(LEX 18) — A convicted rapist and attempted murderer will be released from prison on August 19, after serving 17 years for a brutal attack in Breckinridge County in 2007.

Ernest Pine will be free this week, despite the gruesome nature of his crime that shares striking similarities with an unsolved murder from 1992 in Hardin County.

"I don't understand how someone serving time for the kind of crimes that he is, is granted an early release, good behavior or not," said Danny Hawkins, whose mother was murdered in a similar attack in 1992.

Pine was never formally connected to or charged in the murder of Elena Sanchez Hawkins, who was murdered in her Boston, Kentucky home at just 29 years old. Now, for the first time, Elena's oldest son is speaking publicly about the unsolved crime.

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