True Crime Stories

This is a case of justice NOT served. This is not a case in which an innocent person was sent to prison or a murder went unsolved. This is a case in which it was proven, not once, but twice that the defendant had murdered his wife. The first conviction was overturned on a technicality that had nothing to do with the evidence. The second conviction was overturned because the courts did not agree with the prosecutors, or the jury apparently, that “premeditation” existed and in essence said that the prosecutors “over charged” in the case. The result was that Bruce Hummel was not only released from prison but prosecutors were barred from trying him again. This was not just a simple case of murder, not that there really is such a thing I suppose. This was a case in which not only does it seem clear that Bruce Hummel murdered his wife, Alice, in 1990, but he spent many of the eighteen years before his arrest sending gifts and cards and letters to the children that he and Ali...

This case bothers me, a lot. It is a case in which the only apparent evidence against the defendant were eye witnesses that even the appeals court did not believe were very reliable. There were two trials and while the first trial had a bit more evidence, that was thrown out by the courts and a new trial was ordered. This is one of those cases where I feel as if I must be missing something because not only was the defendant convicted once, but twice. I am not going sit here and tell you that Carol Ege did not have a motive to kill Cindy Thompson or even that she may have liked to have seen her dead, or at the very least, out of her life. Two men say that Ege offered them $350 to kill Cindy Thompson but they claim hey did not go through with it and prosecutors had no evidence she convinced anyone else to do it. In fact, they argue that Carol Ege could not find anyone else so she did it herself, and yet there seemed to be no trace of her at the crime scene. On the mornin...

T here are few things that irritate me more when it comes to the law then the blatant disregard of it inside a courtroom. It is not, as I imagine some would believe, that I have a “bleeding heart” for defendants per se but a fair trial not only helps to ensure (although not always) that the innocent are freed and the guilty are convicted. Of course a lot of variables come into play to make these things happen and some cannot be controlled like how much evidence is available or what that evidence contains. But, things such as behaviors by all attorney's involved, and even the judge can also make or break a case. When there is misconduct from any side there is the risk of justice not being served properly. Sometimes that can include the prosecution of an innocent person, or like in this case, the reversal of court proceedings in a case that was clearly going to be a win for the prosecution. In 2004 Fredrick Baer, a resident of Indianapolis, was working on a construct...

I believe that this case is a bit different than any that I have done, at least from a judicial standpoint. I have done cold cases and cases that may have not had a lot of evidence available directly linking the defendant to the case but nothing quite like this. This was a case that after a conviction was procured the defendant appealed the case and had his conviction overturned and a new trial was ordered. That is not unusual, I have blogged about several cases where this has happened. The difference here is that the prosecution appealed this ruling not once, but twice. They lost the first time but won the second time and the conviction was reinstated. This action has me on the fence as to how I feel about it. I feel like the prosecution was able to appeal until they got someone to agree with them. Now, this does not mean that I think the defendant was innocent or even that I agreed with the two courts that thought he deserved a new trial but often for me it is the point...

One of the first things I came across in my research on one of the perpetrators of this crime was an appeal from 2014.  I love working with actual appeal papers. They condense down the events that occurred during the acting out of the crime as well as during any trial that took place and they deal solely with the legal aspects of things.  This appeal was different in many ways however. First, there had been no trial against Randal Crosley nor his accomplice, Jordan Buskirk so the fact that there was an appeal was quite unusual. Both Crosley and Buskirk had agreed to plea deals with the prosecutors and in general that prevents an appeal taking place.  However, in this case Crosley had filed an appeal based on the sentence that he had received.... an eighty-one year "aggravated" sentence.  This was a term that I had never heard before and to be honest even after a search to define the terms I was unsuccessful.  What seems a bit more confusing is that the pr...