Mandy Lewellen:Kokomo 1978

    Kokomo, Indiana.1978

                                  Mandy Lewellen

   In January 1978, Jeffrey Lynn Hand was shot and killed by police while attempting to abduct a woman in Kokomo, Indiana. So, he was not a suspect in the disappearance of a young woman that was to come later that year. 

   Madeline “Mandy” Lewellen was born on April 7, 1960 to Phillip and Janice Lewellen. She had three sisters and a little brother.  She grew up in the Kokomo, Indiana area. 

   Mandy Lewellen was only 18.  It was summer and she was doing what a lot of 18 year olds do.  She was having fun. She had worked at restaurants but wasn’t currently working anywhere. She lived in Kokomo at 823 W. Monroe. On June 17th, 1978 she and a friend went to a local radio station to visit a disc jockey there. 

   If you are a young person today you might not even listen to the radio. We all have access to music on apps on our phones and we choose what we want to hear now.  In 1978 though, we only had the radio stations whose signals could reach our homes and cars.  We listened while driving, at work if it was allowed, at home when the television wasn’t on.  We got to know all the D.J.’s names and when they worked. 

   Mandy Lewellen was 18 in the summer of 1978 when she stopped by the radio station near Kokomo, Indiana. She never made it inside the WIOU building to see the DJ that Saturday. She was abducted there in the parking lot. 

   More than one person saw Mandy in the vehicle with a man who had a bad reputation around Kokomo. It wasn’t clear if she got into the car willingly or was forced. Word got back to Mandy’s family and they were terrified because of the stories surrounding this man. They knew that Mandy was in grave danger. Mandy and her sister were very close and they spoke on the phone daily. 

   

   Weeks later in July, a 13 year old boy found Mandy’s body at the edge of a wooded area on the farmland of  Russell Young near the intersection of county roads 300 N and 300 W.  She was nude and had been strangled. The killer had twisted her underwear around her neck so tightly that it was still there all those weeks later. Her bathing suit top had been used to tie her hands behind her back.  Decomposition was advanced to the point that the medical examiner said that they could not prove whether Mandy had been beaten or sexually assaulted.  Although it seems highly likely that she was brutally sexually assaulted considering that she was nude and tied up. 

   24 year old Robert L. Avery Sr.  was arrested Sunday July 2nd 1978. Police knocked on his door at 916 Brentwood Drive in Kokomo at 5 a.m.  Robert L. Avery was already facing abduction and rape charges for a previous incident.  Police caught him in the act of raping a store clerk on March 26th, 1978. He had been released on a $20,000 bond by the judge to await trial. If abduction and rape had been considered a serious crime and Avery had not been let out on bond…Mandy Lewellen would still be alive. 

  For that first abduction and rape case, Avery would be sentenced to 8 years in prison.  He would be transported back and forth from prison for the trial of Mandy Lewellen’s murder. 

  (He had also been arrested in July of 1977, the year before for the rape of a 16 year old.  If only rape had been considered a serious and violent crime. But, rape was not a problem for the men who made the laws.)

  Avery had admitted to abducting Mandy and led police to her body. It would seem to be a fairly straightforward prosecution.  But as the trial got underway things would take a strange turn.  Robert Avery’s mother would attempt to hire a hitman to eliminate witnesses against her son. 51 year old Barbara Abel would enlist the help of her friend, 48 year old Mark Detamore. Days after their arrest; Detamore would suffer a series of heart attacks. 

  Barbara Abel would eventually be convicted of trying to hire a hitman to kill a witness in her son’s trial.  She received a 20 year sentence. It would be suspended and she would be placed on probation for ten years. She was also ordered to continue psychiatric treatment. 

   Robert L. Avery was found guilty of murdering Mandy Lewellen and in 1979 was sentenced to 40 years. That should have had him behind bars until 2019.  However, he was released in 1998. 

  Who wants to guess what happened?  If you guessed that Robert L. Avery almost immediately began committing crimes against women…you would be right.  He was first arrested for “invasion of privacy”.  I assume he was peering in windows and stalking some woman. (Why was that not enough to violate his parole and have him returned to prison.)

   Later he grabbed a woman in broad daylight who was visiting a cemetery and forced her into his car by choking her.  He was witnessed by several people who took action. One person followed his vehicle in their car and stopped to help the kidnapped woman when she was able to flee the vehicle. Another continued to follow Avery and took down the license plate number.  Police found that it was his mother’s car and arrested him quickly. 

   Avery was returned to prison to serve his remaining years. He complained in court that he didn’t want to go back to prison and die there. He didn’t think that was fair. 

   Did Robert L. Avery serve out the remainder of his 1978 sentence? It appears that he did. I couldn’t find any more newspaper articles concerning his release.  

  I searched multiple sites to see if he was still incarcerated or if he was freed. In 2021 he died but the place and the cause of death were not listed. He was 67 when he died.  

  The same mortuary company that handled Mandy’s funeral in 1978 also did the funeral of her killer in 2021. 

  Mandy Lewellen was only 18 when her life was taken. She was just a young woman still.  She loved animals and collected Panda bear items. Her brother felt that she might have gone on to work with animals if she had lived. We will never know what she might have been.  Her life was stolen from the world. 

   Rest in Peace Madeline “Mandy” Lewellen