The call came on a Saturday morning, just after ten. A state trooper patrolling twenty miles north of Kruthersville had spotted something in the spillway on the south side of Cypress Lake. He thought it might be a body. When we got there, it was hard to see what he was seeing at first.
But then the divers went in, and they pulled her out. It was Katie. A lot of people standing around had tears in their eyes. Me included.
Kruthersville, Indiana, is the kind of town where everybody knows everybody. Fifteen hundred people, mostly hardworking farmers and factory workers. It’s Indiana farm country, with creeks and small rivers running through the area. For years, people moved there because it was peaceful and quiet and relatively crime-free.
A murder hadn’t happened there in probably thirty or forty years. Katie Coleman was the baby of her family. Ten years old. Her parents, John and Angie, had two daughters, Jessica and Katie, who everyone called Katie for short.
She was known around the neighborhood for her outgoing nature, her wide smile, and her love of her dog. She loved coloring, playing, riding her bicycle, and playing with friends. She never met a stranger she didn’t like. On January 25th, 2005, Katie started her day like any other.
Her father, John, gave her a ride to school. He dropped her off and told her he loved her and would see her that evening. The afternoon passed quietly. When school let out, Katie went home.
Her mother asked her to run a quick errand at a nearby store, no more than 250 yards from where they lived. The store owner recognized Katie and helped her with her purchase. At four o’clock, Katie didn’t come home. John had gone into work at three that day.
Later that evening, his wife called him. “Katie’s gone,” she said. “What do you mean she’s gone? ”
She told him Katie had gone to the dollar store and never come back.
John immediately called the sheriff’s department. The initial information was that she was last seen walking away from the store heading towards Covenor Street around four in the afternoon. Nobody had seen her since. Police sent out search parties immediately.
They canvassed the neighborhood. The Jackson County Sheriff’s Department became involved, then the Indiana State Police. News of Katie’s disappearance spread quickly through the town. The people were upset.
They organized local efforts to find her. Everyone was involved, everyone was worried, everyone wanted to find Katie. As leads came in, John would talk with the police at his house, offering possibilities of where she might be or who she might be with. His first thought was that she had probably run away.
But John and Angie insisted their youngest daughter would never run away from home. She had loving parents. She had a family that cared very much about her. As the night wore on, fear gripped the entire community.
At the Coleman home, John and Angie were facing every parent’s worst nightmare. John told his wife to stay by the phone, because Katie knew the phone number. Maybe she was at a friend’s house and fell asleep and would show up at school the next morning. But he was very shook up.
It was his daughter, and he didn’t know where she was. The community rallied around the search. The fire station was used as the headquarters for the investigation. People from the community brought in all kinds of food for the searchers.
For the next forty-eight hours, search teams worked around the clock. Most of the community spent sleepless hours searching too. They pretty much looked everywhere they could think of. Some people took pictures of Katie and showed them around to neighboring communities, asking for any possible lead.
On January 27th, with no luck and very few leads, the FBI was brought in. Special Agent Tony Cidle led the investigation. They established a tip line and an Amber Alert went out. A lot of information was coming in from the public that had to be assessed.
Agent Cidle compiled the information to help piece together Katie’s movements on the afternoon of her disappearance. They determined she had stopped at an apartment building along the route she would have traveled. She went to the Dollar General store and returned by the same route, passing the same apartment complex. Police discovered Katie went to the nearby apartment to visit school friends just after 4:00 p.
m. Officials believed this was the last anyone saw of Katie. Tips from the public continued to pour in. With every Amber Alert, people call if they have any inkling they might have useful information.
Every single tip was investigated. On January 28th, an eyewitness came forward with startling information. She had seen Katie in a white pickup truck with a man. The woman recognized Katie but did not recognize the driver.
That struck her as odd. Thank goodness she was a very observant woman. She was able to give the police an excellent description of the man. A composite sketch was prepared of the driver.
Police were looking for a white Ford F-150 and a skinny white male, possibly wearing glasses and smoking a cigarette. Armed with this eyewitness account, police focused their investigation on locating the truck. They ran through the state Bureau of Motor Vehicle Records to find every white pickup truck and then hunted down those people and talked to them. Police released the composite sketch to the media.
The image of the slender white male appeared on television reports and in newspapers across the state. Investigators interviewed several men fitting the description, but none could be connected to the crime. With each passing day, police hoped for the best but began to suspect the worst. You get that feeling that things are not looking good.
After two or three days pass, you shift gears into a different mode. John’s initial reaction was that Katie was probably with a friend or hiding out somewhere in town. But when that didn’t happen, it was obvious something bad had happened. The investigation grew in size and scope.
Several police departments were now actively involved. They were looking all over town and then eventually expanded into the more rural areas. Then came the discovery at Cypress Lake. The tragic finding of Katie’s body closed one chapter of the heinous crime and forced police to shift the focus of their investigation to a homicide.
They had to completely change gears and find out who did this to this girl. Battling the cold January weather, police worked quickly and efficiently to secure the area, documenting every element of the crime scene exactly as it was found. Crime scene investigator Chris Lewis was one of the first to arrive. His job was to document the scene with still photography and video, so it could be recreated for other people.
He documented where exactly the body was, the position of the body, and the condition of the body. She was still completely clothed, and he didn’t remember seeing any external injuries, no knife wounds or bullet holes. Special Agent Tony Cidle led a team of experts to collect physical evidence. Evidence technicians recovered a large amount of debris from along the route that led to Cypress Lake.
They spent hours combing those areas, searching for anything that might have been discarded that could link Katie to the scene or to the individuals responsible for depositing her there. Being a public area with 24-hour access, there was a lot of potential evidence. What a normal person might consider trash—soda cans, beer cans, straws, cigarette butts, documents, ATM receipts—was all collected, cataloged, photographed, and noted where it was found. A very professional and thorough job was done because they were going to do DNA testing on all of the objects that seemed appropriate.
The brutal nature of Katie’s murder shook even the most experienced police officials. The circumstances of the recovery of her body in a body of water with her hands bound behind her back was overwhelming for the investigators and evidence technicians. They see a lot of really bad things, but there was a lot of grief among the investigators. You’re never ready to see a little girl being pulled out of water.
Initially, you hold onto some kind of hope that she might still be alive and you can get a return to appearance. But then, as they brought her body across the water, you could see her hands behind her back. News of the discovery of Katie’s body spread quickly through the town. Now faced with a child killer in their community, the people of Kruthersville reacted with shock, fear, and anger.
Everybody was outraged. Her classmates were upset. The parents of other children were upset. When you live in a small town like that, you have a certain sense of security.
Children may be abducted and murdered somewhere else, but it doesn’t happen in Kruthersville, Indiana. John and Angie were informed at their house by the FBI and the chief of police that they had found a body. John’s heart fell out of his body. Quite honestly, he wanted to die.
And then he wanted to find out who ever did it. News media from across the country descended on Kruthersville to capture the story of the murdered school girl. The coverage was unheard of. Every TV station from Kentucky to Indianapolis came to shoot footage with their trucks.
A formal press conference was held later that day. The release was limited to the fact that the body had been recovered, where it had been recovered, and that the investigation was continuing. At the Kentucky State Medical Examiner’s Office, forensic scientists performed the lengthy autopsy on Katie’s body. The results provided crucial clues.
The cause of death was drowning. That meant the murder scene was right there at Cypress Lake instead of somewhere else. The autopsy contained further key details. Her body was evaluated for trace evidence in the forms of hairs and fibers.
They collected red fibers from Katie Coleman’s torso at the autopsy. Every piece of microscopic evidence was collected and cataloged. But the most important discovery from the autopsy report was both troubling and telling. There was the presence of semen, and they knew she had been sexually assaulted.
At the state police lab, forensic scientist Paulita Maguire developed a DNA profile from the evidence. It was consistent with an unknown male individual at that time. They had some material present. They had a DNA profile from it.
But at the time, they did not know whose DNA it was. Police began to build a profile for the unknown murderer using both the evidence from the crime scene and psychological profiling. There are not many people who will kidnap, sexually assault, and murder a 10-year-old child without having meaningfully interacted with them previously. Clearly, the murder was done to cover up his guilt and for no other reason.
Special Agent Tony Cidle doubled his efforts. He requested and received a list of all registered sex offenders in bordering counties and within Jackson County. Then they cross-referenced that list with individuals who might have had access to or owned white Ford F-150s. On February 2nd, police got an unexpected break in the case.
A startling confession to the murder of 10-year-old Katie Coleman. Twenty-year-old Kruthersville resident Charles Hickman called the police with a stunning confession. On February second, he confessed to being responsible for Katie’s death. He provided details that fit with what they knew based upon their investigation, relative to her knowing that she had drowned.
They hadn’t released that information. Unemployed and a known drug user, Charles Hickman had a reputation for being less than credible. But the police couldn’t afford to take any tip lightly. They interrogated Hickman, careful not to reveal too much about the crime.
They held back something the public wouldn’t know. In this case, it was the fact that Katie’s hands were tied behind her and the manner in which they were tied. Hickman told them how she had drowned and where she drowned. He identified the white Ford F-150 that was used to transport her to Cypress Lake.
He had a home right there on the main drag, not far from where Katie lived. He would certainly have known Katie. They examined the information. They presented a probable cause hearing with several police officers in front of Judge Vance, who then issued an arrest warrant.
Chucky Hickman was charged. In the first of several interviews, Charles Hickman told police that on the afternoon of January 25th, Katie Coleman accidentally witnessed his illegal drug use on her way home from the dollar store. The apartment building Katie had visited had at least one apartment involved in the production or use of methamphetamine. She had perhaps encountered individuals using or producing methamphetamine.
They panicked. Hickman came forward and confessed to the murder, claiming Katie had been brought to his home. He told his interrogators that he and his friends tied Katie’s hands behind her back to intimidate her into not going to the police. He claimed he had taken her to Cypress Lake to scare her, and he couldn’t recall whether she had fallen into the lake or if he had accidentally bumped her into it.
She died because of that. His story was that she had accidentally fallen in and drowned, which was consistent with the way the body was recovered. Right away, police started to build their case against Charles Hickman by compiling the evidence. He frequented the apartment complex where she was last seen.
He was friends with the occupants there. He had a friend who had a white F-150 truck. But despite the strong evidence, investigators began to question several inconsistencies in Hickman’s confession. Some of the things he was saying from the very beginning didn’t match up.
The composite sketch that came out shortly after she went missing didn’t match Chucky Hickman. There was some disbelief because everyone pretty much knew Chucky. He was a high school dropout. He didn’t work.
He just hung out. Most significantly, the DNA from Katie’s body didn’t match the blood sample Hickman provided. This was final and undeniable proof of his innocence. Frustrated, police shifted their investigation once again.
When Hickman was arrested, they thought at that moment they had solved the case. However, that turned out not to be true. They weren’t even close. Chucky Hickman made the whole thing up.
His confession was based upon what he had read in the newspapers and what he had seen on TV. That’s probably one of the other big questions of this whole tragedy. Why would you admit to a murder you didn’t commit? Eventually, Charles “Chucky” Hickman was cleared of all charges relating to the murder of Katie Coleman.
The people of Kruthersville reacted in shock and anger. John was beside himself. He couldn’t believe they had one person confess to killing a 10-year-old child and then be told that no, he’s actually not the one who killed her. With a child killer still at large, fear and terror continued to grip the small Indiana community.
Everybody started keeping a closer eye on their children because they realized just how fragile the peace is and what a slim line there is between a child’s safety and a brutal and vicious death. Under pressure to make up for lost time, investigators continued to pursue drivers of white pickup trucks and process evidence recovered from the crime scene. Over 300 items of evidence were looked at. The amount of evidence was overwhelming because there were so many different leads in the case and they were going in so many different directions for a while.
Forensic scientists focused their efforts on the traces of DNA found on cigarette butts close to where Katie’s body was discovered. There were ten collected from the actual crime scene. It was brought up that maybe they should just test the ones closest to Katie’s body. But the difference between two cigarette butts and ten cigarette butts to a DNA analyst is minimal.
The analyst would rather just do all ten. One of those came back and matched the semen material found in Katie’s body. It actually ended up being one of the ones furthest away from her body that they got the match on. That was very big for a few reasons.
It placed whoever molested Katie at the scene where she was killed. But what they did not know was who had committed the crime. The cigarette with the matching DNA was a rare brand available only at specialty stores. It was a brand the investigators hadn’t heard of.
They contacted the manufacturer and determined there were four local distributors of that particular brand. They notified them and requested their assistance. They met with the managers and requested they call if somebody came in buying that brand of cigarettes. It wasn’t very long after that a call came in.
A white male had come into the store and purchased a carton of that rare brand. The caller didn’t get his name, but he was driving a white Ford F-150. And here’s the plate. State Trooper Rob Simpson ran a check on the license plate through a dispatcher.
The plate returned to Anthony Stockman. Simpson knew he was a person of interest early on. He called the command center and talked to Tony. “Hey, this is what it is, and this is who it’s come back to.
This could be something good. ”
Police now focused their investigation on Anthony Stockman, a factory worker from the neighboring town of Seymour, Indiana. Since he had a white truck and matched the composite sketch, he was one of the many persons of interest questioned by police early in the investigation. At the time, the 39-year-old father of two had a solid alibi provided by his wife.
With the license plate matching his white pickup truck, Anthony Stockman was now the number one suspect in the murder of Katie Coleman. Police got ready to close in. They went to his residence to re-contact him and determine if he would consent to a sample of DNA. As they pulled up to his house, they saw the white Ford F-150.
Everything matched perfectly with the description given by the eyewitness. Stockman was shocked that they were back. He thought he was home free. He knew one individual had been arrested and confessed, and he thought he was off the hook.
Police questioned Stockman at his house. He insisted he was innocent. He repeated his story from the first interview, telling police why he was in Kruthersville at the time of Katie’s disappearance. He was moving furniture out of a family member’s residence.
That’s the reason he had his truck at that particular location. He did not volunteer any information except that he hadn’t been to Cypress Lake in eight to ten years, so he couldn’t possibly be responsible for placing Katie’s body there. Stockman willingly provided a sample of his DNA. Police waited in anticipation for the results.
The single DNA finding could potentially sum up months of tough police investigation. The mood was tense. Everyone kind of wanted to know if they had finally solved the case after they tested 73 male individuals. Two days later, they called back and said, “We have a match.
” The investigator got cold chills. They finally got this guy. Special Agent Cidle contacted local prosecutor Steven Pearson and arranged for an affidavit for the arrest of Anthony Stockman. As final proof of Stockman’s role in the murder, Cidle conducted a test using the rare brand of cigarette found at the crime scene.
In an effort to disprove Stockman’s alibi, Cidle set up an experiment where he put cigarette butts out and exposed them in the same area at the same time of year. He had already determined from the manufacturer that the brand was only available in the area for approximately the last five years. He also determined that it was not possible for Stockman’s cigarette to have survived out there for eight to ten years. That cigarette would have degraded to the point that it wouldn’t have been recoverable.
With the arrest warrant in hand, police prepared to close in on Anthony Stockman. Together, Trooper Rob Simpson and FBI Special Agent Tony Cidle drove to Stockman’s house to make the arrest. Upon their arrival, nobody was home. They sat there watching the place and called him on his cell phone.
Detective Simpson asked him where he was, because they needed to speak further with him about his DNA. Stockman said he was down at the karate studio with his son. He agreed they could come by and talk again. Tony and Rob were the only ones who went over to meet him again.
They didn’t want to do anything to spook him too bad. Plus, he was in a karate studio with other kids. They didn’t know what his mindset was. Obviously, their belief was that he killed Katie Coleman.
Stockman was waiting for the officers in the parking lot of the karate studio. After he agreed to get inside the car, Detective Rob Simpson began to drive to another isolated parking lot. Tony was in the front passenger seat, and Anthony Stockman was sitting right behind Tony. Agent Cidle reached around and said, “Shake my hand.
” Stockman did so, and Cidle grabbed hold of his right hand and said, “We have an arrest warrant for you. You’re under arrest for the molestation of Katie Coleman. ”
April 7th, 2005. Anthony Stockman was arrested without incident and put in jail where he was held without bail.
Throughout the interrogations, Stockman maintained his innocence. He was not informed that his DNA was on the cigarette that was recovered. He was informed that his DNA had been recovered from the body of Katie Coleman. His response was incredulous.
He didn’t understand how it could be on Katie Coleman. He did not even know her. He’d never spoken to her. A press conference was held to release the news of Stockman’s arrest and charge to the media.
Once again, the small town was besieged by reporters from across the country. They were inundated with network news and large city daily papers. It was a media circus at times. The large trucks with TV antennas and cameras were a regular feature in Kruthersville for a while.
With accused rapist and murderer Anthony Stockman safely behind bars, authorities planned for what would be a difficult and controversial trial. With Charles Hickman having confessed to the crime, would the prosecution’s case stand up in court? Charged with the sexual assault and murder of 10-year-old Katie Coleman, factory worker Anthony Stockman was behind bars awaiting trial. The prosecutor had his suspect and started working on the trial immediately because they did ask for the death penalty initially, and that takes an incredible amount of work.
Prosecutors set to work building their case and sifting through the evidence. They had a witness who said they saw Katie in a white Ford F-150 truck within approximately half an hour of her disappearance. The composite sketch was Tony Stockman, a tall, thin white man with short hair, smoking. Furthermore, Stockman’s alibi that he was helping his mother move out of her house now provided police with further proof of his guilt.
He was at the residence 137 feet from where Katie was last seen. At least the class characteristics on several of the fibers collected from Katie Coleman’s clothing and her body matched back to the glass characteristics of the red fibers in the carpeting of Anthony Stockman’s mother’s home. In the investigator’s mind, that sealed the fate of Tony Stockman. What that told them was the sexual assault occurred in the back bedrooms on that red carpet.
But the defendant evidence was the DNA evidence. There were three sources of the same DNA. They had taken a swab from Stockman himself. They had DNA from the cigarette butt.
And they had DNA from the semen found on Katie’s body. Despite the evidence against Anthony Stockman, there were several challenges facing the prosecution. When police first questioned Stockman, his wife had provided a solid alibi. Initially, she backed him.
In fact, she said, “I back him 100%. ” She stood beside him and said she knew he didn’t do this. But that didn’t last long before she was convinced he was lying, just from knowing the facts they had against him. But the biggest challenge was the confession from Chucky Hickman.
The prosecutor fully expected the defense to try to point the finger at Chucky Hickman and say he confessed. He’s the one who did this. Pay no attention to the DNA evidence. Chucky Hickman is the murderer.
Why are they picking on my client? Prosecutor Steven Pearson had an enormous task ahead of him. Not only must he prove beyond a reasonable doubt Stockman’s guilt of the crime, he must also convince the jury of Hickman’s innocence. But after months of negotiations, the case never made it to trial.
On the advice of his lawyers, Anthony Stockman accepted a plea bargain. He agreed to plead guilty in exchange for life without parole instead of the death penalty. April 20th, 2006, the day of the hearing and sentencing for Anthony Stockman. The mood in the packed courtroom was tense and highly charged as those in attendance waited for the proceedings to start.
The courtroom was filled with family, friends, community members, and investigators who had a vested interest in the investigation. It was very emotional for all the individuals sitting in the gallery and for all the individuals who testified, because it was the culmination of months worth of work. Anthony Stockman was brought into the packed courtroom. The crowd hushed and leaned in for a better look at the accused child killer.
Everybody maintained a level of calm, which was difficult, sitting right across the room from someone who took your child away from you. He was very stoic, very unemotional. Seemed disinterested. Seemed bored.
When he was brought into the courtroom, someone yelled out, “Why’d you do it, Tony? ” It was his wife. But he never answered why. To this day, everyone is still wanting to know.
After a thorough presentation of the facts of the case, presiding Judge Vance listened to a victim impact statement from Katie’s father, John Coleman. John told the judge that people might say Tony’s kids are the biggest losers in this whole ordeal. He begged to differ. They’re actually the biggest winners, because they don’t have to live their life wondering if their father’s going to mistreat them.
Katie is ultimately the biggest loser. She paid the ultimate price with her life. After listening to all of the evidence and the testimonies, Judge Vance delivered his sentence. The sentence that Stockman received was life without parole for the murder of Katie Coleman.
He also received 30 years for the child molesting. The community reacted quickly to the sentencing. There were folks in this and other communities who thought because of the crime he committed against a 10-year-old girl, he ought to be put to death. But the prosecutor’s view was that sometimes there are things worse than death, and being in prison as an admitted child molester is one of them.
There is such a thing as jailhouse justice. It’s swift. It’s frequent. And there’s no court of appeals.
The public is safe. Mr. Stockman is not going to get out, and the Coleman family is at peace. His life in the free world will never be again.
He can’t get out here and hurt any more kids. He’s just done. Anthony Stockman is behind bars for the rest of his life with no possibility of parole. For many, life in this peaceful Indiana town will never be the same.
They’ve had murders before, but they were so infrequent, and those victims were adults. This happened to a 10-year-old little girl, and it meant something different. It meant something more profound. It stripped away another layer of innocence that perhaps they could claim.
The case of Katie Coleman, the joyous little girl with the wide smile and generous spirit, has left a lasting impression on those involved. Every time investigators drive by that lake, it all comes back. It was just a tough case. What stands out most, what they take with them on a daily basis, is the strength of the community.
The family is still an important part of the community, and it made that community stronger. She’s still here. She may not be here in body, but she’s here in spirit.
Every moment, she’s right here with us.
