Jean Marie Crouch:Taken at Gunpoint

   

  Sometimes when you wake up half asleep there is that disorientation in which you aren’t sure if you are dreaming still or awake. It’s difficult to figure out what is going on.  Things that are happening right in front of your eyes may not seem particularly nefarious at first. It’s only later that you realize what you were actually seeing. 

   Jean Marie Anne Crouch was born on Sunday November 24th 1957. When she was 15 she was looking forward to her sophomore year and becoming a Varsity cheerleader at Tech High School in Indianapolis. She lived at 527 North Oakland Avenue. It is a short walk, about 8 blocks, to the house where Sylvia Likens was tortured to death just 8 years earlier in 1965. Things had been relatively peaceful and calm in the years since then. 

    That summer Jean had attended cheer camp at Vincennes University. That must have been an exciting opportunity. It might have ignited dreams of college later on in the 15 year old. 

   Jean lived with her Mom and two brothers.  Her older sister was married. Her father lived in Anderson, Indiana. 

   On Wednesday the 1st of August 1973 someone stood outside Jean’s bedroom window early in the morning before dawn and hooted like an owl.  Jean woke up and went outside to see who it was. She didn’t even think it was a dangerous situation. What in her life would prepare her for that thought? She probably thought it was a friend. She was described as friendly and a girl with a million dollar personality. She would never have dreamed that anyone would wish her harm. 

   Her mother, Mildred, heard the hooting too.  She heard Jean get up and walk through the house to the back door. She looked out her window to see Jean and a man that she thought was about 6 feet tall.  He stepped out of the shadows and put his hand on Jean’s back and led her away. Mildred stepped outside and called after her daughter but the man and Jean disappeared down the alley.  Mildred went back inside and hastily dressed and then set out to look for Jean. 

   This neighborhood is one made up of bungalows and two story houses. Each two streets share an alley behind the houses. Houses on the east side of Oakland shared an alley with the west side Gray. Houses on the east side of Gray share an alley with houses on the west side of Dearborn. 

   

   A neighbor, Ronald McClintock, at 530 N. Gray Street, was awakened around 4 a.m. because his dogs were barking. He looked out and saw three tall men walking across his yard toward the Crouch residence. 

   Jean had been wearing a short summer pajama set. In classic victim blaming style the newspaper described it as “skimpy”. It was August in 1973 in humid and hot Indiana.  Most people did not have air conditioning as it was too expensive to run. My family did not bother with air conditioning until the mid 1980’s. The pajamas likely were a nightgown style that came to the knees. Most people slept with their windows open in the heat so it definitely wasn’t immodest. Victim blaming is never acceptable. 

   At least one witness reported hearing screams. 

   Mildred began searching and continued to call out Jean’s name. It was dark and she may have been embarrassed to wake up the neighbors if this turned out to be nothing. There was no answer and no sign of Jean. She went back inside and called David Kennedy’s house.  He was Jean’s boyfriend.  Mildred thought maybe the man with Jean was David and the two were meeting.  They had never done anything like that before but maybe that was what was happening.  To her horror, David was home. 

   David and his father rushed over to help with the search. The confusion and disorientation was replaced with a nauseating panic. 

   Other neighbors and friends came to help. Mildred Crouch suggested they search all the garages down all the nearby alleys. 

   Jean was found at 8:41 a.m. by her own mother behind 530 N. Dearborn in a small cluttered garage. She was nude and had been stabbed 56 times in her chest, back, abdomen and arms with a screwdriver.  She fought for her life. The pathologist who conducted the autopsy said she had not been raped. She was found on an old mattress. Rape seems to have been the goal but Jean screamed and fought. The killer likely began stabbing to silence her.  A toy gun was found under her body. 

   I imagine that she left her home initially thinking that this was a friend and then the killer forced her to walk away at gunpoint. In the dark the toy gun might have looked very real.

   Two days later a suspect was apprehended. Larry West, 21, had walked away from the Central State Hospital on Monday July 30th, 1973. He had a criminal record that included multiple rapes. Another suspect who lived closer to the victim would be found in the days to come. 

   In the weeks that followed a young man who lived a block north of the Crouch home was arrested. Anthony Wayne Hall, 17, lived at 608 N. Oakland. He had been accused on July 20th of rape by another young woman. She described the rapist and the house that it had occurred in. Police went to the home and found it occupied by a young mother and her toddler. They didn’t ask about anyone else who lived there. They assumed the victim had given them incorrect information. They found out after Jean’s murder that Anthony Wayne Hall lived there with his 27 year old sister, Mary Grever, and her child. Reporters and others were critical of the investigation into the rape saying that if it had been taken seriously Jean would still be alive. 

  Police said they didn’t find the rape victim credible because she didn’t keep an appointment a few days after her initial report.  

  The victim told reporters and testified in court that police refused to arrest Hall and only did so after Jean Crouch was murdered. 

   Anthony Wayne Hall was tried as an adult. Bloody clothes and shoes were recovered from his home. The blood matched Jean’s blood type. He admitted to killing Jean and to kidnapping and raping the other young woman on July 20th. 

  He was convicted of murder in the second degree in 1975 by a jury of 11 men and one woman and sentenced to life in prison. His attorneys immediately appealed the conviction. That appeal was successful as his sister was determined not to be his guardian. She had agreed to the search of the home and the questioning of Hall. His conviction was overturned and a new trial was ordered in 1976.  I believe he was again found guilty and again sentenced to life in prison although it is difficult to determine as I did not find newspaper reports of the second trial. But, did he serve out his life sentence? 

   No. He was released in 2018. He moved to Fremont, Nebraska. 

   Did he stay on the straight and narrow? 

   No.  He robbed the First State Bank in Fremont  using…a toy gun on November 21st 2019. He took a bank employee hostage and walked that employee at gunpoint out to his car and then fled.  It seems like he may have enjoyed the reenactment of forcing Jean Crouch to walk away from her home at gunpoint. He fled in his car with 10,000 cash. A witness to the robbery called police almost immediately. Hall managed to evade police several times on foot as he fled the state. 

   He bought another car using the stolen cash while fleeing and was eventually captured in December 2019 in Missouri. 

   In 2022, he was convicted under the federal “3 Strikes” law and is serving a life sentence again. 

            Anthony Wayne Hall 

   Additionally, in 1973 Mildred Crouch sued Anthony Wayne Hall and the Indianapolis Police Department and named several members of the police force in a civil suit. Jean’s mother was represented by Attorney Belle T. Choate. They sought 100,000 dollars in damages in 1973. The suit faced an uphill climb and at least one change of venue. In 1980 an appeals court ruled that police officers cannot be sued. Mildred Crouch and her attorney, Belle T Choate, chose to appeal. In 1996 it was decided again that police officers could not be sued. I don’t know if any part of this suit was ever successful.  Personally I am very glad that they fought for it though.  It brought attention to police attitudes procedures. Internal investigations were launched and hopefully some small improvements were made. Even if only incremental; progress has to start somewhere.  I think Attorney Choate and Ms. Mildred Crouch were incredibly brave and very strong to fight for Jean and other victims in this way. 

   

   Jean’s mother, Mildred Clayton Crouch died in 2008. Jean and her mother are buried side by side. 

   Jean Marie Anne Crouch was only 15. She should still be here with us. She deserved to start cheering at Tech that Fall in 1973. She deserved to go to prom and to graduate. She deserved a long life. 

   Rest in peace Jean.