N2 – Cat. 1
Teens charged in murders
Alan Stewart
The Corydon Democrat
Two 18-year-old males are behind bars in Floyd County after allegedly murdering a Harrison County couple Saturday morning in what police say was a robbery that went wrong. Formal murder charges were filed in Harrison Superior Court yesterday afternoon (Tuesday), and the suspects are expected to arrive in Harrison County for their initial hearing sometime in the next 48 hours, Harrison County Prosecutor J. Otto Schalk said.
Schalk said yesterday during a press conference that he’s weighing the death penalty for the suspects.
“One of the single most important decisions that I’m tasked with as prosecutor is choosing whether or not to seek the death penalty for an individual, even more so for an 18-year-old. Capital punishment must be reserved for those individuals whose crimes exhibit truly the worst of human nature,” Schalk said. “At this point, I would say seeking the death penalty is strongly being considered. However, I will not make such a decision arbitrarily ... “
According to Chief Wayne Kessinger of the Harrison County Sheriff’s Dept., who interviewed the suspects, in the early morning hours Saturday, Kevin (Drew) Schuler, of the 11900 block of Nadorff Road in Greenville, and Austin Bryan Nelson Chancelor Scott, who resides in New Albany, were riding a four-wheeler that was sputtering and running low on fuel. They stopped at a house along Nadorff Road to try and get some gasoline but decided the house was too close to the road and moved on to look for fuel at a home in the 9100 block of Walk Drive near Greenville.
According to a family member of one of the victim’s, a neighbor reported seeing Schuler on the Walk Drive property sometime Friday; when the neighbor asked what he was doing, Schuler allegedly drove off.
Police said Schuler and Scott did eventually enter the home of Asenath (Senie) Arnold, 57, and Gary L. Henderson, 70. The front door lock appeared to have been broken in, and the rear door was unlocked, so it’s unclear as to which door the pair used to gain access, Kessinger said.
Kessinger said one of the suspects lived nearby and may have known the victims. Yesterday, Schalk said Schuler had helped cut wood for Henderson.
An employee of the victims’ carriage ride business, Welcome Home Horse Carriages, arrived at the couple’s home Saturday morning and was preparing horses for pony rides later that day. The employee noticed that neither victim had emerged from the home after calling multiple times and she went inside at about 11 a.m. to investigate. That’s when the employee found Arnold’s body and called police. After arriving, police went inside the house to do a sweep to make sure no one else was inside, and that’s when Henderson’s body was found upstairs.
Kessinger said both victims were in separate bedrooms in the home, with Arnold having been beaten to death with a wooden part of a horse harness, called a single tree, and Henderson having received 23 stab wounds to his body on the second floor. Stab wounds were also found on Arnold’s body.
During interviews with police, Scott allegedly said he used a fixed-blade knife he was carrying with him to kill Henderson, and Schuler described how he punched Arnold in the face and struck her in the head with a wooden stick. An autopsy at the Jefferson County (Ky.) Medical Examiner’s Office revealed that Henderson died as a result of sharp force injuries to his chest and head while Arnold died as a result of blunt force trauma to the head.
“It was a senseless, heinous, gruesome beating of a defenseless elderly couple,” Kessinger said. “He was in his 70s, and she used a walker to get around. It was just totally senseless. Two people are dead over a gallon of gas, a few guns and a little money.”
Kessinger, who has investigated hundreds of homicides in a law enforcement career that has spanned several decades, said the murders Saturday ranked in the top three of any he’s investigated in terms of heinousness.
He also said that the case had all the earmarks of being a unsolved case – no witnesses, committed in a rural area – until there was a lucky break later that day.
Kessinger said that Schuler and Scott went to Scott’s home in New Albany. For an unknown reason, Scott’s twin brother, Justin, struck Schuler in the left eye. Austin Scott fired a gun in response, causing someone to call the New Albany Police Dept. to report an altercation and shots fired. Schuler and Scott fled the scene in a red pick-up truck, but not before the person who reported the ruckus described to police the type of vehicle they were in.
Officers located the vehicle and questioned the occupants. Upon searching the vehicle, police located large amounts of prescription medications and three guns that both teens allegedly admitted came from the murder scene in Harrison County. According to the probable cause affidavit filed in Harrison County, during the traffic stop Scott allegedly told NAPD officers that he and Schuler had been involved in the killing of an elderly man somewhere off of Nadorff Road.
“That was a huge break in the case and allowed us to tie it all together. I can’t say enough about the outside help from the New Albany Police Dept., the Floyd County Sheriff’s Dept. and the Indiana State Police crime scene techs,” Kessinger said. “I’ve worked with the belief that 80 percent of solving a case is the effectiveness of the investigation and knowledge and 20 percent is luck. In this case, luck played a little bigger role. Forensics at the scene would have probably eventually led us to these two, but that would have taken quite some time.”
As of press time, Scott and Schuler were being held at the Floyd County Jail after having their first day in court on Monday. Cash bond was set at $500,000 for Scott, and $50,000 for Schuler. (Scott’s is higher due to his charges; see below.) Floyd County Prosecutor Keith Henderson said the large bond amounts were intentional to keep the two behind bars until Harrison County had a chance to file charges yesterday.
In Harrison County, Schuler and Scott are both being charged with three counts of murder (one each for the deaths and another because murder was committed while in the act of burglary, which is a separate offense), and single felony counts of Class A felony robbery and burglary and Class D felony theft.
In Floyd County, Schuler is being held on two counts of Class D felony theft, Class D felony possession of a controlled substance and Class A misdemeanor carrying a handgun without a license. Scott was charged with Class C felony criminal recklessness for discharging the handgun, Class D felony receiving stolen property and possession of controlled substance and Class A misdemeanor carrying a handgun without a license.
The murder weapons were located and collected as evidence and much of the stolen property was recovered.
Schuler’s criminal record in Floyd County includes a domestic battery charge in 2010 and five felony drug charges in one case this year. Schuler’s drug case is still pending in Floyd Superior Court.
Scott’s only criminal record in Floyd County is a charge of illegal consumption of alcoholic beverage by a minor. That case was decided last month.
Also assisting in the case was the Harrison County Prosecutor’s Office.
N2 – Cat. 2
Indiana’s No. 1 ... in number of meth labs
STEPHANIE TAYLOR FERRIELL
Salem Leader and Salem Democrat
Young children being carried away, crying and screaming for their parents, as those parents are handcuffed and placed into the backs of police cars.
Adults who haven’t worked in years, too strung out, too addicted to even consider seeking meaningful employment, much less having the ability to pass a drug test.
Homes burglarized, the perpetrators snatching whatever they can unload easily and quickly, desperate to find the cash for their next fix.
A once youthful and attractive 25-year-old who now looks twice her age; skin sagging, teeth rotting, body rail-thin.
This is what meth does. It devastates lives, destroys families and jeopardizes a community’s future. And the problem isn’t getting any better. In fact, in Indiana, it seems to be only growing worse.
The Indiana State Police Meth Suppression Section last week released 2013 meth lab statistics. State-wide, there were 1,808 meth lab seizures last year. That’s 82 more than in 2012.
The MSS said, based on information received from other states, Indiana will be first in the country in clandestine meth lab incidents for 2013.
While the increase in labs being seized is positive, Washington County Prosecutor Dustin Houchin said the increase isn’t exactly good news.
“Being number one in the nation is a dubious distinction of our state,” he said, noting that Madison County, Indiana, led the nation in number of meth labs seized in 2012. “I think there were 91,” said Houchin. “That’s just stunning.”
The state has tried to head off the problem, but has taken a tentative approach. The legislature restricted the amount of products containing pseudoephedrine, commonly found in cold and allergy medications, a person could purchase in 2005, but law enforcement officials say cooks circumvent that law by “smurfing;” recruiting others to buy it for them.
“What that law has created is more people buying a little bit at a time,” Houchin said. “Basically, someone can buy it for eight months before they need a prescription.”
Judging by the number of labs seized, the restriction has had an impact. The number of labs in Indiana has increased every year except one (2006, when 776 labs were seized) since the law was passed.
“Clearly, that leads to arrests, but it’s still an indication of a serious problem,” said Houchin. “Are we catching more because of it or are there more out there? Either way, it’s not getting better.”
Houchin said once again a bill was introduced this session to make drugs containing pseudoephedrine available by prescription only. “I think that is a useful tool and has worked in other states, and I would hope our legislature would take that step.”
In a report issued last year, the U.S. Government Accountability Office noted the decrease of meth labs in states, which had made PSE prescription-only. The state of Oregon saw its meth cases drop from 501 to 11 in 2006, one year after it made pseudoephedrine-containing medication available only by prescription.
Houchin said prosecutors across the state strongly endorse making PSE prescription only. The Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys Council, of which Houchin is vice-chair, will have to continue their efforts next legislative session; the bill introduced this year never made it out of committee.
The House Courts and Criminal Code Committee heard testimony on the bill Monday, but Chairman Judd McMillin did not take a vote, effectively killing the bill, as reported by NPR station WFIU.
McMillin says while he wanted to have a public dialogue, he’s not ready to take the next step to make pseudoephedrine prescription-only.
After taking a significant jump in 2007 (when 820 labs were seized statewide), the number of meth lab seizures in the Hoosier State has increased steadily over the past several years.
Washington County’s numbers have been huge the past two years, compared to all previous years over the past decade.
In 2013, there were 29 labs seized here, down slightly from the 36 in 2012. But from 2008-11, the number of meth lab busts was in the single digits; just three labs were seized here in both 2011 and 2010.
Houchin said an increased focus on meth activity, coupled with state restrictions, have boosted the number of meth arrests locally. Comparing drugs to a river, he said, “If you have more fishermen on the banks, you’re going to catch more fish. We’ve heavily focused on it, and those are the results. You have to make it a priority.”
The state adopted another measure advocates believed would help stem the rising tide of meth labs, the NPLEx system, a multi-state computerized system that allows law enforcement to track purchases of pseudoephedrine from pharmacies across the country. That bill was signed into law by then-Gov. Mitch Daniels May 13, 2011. Indiana became the 11th state to join the network of states tracking pseudoephedrine purchases electronically. There are now 19.
According to state police data, that effort, too, has had success. NPLEx was fully implemented Jan. 1, 2012. Meth lab seizures are up 29.6 percent since that time, according to ISP data.
Yet, finding those meth cooks, while they’re in the act, is like finding a needle in a haystack. And the introduction of the “one-pot” method has complicated matters almost exponentially. Previously, the “two-cook” system basically tied a cook to a location during the processing phase. Now, however, a lab can be a single soda bottle and a batch of meth can be cooked in about an hour, said Houchin. In a huge county, filled with almost 30,000 people, police officers are searching “for a Gatorade bottle,” said Houchin. “It’s a pretty tall order. Law enforcement officers have to find out not only who’s doing it, but where and when. In a county the size of Washington, that’s not an easy thing to do, when you look at the logistics of it.”
Then there’s the harsh reality of just how deep the meth problem runs. The lab seizures grab headlines and residents’ attention, but the truth is, “For every one [seized] there’s four or five more out there,” said Houchin.
“...I think we’re fighting forces that are bigger than us.”
N2 – Cat. 3
Courthouse petition deadline nears
KEVIN LILLY
Brown County Democrat
If you want to sign a petition for or against remodeling and expanding the Brown County Courthouse, you have less than a week to beat the deadline of 4 p.m. Monday, Sept. 9.
Clerk Beth Mulry said there has been a steady flow of people coming in to get petitions since the signature-gathering window opened Aug. 9. She declined to release the number of petitions picked up so far because she did not want to influence the remonstrance by indicating one side had gotten more petitionsthan the other.
The Brown County Commissioners are seeking a 15-year loan not to exceed $8.25 million to cover the cost of renovating the existing courthouse and adding a two-story addition, possibly with a town funded public restroom facing Van Buren Street.
About 200 Brown County taxpayers delayed the loan-seeking process by gathering enough signatures against the loan to force a petition race, or remonstrance.
As is generally practiced in Indiana government, the commissioners advertised a not-to-exceed amount of $8.25 million, which has created a stir among some Brown County residents.
The estimated cost of project is $6.5 million, but that does not include roughly $1 million in architectural and financing fees, furnishings and other costs, such as demolition of the current Brown County prosecutor’s office.
Commissioner Joe Wray is carrying a petition in support of the project. He said he believes the design by architect Burt Perdue is the county’s best option to address security, space constraints and compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
When he approaches people, Wray said, he has been surprised by the amount of misinformation he hears in response. He then presents them facts about the project.
“It’s amazing. When I cover those bases, they say, ‘Oh, well, I didn’t know that,’” he said.
Wray said he has received mostly positive feedback about proceeding with the project.
Brown County resident Pam Raider said she has had heard people complain about the estimated cost of the project while gathering signatures inopposition.
Like Wray, though, Raider was surprised by the number of uninformed people who will be impacted by increasing property taxes to pay back the loan.
County officials estimate that the owner of a $100,000 property would pay an additional $22 a year, while taxes on a $200,000 property would see $64 jump, and the bill on a $300,000 property would increase by $106 a year.
Raider understands that something needs to be done to improve the courthouse. She just wants to ensure that all options have been fully explored. Her biggest concern is how quickly she thinks commissioners moved on the project.
“Let’s consider this. Let’s slow it down. Let’s have a little conversation about it,” Raider said.
Wray said the topic has been discussed for more than a year. He wanted to know what else commissioners can study. He doubted that the county had money to relocate the courthouse to a new building.