committed at his home the week prior.

Langnese was a Vietnam veteran who was discharged from the Army after being seriously wounded in action, Anear said. Difilippis said Langnese had been hit in the head by shrapnel.

The defense attorney said Langnese has no other violence on his record, and that the killing came at the end of a four-day meth bender. He said his client was enraged by the earlier robbery, and confronted Lisa Shivak when she was at his home.

"With four days of not sleeping, pretty much out of his mind, he ends up killing her," Difilippis said. "There was absolutely no violence before or after this event. This is a situational type of event, where a guy commits a pretty heinous act one time as a result of situational stress."

Retired Navy man Frank Shivak said he and his wife of 50 years moved to Oceanside in 1991 to flee memories in the east San Diego home they were living in at the time Langnese killed their daughter.

Seated at their kitchen table last week, the couple offered coffee and fresh-baked cinnamon rolls along with stories about their daughter, one of five children. Frank Shivak smiled as he talked of taking his kids camping and teaching them to swim.

When the topic turned to Langnese, anger erased the twinkle in his eyes.

The couple have attended all of his parole hearings, either in person or through video conferences. Each time, 74-year-old Lucy Shivak brought her daughter's high school photo.

"This is the one I bring," she said, gripping a framed 8-inch-by-10-inch picture, which usually sits in the center of a table of photos in the family's dining room. The color in the old photo is fading now, growing fuzzier with time.

"She should be at the parole hearings."

Lucy Shivak said she was stunned as she listened on Dec. 19 as parole board members gave a thumbs-up to Langnese's release.

"I just didn't believe it," she said. "How could they?"

Contact staff writer Teri Figueroa at (760) 740-5442 or tfigueroa@nctimes.com.