True Crime Stories

  I came across this case when I learned about the last one I wrote about. And, like the previous blog there was a lot of confusion on the date in which prosecutors believed this crime had occurred. In the last few months of the year of 1975 the city of Evansville Indiana was a violent one. There were six murders in the matter of seven days. Five of those murders seemed to be focused in much of the same area so much so that they were often lumped together in articles. The other issue with confirming times or dates of death was the fact that the bodies were not found immediately. In fact, on Tuesday December 2 nd the bodies of Joe Edwards and Phyllis McCown had been found earlier in the day and then at 8:30 that evening the body of seventy-nine year old Clara Vickery found was just a few blocks away. Prosecutors theorized that Edwards and McCown were murdered on December 1 st between eight in the morning and two in the afternoon. As my previous blog pointed out there were...

I was born in 1972 in Evansville Indiana. I moved away when I was almost five but I do not remember a whole lot about when I lived here. I say here because while I moved away in 1976, I moved back to the area in 2014. At the time that I moved back I knew certain areas of town that were not “good” and where not to go house hunting. I also knew when I moved to my current home in 2020 that this area used to be a very violent and crime ridden area. Several years ago the city was given a grant and started cleaning up some of the bad areas of town. I live now in what is considered the Arts District and historic home area. In fact the home I live in was built in the late 1800's. I came across this particular case when a discussion about the area I live in was brought up on a Facebook page. Actually a few crimes were brought up and upon some research I discovered that around the time I moved away from here and for a few years prior to that there had been a lot of unrest not ...

  This case has me a bit perplexed on some things. Everyone that has been or continues to be held on death row in Indiana can be found on a particular website. The site is full of information about a case, but more particularly about the person. If they have already been executed it will add things such as what they had for their last meal or their last statement. One of the more interesting things that it often shows is the mitigating and aggravating circumstances of the case. It was here that I found one of the confusing things. The second thing revolved around issues with the jury in the sentencing phase. I will get into these issues as I tell the story but I will let you know that while Daniel Ray Wilkes was sentenced to death in December of 2007, after several appeals upholding this sentence, in 2011 he was subsequently re-sentenced to life without parole. Daniel Ray Wilkes met Donna Claspell when they were both residents at a rehabilitation center in Evansville Indi...

After doing two very long and complicated cases I decided to do one that is very much not long, or complicated. At the time this case took place in Evansville Indiana in 1984 I lived in Indianapolis but still had family in the area. I knew approximately where this took place within the city and for years I would think about it as we drove on the main road near the home. On the morning of Thursday October 18, 1984 Candice Day returned home around 10:00 after working at her new job at the Post Office. When she walked in the door she found her husband, James, sitting in the front room in a chair with a gunshot wound to his head. She called 9-1-1 and then she went into each of her children's rooms and found that all six of her children were also dead. James had apparently shot fifteen year old Michael, fourteen year old Bartholomew, nine year old John, eight year old Stephen, seven year old Christopher and six year old Laura, all in the head while they lay sl...

I know that I have been slacking as of late in my effort to blog. There is never an issue of having enough cases, my list topples over 1,000, but there is often an issue of finding one to grab my attention and that is never so true as it has been today which is leading me to do something I have never done. First, I rarely compile a blog on a case that has not seen the inside of a courtroom unless it is deemed to be an extreme cold case that has never been solved, until now. Secondly, instead of researching this case first and making notes, I am basically winging this one and will do searches for specific places and dates. This latter part will be easy for me because I have followed the case through the news and social sites since it began. I could probably tell you this case inside and out, or at least the opinion of myself and many others in my community. This will definitely be a blog that eventually I will have to come back to and update which is why I try to avoid unfinis...