Ann Kline:Murder in the Old Courthouse

   

   Ann Kline was born Ann Miller in Pennsylvania. She was the oldest of her siblings and they grew up on a farm. She finished highschool and college there. Ann earned a degree in business education. She and her husband moved to Indiana for jobs at Alcoa.  They settled down to a quiet life in Newburgh, Indiana. In 1970 she left the accounting department at Alcoa to teach business math courses at Lockyear Business College in Evansville. In 1973 she was considering starting a family soon with her husband. They were looking forward to all that 1973 might bring their way. 

   The Old Vanderburgh County Courthouse is a stately old building in downtown Evansville. It was constructed in 1891 and remained active until 1968. Costly repairs and a growing community made a new modern courthouse a necessity. But the beautiful Beaux Arts style building was much loved by the community and efforts were made to save it. 

   In 1973 Lockyear Business College had set up temporary classrooms in the old Evansville Courthouse due to a fire at their school the year before. 

   Mrs. Ann Kline, a 26 year old business math and accounting teacher had finished a class and was alone in her basement classroom. 

   Just after 3 p.m. on January 18th, 1973, Ann Kline had just met with a student. As he was walking up the stairs he heard screaming but assumed it was other students just horsing around. 

   The screaming was actually Ann being murdered. Ann was stabbed nineteen times in the chest in an adjacent alcove close to the nearest exit on January 18th, 1973. She bled to death within a few minutes. She was very near the exit.  Was she fleeing from her attacker? 

   Her purse was still in her classroom. Her jewelry was left on her body. Robbery was not a motive. 

  She had not been raped. Killing for the sake of killing seems to be the motive. 

  Ann was stabbed nineteen times. Nineteen stab wounds allows for a lot of chances for a killer to cut himself on a slippery knife.  Did he leave any of his own blood on the dress of the victim?  She was described in newspaper articles as wearing a blue dress with orange and yellow flowers. 

  News articles also described investigators looking into the fingernails of Ann and scrapings underneath the nails. Did they save that evidence?  Could it still reveal DNA of the killer?  At the time they were trying to determine the skin color of the killer. They were unable to do so.  

  Ann also had hair and lint clutched in her hand.  The hair was determined at the time to be her own.  

  No one saw a blood covered suspect leaving. There were no footprints showing which way he left.  One would guess that he simply left through the closest doors there on the 5th street side of the building.  Was that area fairly deserted around 3 p.m. in January?  It’s not rush hour in the morning or evening.  It’s not lunch time.  It might have been very easy to walk right out and to a parked car on the street. That exit led out to 5th street or a person could quickly make their way to Vine Street or Covert Street. 

  Who is a likely suspect? Robbery wasn’t the motive. Ann didn’t have any enemies. 

   Who was killing people just for the sake of killing people around Evansville in January of 1973?  

  I think Jeffrey Lynn Hand could be a possible suspect. Jeffrey Lynn Hand was working in Evansville sporadically in early 1973.  I don’t know where he was working in January. He sometimes did construction work. Were there any projects in or around the courthouse that he could have been working on? It’s very likely. 

   The Old Jail nearby was being renovated by Gregory Wolf. He had signed a lease of $1 per year in 1972 with the provision that he renovate the building. He taught photography and planned to open an art gallery. Students of his were volunteering to scrape paint and do other work in the old jail. 

   Other restoration projects were happening inside the Courthouse itself. The Conrad Baker Foundation was in charge of the upkeep and restoration of the Courthouse property. 

   In February and March Jeffrey Lynn Hand worked at Whirlpool before he was fired. He worked at George Koch in May/June and was fired from there as well.  But, where was he on January 18th 1973? 

   We know where Hand was on September 15th, 1972.  He killed Indiana State University student Pamela Milam that day.  Her murder investigation would be cold for decades until Parabon Nanolabs solved it through DNA analysis in 2019. Jeffery Lynn Hand’s sons graciously agreed to give samples of their DNA so that the Milam family might be some small measure of closure after all these years. 

   In June of 1973 Hand stabbed and shot a man to death and kidnapped the young man’s wife. The murder of Jeffrey Wayne Thomas was incredibly brutal and senseless. His hands were tied behind his back and he was shot in the face with a .22. He was stabbed 8 times in the chest. Finally his throat was slashed and his jugular vein was severed. His wife, Carol Thomas was lucky to escape with her life. Robbery was not a motive. Hand was sentenced to a mental institution for that murder. In August of 1976 he was released on a technicality. (There are other murders between then and Hand’s death in January of 1978 that look like they could be the work of Jeffrey Lynn Hand.) 

  Did Hand commit other crimes between these two murders In September of 1972 and June of 1973? It’s entirely possible. Does a person who is capable of murdering strangers in such brutal ways simply stop? 

  The timing and proximity of Ann Cline’s  murder to Hand’s time working in and around Evansville is noteworthy.  

  Who was Jeffrey Lynn Hand? 

  Jeffrey Lynn Hand attended Washington High School in Washington, Indiana and graduated in 1967. He married a 15 year old girl that year. By 1969 they had split up and each remarried other people. 

   He served in the Air Force in VietNam as an Airman First Class. I have not found the years that he served. 

   He was back in the United States sometime in 1972. We know without a doubt that in September of 1972 he abducted, raped and murdered Pamela Milam in Terre Haute, Indiana.  He tied her up and put an excessive amount of tape over her nose and mouth and left her in the trunk of her car.  He parked the car back in the campus of Indiana State University.  Her father found her there after her roommate and her friends became concerned when she was missing. In 2019, Parabon Nanolabs used DNA technology to identify her killer as Jeffrey Lynn Hand. 

   He is suspected of murdering Vickie Lynn Harrell of Bloomington in August of 1972.  She was found outside McCormick’s Creek State Park. She was raped, stabbed and strangled and had what looked somewhat like the letters K N carved into her chest.  She was nude and face down in a puddle. Her murder has never been solved. 

  He is also suspected of the murder of Linda Sue Ferry in Lafayette in August of 1977. She was strangled and left in the trunk of her car very similarly to Pamela Milam. 

  If he is guilty of these suspected murders in a string of college towns; could he have been cruising for victims in college towns where he would have an abundance of young women to choose from? 

   Think about the atmosphere of a college. Any young person in 1973 could just go hang out on campus.  You could walk into nearly any building. A person could hang around in a classroom building without appearing to loiter. They would look like a student killing time between classes. They might look like they were simply waiting for a friend. Colleges and college towns were a preferred hunting ground for Ted Bundy.  I think that Jeffrey Lynn Hand also had a preference for this particular setting. 

   If Hand is guilty of these college town murders; he drove around a lot. Do we have any record of Hand driving around for no real reason? In the summer of 1973 he picked up the Thomases.  They were newlyweds hitchhiking back from Chicago where they had visited friends and family. They lived in Evansville. Jeffrey Hand picked them up near Terre Haute.  He had just recently been fired from two different Evansville jobs.  What was he doing in Terre Haute? He had two different handguns and a 9 inch knife with him. He had two different cars at his home.  Why was that?  He can’t hold a job but there are two cars there on a farm in Gibson County where he is living alone. 

  Ann Kline could have been a victim of Jeffrey Lynn Hand. But the 1970’s saw a huge rise in violent crime.  It also could have been a lot of people. 

  Hopefully evidence has been preserved in this case. There are nineteen chances that the killer cut himself on a slippery knife while inflicting nineteen stab wounds. Was Ann’s dress preserved?  Can a DNA profile of the killer be found?

   

   If you have information about the murder of Ann Kline please call the Evansville Indiana Police Department Adult Investigations Unit at (812) 436-7979.