Lois Thacker

While a spouse against spouse crime is the most common and of course I have blogged about several of those types of cases here, it is not my primary focus on cases. Sadly they are just so “commonplace.” The spouse is the first one suspected in a crime, we all know that. When blogging about such cases I try to find the “more interesting” ones. They are the ones that have multiple murders or interesting legal proceedings. This case has both.

Lois Music married Phillip Huff in 1974. They appeared to have a few children and then in February of 1983 Phillip was murdered in Orange County Indiana. I believe the couple lived in the town of Paoli but they could have just as easily lived in the town of French Lick, most famous as being the place basketball great Larry Bird grew up. Okay, I always wonder if people like Larry Bird and John Mellencamp are as “big” outside of Indiana as they are in the state. There are very few details about Phillip Huffs murder but apparently his wife confessed to shooting him with a shotgun. He was shot twice in the heart with the shotgun that had been loaded with deer slugs. It was said that the prosecutors failed to get an indictment (did they try??) because it was determined that Lois had shot Phillip in self defense.

Within two months Lois was remarried to John Thacker, a man she would later claim to have known and loved since she was fourteen years old. It does not appear that authorities found this suspicious, or if they did it seems nothing was pursued in Phillip's murder. Then on November 2, 1984 John Thacker was found murdered on a rural road near his home. Just like Phillip, John had been shot twice in the chest with a shotgun that contained deer slugs. Ultimately seven people would be arrested for being involved in John Thacker's murder but it is not completely clear just how investigators came to the conclusions that they did.

Lois herself was arrested on November 5^th. She would ultimately be charged with hiring others to murder her husband. The others arrested was Lois' eighteen year old sister, Connie Busick, her forty-six year old mother Mary Music, her seventeen year old cousin Charles Music, twenty-seven Donald Buchanan Jr. who was dating her older sister, thirty-four year old James Hart and twenty-three year old Rwauna (I have also seen her name spelled Twauna) Wilder. The men, along with Lois, were charged with murder while Connie and Mary were charged with assisting a criminal; Wilder was charged with obstructing justice.

As is often the case, at least one co-conspirator started talking and giving the story. It is unclear exactly who said what or even when they first said it. The three men would claim that they were not only pushed to murder John Thacker by Lois, the courts determined that at least one, Buchanan, had been offered compensation for doing so. They would also claim that she also stated that she wanted John murdered just like Phillip had been and apparently claimed at least to a few of them that she and John had killed Phillip together. Charles Music would appear to claim that Lois had told him that John had killed Phillip, a friend of his. All the men also claimed that when they were not doing it fast enough for Lois she repeatedly taunted them by calling the cowards among other things. They alleged that Lois told them where to do the shooting, which was on a rural road that John was known to travel.

There were claims that there was an attempt made the night before the murder but that the men had been unable or unwilling to pull the trigger which infuriated Lois. So she sent them back out with a new plan on the night of November 2^nd. She sent them out early so that they could place a log across the road that would force John to have to get out of his car. Lois also ordered that John's wallet be brought back to her because there were important papers inside. So, the three men did as Lois wanted. They placed the log in the way of the road and when John Thacker stopped his car and got out Charles Music shot and killed him. My research was not specific but it stated that two of the men returned to Lois' home where they gave her John's wallet and she gave one of the men clean closed and put their muddy clothes in her washer. The prosecution theory was that this was done for the $134,000 in life insurance that John had. Days after Lois' arrest authorities reported that they were re-opening the murder case of Phillip Huff.

My research stated that “all three men testified against her at trial after entering plea agreements” however, I am unsure how true that was. Another piece of research indicated that at the time of Lois' trial Charles Music, James Hart and even Lois' mother were planning to take their cases to trial. What I can tell you from information on the Indiana Department of Corrections website is that Donald Buchanan received a thirty year sentence for conspiracy to commit murder and was released from custody in January of 2001; Charles Music received a forty-five year sentence for the charge of murder and was released in April of 2008. I also found an article that stated that Connie Busick was given a three year sentence for assisting a criminal and that Rwauna Wilder received two years for obstructing justice. I can also say that Donald was sentenced prior to Lois' trial while Charles was sentenced after.

Lois' trial was moved to nearby Jasper in Dubois County and began in May of 1985. The jury took an hour and a half to deliberate before finding her guilty. The prosecution had asked for the death penalty and the jury complied. On June 27, 1985 the judge officially sentenced Lois to death. The “aggravating” factors used to come to this decision were the fact that she had hired someone, or promised compensation for the murder and the prosecution argued that she “lied in wait.” Appeals were filed and it appears as if the first, if not more than the first, upheld her conviction and her sentence. Then in 1990 the courts made a different decision but it should be noted that it was a close call of 3-2 and the two dissenting judges were very verbal about it. The court ended affirming her conviction but overturned her death sentence. Keep in mind that women rarely make it to death row to begin with, and even more common have their death sentences reverse. When Lois went to death row it was said she was only the second woman awaiting execution in Indiana.

I did some searching and I was unable to determine what other woman may have been on death row at that time. I have also questioned whether this was a mistake and whether they were speaking about a later time. While Lois was sentenced to death in June of 1985 the following year in June, Debra “Denise” Brown was also given a death sentence. The state of Indiana has executed 92 men in the state but they have never executed a woman.

The 1990 appeal by Lois Thacker was met with criticism. In essence the court argued two things that they said did not rise to the level in which they felt a death sentence was warranted. The first one was confusing. While they apparently admitted that Buchanan was offered money as an incentive to murder John Thacker, they claimed the other men, including Charles Music, who actually shot John Thacker was not directly offered anything by Lois. They admitted that Music and Hart may have expected something in return but could not prove that she had offered them anything in return. They could not argue however that she had “goated” them into doing the deed. The second thing they argued was the “lying in wait” issue. Three of the judges agreed that while the other men were murdering her husband, Lois was at her home in Paoli. Now, the same could not be said for the men as they went to the scene, laid the log across the road and then waited for Thacker to come down the road. In the end the vote was 3-2 to overturn her death sentence but affirm her conviction. The two dissenting judges strongly disagreed with both points that the others stated. They claimed even if one were to agree that Music and Hart did not hear directly from Lois about some compensation, Buchanan had. They also disagreed with their decision to claim Lois was not lying in wait because she was not at the scene but at her home. The dissenting judges had some compelling arguments and legal precedence to back themselves up but obviously they had not convinced the other three. The appeal came down on July 23, 1990 releasing Lois from death row.

On October 4, 1990 the courts re-sentenced Lois to sixty years in prison. In 1991 another appeal was filed saying that she was given a twenty year enhancement when she was sentenced and that was not warranted. The claim was that the courts had ruled against aggravating factors in 1990. This time the appeals court responded with pointing out that the aggravating factors did exist, they just did not rise to level of warranting a death sentence. This time Lois' conviction AND her sentence were affirmed. She was released from prison in April of 2013.

It is unclear whether Lois ever admitted the role that she played in John's murder. At her trial she was proclaiming her innocence claiming John was the love of her life. She had turned down a plea offer, and “she also refused to allow jurors to consider a lesser offense such as assisting a criminal” This information came from a book titled Notorious 92 which is about the counties in Indiana and their most famous crime. It is also unclear what ever came from the investigation in Phillip Huff's murder. I found no information about where Lois now resides or whether she has had any more run ins with the law.