Patty Ann Bundren : 1975, Indianapolis

  

   2415 Bishoff Court in Beech Grove was the home of 37 year old Patty Ann Bundren. She worked for the National Life and Accident Insurance Company located on New York Street in Indianapolis. She was not always in the office though.  In those days, insurance agents came to your home and collected premium payments in person on a regular schedule.

   Patty had been doing that on the east side of town when she disappeared according to a co-worker. 

   Patty was found on Saturday March 15th 1975 in an alley off the 200 block of N. Keystone Avenue under a discarded snow covered sofa. (A group of children went to play there and discovered the body.) That’s on the east side of Indianapolis. She had been beaten but the cause of death was strangulation according to her death certificate. She was nude when found. Tests would show that she had been raped. Her clothes were never found.

   Her car was located later near the driveway of 616 LaClede Street on the opposite side, the southwest side, of Indianapolis. 

   Rex Rayburn and Steve Minton were arrested and charged. Rex Rayburn lived with his father at 616 LaClede. Steve Minton was Rex’s cousin. 

   Open and shut case. Right?  No.  

   Steve and Rex never made it into the papers for any crimes in the ten years before this. I cannot find anything in the news archives about a trial and conviction. It looks like the charges did not stick.  Neither of these young men made the news for crime before this and I didn’t find them mentioned in connection to any crimes after.  Rex worked as a security guard for many years.  He could not have gotten that job with a murder on his record. Rex Rayburn had returned to live at this same address after his divorce and passed away there as well. He is buried at Floral Cemetery in Indianapolis. It doesn’t seem like Steve and Rex had anything to do with this. What if Patty’s killer just dumped the car there? 

  Interestingly enough, just a few easily walkable blocks south of 616 LaClede was 5303 Seerley Road. That was the foster home of Steven Timothy Judy.  He lived there with the Carr family who thought he was a nice boy and knew nothing of his past. In 1975 he was only 19. But he had raped and nearly murdered a grown woman, Mrs. Carol Emig, a housewife, when he was 12. He conned his way into the house pretending to be a Boy Scout and attacked her.  He raped and beat her and then attacked her with a hatchet causing deep head wounds.  She put her hands up instinctively to protect her head and one of his blows severed one of her fingers. He was not charged with attempted murder but aggravated assault. He was sentenced to a juvenile facility and later the State Hospital. In 1972 he was released to the foster home of the Carr Family. They were told nothing about his violent past.  They enrolled him in Washington High School in Southwest Indianapolis.  He was expelled by mutual decision not long after enrollment because he cut a girl’s shirt off.  Read that again.  He cut the shirt off of a high school girl and did not face criminal charges.  “Boys will be boys.”  This was the kind of thing that was given a pass in the 1970’s. 

   Steven Timothy Judy was free in March of 1975. He had jobs in construction and in 1975 was driving a delivery van. He would go to jail later that year in Illinois from July 23, 1975 until March 1977.  He was sentenced to three years in Joliet for attacking Susan McFadgen. You’ll notice he did not serve all three years. It was “just a rape”.  Rape wasn’t considered a violent crime then. 

   Judy would go on to commit a rape and quadruple murder in 1979. Terry Lee Chasteen and her three children were abducted and murdered in the Spring of 1979 in Mooresville. 

   Judy received the death penalty in 1981.  He literally asked the jury for it.  He refused all efforts at appeals.  Every prisoner is entitled to appeals.  He would not cooperate with appeal efforts. 

   In the days before his execution he confessed to his foster Mom that there were many victims out there.  He confessed to her that he had killed Linda Unverzagt. She was a pretty disco instructor but she was also a Mom. He talked with reporters about his very chaotic childhood and his sexual fantasies about and attraction to his own mother. 

  

     I used to look at Terry Chasteen and think that her beauty made her a target of Steven Timothy Judy.  I now think the fact that she was a Mother was the factor that he was drawn to. 

     I wonder if any DNA labs are working on a profile of Steven Timothy Judy’s DNA.  He had biological brothers and sisters. 

  In 2019 Parabon Nanolabs developed a DNA profile of Jeffrey Lynn Hand, because of the generous help of his sons, and solved the nearly 50 year old murder of Pamela Milam in Terre Haute.  It’s possible to solve these really old cold cases. 

  I think this crime is related to the murders of Patricia Anderson and Zetta Mae Warner as well.  

 Judy is buried at Floral Cemetery in Indianapolis. Ironically, that is the final resting place of Rex Rayburn who was falsely accused of this particular crime.

   Hopefully one day there will be Justice for Patty. Her five children deserve that. She probably has many grandchildren that she never got to meet. 

   Rest in peace Patty Ann Bundren.