Ann Harmeier:September 1977, Martinsville, IN

Chapter 34:Ann Harmeier: Vanished from the Roadside.

  I remember that feeling of driving back to campus after a weekend home. It was such a great feeling. You had visited your family and your hometown and alleviated the homesickness. You had that optimistic feeling of a new week ahead. There’s the fresh clean laundry smell in the car. You have got exciting prospects ahead of you. You are getting an education and pursuing new opportunities. You are following your dream.  It’s an incredibly optimistic feeling.  You’re on the right track and nothing can stop you now.

   September 12th 1977, Ann Harmeier was driving back from her small town of Cambridge City, Indiana to Indiana University in Bloomington. It’s not a long drive, but her mother had convinced her to not go on Sunday evening but to go on Monday morning. She had been having some issues with her car and her mother felt that driving during the daylight would be safer than driving at night.  

   Ann headed out early in the morning with the intention of making it on time to her first 10:30 a.m. class at IU. Ann was a Junior studying music and drama. She had made this drive many times and she wasn’t worried. She likely had pop music on the radio and was singing along. 

 

   The weather in Indiana in September is still a bit like Summer. It’s still very green and warm. That beautiful fall color that is absolutely gorgeous is just not there yet. The temperatures are cool and crisp in the morning and very warm in the afternoons. It’s not quite time to harvest the corn. That happens a bit later in Fall but it’s still a beautiful time of year. 

   It would have been a very nice day to make the drive but Ann was having a lot of difficulty with her car that morning. Despite the fact that it was a cool morning; the car is overheating. She stops several times to put water into the radiator but just about two and a half miles north of Martinsville on State Road 37 (now I-69); the car breaks down. It overheated and this time she can’t fix it. She is just stuck there on the side of the road. She put on her emergency blinkers and then tried to figure out what to do next. This is decades before cell phones and there are no pay phones or emergency call boxes nearby.  She debates the idea of getting out and walking toward Martinsville.  

   When she doesn’t make it to the dorm or to class her friends and her roommate at college are immediately concerned. When she doesn’t call her Mom to say she arrived; Her mother is, of course, extremely worried. This is not like Ann. Ann always calls.

   Ann and her mother, Marjorie, had always been extremely close.  Ann was an only child. Her father had died when she was just five.  Ann’s mother was a teacher and she raised Ann as a single Mom. 

   As soon as school was out for the day, Marjorie and a friend drove toward Bloomington to see if they could find Ann.  They found her empty car with the emergency flashers still blinking.  Her books, clean laundry and other things were still in the locked car. Things in the car looked orderly. The area around the car looked ordinary. But there was no sign of Ann. 

   They drove toward Martinsville thinking they might find her at a local gas station or garage.  They called the police, the hospitals, and anywhere else they could think to call.  But it was as if Ann had just vanished. 

   I can’t imagine what Marjorie must have been feeling that evening. How do you turn around and drive home without your daughter? That must have been a torturous feeling. But, they had reached the limit of what could be done there on the side of the road. 

   The Harmeier family belonged to a wonderful community in Cambridge City.  Word spread quickly. People mobilized immediately to search for Ann. They printed flyers and started getting them out to television and radio stations. They took them to gas stations, diners and truck stops. As the days turned to weeks; they funded billboards with a hotline number for tips and a reward for information about Ann. They printed and distributed bright red bumper stickers with the slogan “Where is Ann?” and the tip line phone number on them. This wasn’t a state police phone number.  This wasn’t Crime Stoppers.  This was someone’s home phone in Cambridge City that was being manned by volunteers around the clock. It was truly a grassroots media blitz.

   People volunteered to drive all over Central and Southern Indiana passing out and posting flyers. They raised money for all of these efforts with charity events.  

   Their efforts worked in some ways. Ann’s case got nationwide attention.  

   Tips did come in. Two men working at a gas station thought they had seen Ann come in that morning with a group of younger people. They remembered the car had Kentucky plates but they didn’t remember the plate number. Some tips reported seeing Ann after her disappearance in other places. But none of these tips lead to anything. 

   

    Weeks go by but the people of Cambridge City are unrelenting.  They get her story in as many newspapers as they can all across the country. But sadly, nothing comes of it. 

   Late in the afternoon on October 18th, Lawrence Stanford was harvesting corn when he discovered Ann’s remains.  She was in a field only a few rows in from the road and only seven miles from her car. She had been strangled with her own shoelace and her own hairbrush had been used to make a garrote. The hairbrush handle was twisted in the shoelace loop around her neck to strangle her. Her hands had been tied with her other shoelace. Her shirt had been pushed up and her pants and underwear had been pulled down to her ankles. 

   The contents of her purse were scattered around and her checkbook and ID helped investigators to tentatively determine that this was Ann. An autopsy would show that the cause of death was strangulation. Ann had been murdered the morning she went missing. 

   Police theorized that she had accepted a ride from someone to get to a phone. The killer could have also offered to drive her to a gas station or a garage where she could get the car towed and repaired.  Ann was a smart girl and very careful.  This person had to have looked extremely safe and trustworthy.  Ann wouldn’t have gone with just anyone. Either that or the killer had threatened her with a gun or some other weapon.

 

  Ann’s death was a devastating blow to everyone who had searched, hoped and prayed.  The community mourned this loss deeply.  Ann had been a kind and popular girl with a positive attitude.  She had loved performing and had enjoyed singing and dancing in a production of South Pacific.  She also loved making people laugh. She had even won a local beauty contest.  More than all that; she was one of them. How could this happen to their child? How could a light this bright be gone? 

   Her funeral was attended by hundreds of mourners. She was buried next to her father. 

   

    The search for Ann was over but the search for her killer was just beginning. Who could do this?  

    Police looked at known sex offenders and parolees.  They questioned motorists at checkpoints seeking any information hoping that someone had seen something significant back in September.  Perhaps someone saw a car or truck pulled over to seemingly assist Ann. Perhaps someone saw her getting into a vehicle.  But there are no tips that lead to anything significant.  Her case goes unsolved. 

    Ann’s mother passed away just a few years later of cancer. Her family said the light had gone out of her and she didn’t have the will to fight the disease. 

   Volunteers in Cambridge City started teaching automotive repair and self defense classes for young women and girls in the following years. They didn’t want Ann’s murder to make young women afraid to get out in the world and go after their dreams. 

    Ann’s case is still an open investigation.  No one has ever been charged in the murder.  There have been suspects but none has been positively linked to Ann. 

    One particular suspect was convicted in 1981 of an extremely similar brutal murder. That man, Steven Timothy Judy, was ruled out because he was in jail in Marion County when Ann was abducted. He was a serial rapist and murderer and his many crimes will be covered in a future post. However, there are many who think that police should double check the incarceration records because of the extremely similar circumstances. 

    

    So, if it wasn’t that particular infamous man with the extremely similar modus operandi; then who was it? Did Indiana have multiple serial killers in the 1970’s and 1980’s? 

    The answer is yes.  There absolutely were many serial rapists and murderers operating in Indiana in the 1970’s and 1980’s.  

   Robert L Avery and Jeffrey Hand are other possible suspects that will be looked at in future posts. 

Update: John T. Gibson, Jr. killed Tara Meredith in 1979.  She was also strangled with a shoelace in a field. Could he have also killed Ann Harmeier? Hopefully DNA testing can take place and solve this.

If you have information about the murder of Ann Harmeier please call the Indiana State Police at 1-800-423-1286 or 1-812-332-4411