Tag: Hendricks County

The Hendricks County Grave Robberies Part 3

While no vandals or cult members were apprehended by law enforcement on Halloween night, Hendricks County officials did receive a report of cult activity at a cemetery in Avon.  Some adults allegedly witnessed a group of teens in black robes “holding sticks and dragging what appeared to be a body,” the Star reported.  

Hendricks County Sheriff’s Lt. Stephen Golden offered his thoughts on the alleged cult activity.  

“We are sure devil worship exists, but we don’t know if it is really going on (in the county) or if it’s teens playing a game or people out to steal things to sell.  If it’s teens, a lot could have to do with movies they’re watching like Prince of Darkness or Nightmare on Elm Street.  If it is teens, it’s a very small select group of teen–agers that are not representative of teens here in Hendricks County.” 

Although investigators believed more than one cult was operating in the area, they could not determine whether the groups were involved in devil worship.  Additionally, Golden clarified that in most instances the devil worship activity was not illegal.  

“When they trespass on people’s property, dig up graves and when they kill or maim animals, then it becomes our business.  That’s why we want to find out what’s going on and get to the bottom of it.”

Investigators reported discovering a ritual site in a densely wooded area near I-74 and State Road 267 north of Brownsburg.  A tree spray-painted with a “666” and the word “Satan” marked the site.  Attached to the tree were a pair of ropes with an ax handle hanging from one of the ropes.  Also present at the site were two small platforms and a candle in a jar.

At the previously mentioned bonfire site northeast of Pittsboro, where an 8-inch bone was found, investigators also discovered candle wax drippings on a table.  Tests performed on the bone showed it to be that of a large dog.

Then in the early morning hours of November 4, 1987, the night manager of a Brownsburg restaurant was driving home from work along a dark stretch of road outside Pittsboro.  Near the intersection of County Roads 750 North and 475 East, the man suddenly came upon a vehicle parked in the middle of the road.  Unable to stop, he was forced to drive off the road to avoid hitting the vehicle.  Angered at the driver in the stopped vehicle, the night manager grabbed an ax handle he kept in his car for protection.  (Apparently, ax handles were widely available and in heavy rotation back in 1987.)  As the night manager exited his vehicle, a man wearing a black leather jacket, a black hood and a black glove with spikes or claws appeared out of the darkness.  Additionally, two other men wearing ski masks emerged from another vehicle.  The night manager was pushed to the ground, kicked and struck by the group, and slashed across the face and abdomen by the man with the claw glove.  The men fled when the night manager lost consciousness. 

The night manager was not badly injured and the assailants were never identified.  Robbery was ruled out as a motive in the attack because the restaurant’s deposit the manager carried with him was not taken.  

As highly bizarre as the attack appeared, it was not an isolated incident.  Due to the popularity of the Nightmare on Elm Street series, assaults committed by individuals with clawed or studded gloves were not altogether uncommon back in 1987.  But with fears already running high over reports of satanism and satanic crimes in the press, the attack only caused the paranoia to grow.        

Sources:

The Indianapolis Star

The Indianapolis News

The Hendricks County Grave Robberies Part 1

On Monday, September 28, 1987, Hendricks County Sheriff’s deputies followed up on a report of a recently reopened grave in a remote cemetery plot north of Plainfield, Indiana.  A hiker discovered the disturbed area near a tributary of White Lick Creek while exploring the surrounding farm fields and wooded areas.  A six foot deep hole had been dug at one grave site and the remains removed, while several inches of topsoil had been cleared from two other plots.  

The site was an old family cemetery belonging to the Carters, an early pioneer family who in 1823 settled 240 acres in that part of Guilford Township.  One grave belonged to Ruth Hadley Carter, who died at the age of 68 on April 24, 1869.  Another grave belonged to a two-month-old infant, and the third grave was unmarked.

Regarding what would motivate an individual to remove centuries old remains from a remote and obscure settler grave, there weren’t many good theories.  Hendricks County Sheriff Lt. Stephen G. Golden speculated that the robbers could have been looking for antique jewelry, or the disturbance was possibly just a sick prank.   

Christopher S. Peebles, director of the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology at Indiana University, was also uncertain of what the vandals would have found in the grave other than skeletal remains.  “I don’t know what would have been left in this case, but it all comes down to thievery, pure and simple.  It’s pretty sick for someone to dig up graves for no apparent purpose.  I suspect it’s someone with a screw loose,” Peebles said.

There was one thing investigators did know for sure, the present scene of a recently looted grave in Central Indiana was not an isolated incident.  Only a month earlier, residents of nearby Brownsburg and Greenfield, Indiana, went to clean up an ancient family cemetery near Brownsburg and discovered one of the graves dug up and the remains missing.  Walker Cemetery, as it is known, sits along 56th street near Brownsburg about a mile west of the Marion County line.  The missing remains belonged to Ann Walker, a member of one of Brownsburg’s founding families.

Whether it was someone with a screw loose, a thief in search of valuables, or some twisted, rogue member of the local historical society was anybody’s guess.  However, in 1987 there was one theory that explained a lot of grisly and macabre behavior: devil worship.  In the climate of the time, it was difficult to understand a series of grave robberies as having any explanation other than dirty deeds done in service of the dark arts.  And as the discoveries of disturbed graves and missing remains continued, and tales of strange hooded figures deepened the mystery, the spectre of Satanism spread like a fever until all became infected with its delirium.

Sources:

The Indianapolis Star

The Indianapolis News