Patricia McCaslin: 1983 Indianapolis
Patricia Ann Aleksa McCaslin was born on the 6th of March in 1938 to Matthew and Ellen Delight Windhorst Aleksa. Her father had been born in Hungary. Her mother had been born in Indiana. In 1938 her family was a farming family in Center Township in Marion County. She was the oldest of her siblings according to the 1950 census.
In 1956 Patricia Aleksa married Shildes McCaslin. She was 18. Young marriages were very common in the 1950’s. Women were expected to marry and raise children and keep a tidy house.
Patricia was a homemaker for a while but eventually she became a police officer. To step into a job that was traditionally only held by men was a brave thing to do. It still is a brave thing to do in the United States. I wish we could say that women have made a tremendous amount of progress. While there has been some progress; there is still a long way to go. Recent elections show us that people in the United States are reluctant to elect a woman as President, for instance.
But, women were entering the workforce more and more in the 1970’s. It was an economic necessity. Marriages did not always last. Bills could often overwhelm a family. Women who entered the workforce often saw that “men’s jobs” paid much more than the jobs that were traditionally held by women. That still holds true half a century later. Someone driving a semi is going to make more than someone working a reception desk in an office. Mechanics, plumbers, and HVAC technicians make more than bank tellers and teachers. There is still a huge wage disparity between jobs traditionally held by men and this traditionally held by women.
I remember in the 1980’s when the coal mine that my father worked at first hired a woman. (And not for a secretarial position.) There was a lot of uproar and push back in the community. Women in town were angry. You’d think that they would have supported her. She was the sole breadwinner for her family. She needed that paycheck. But, they did not. I am sure men at the mine harassed and verbally abused her. It can’t have been easy for her.
In the 1990’s I worked in the office at a factory and regularly got harassed by the factory workers. I just shrugged and kept doing my job. There was no HR department and reporting it would not have changed or prevented it. I simply quit after I found a better job. That was not the only job or place where I encountered harassment in my life. I was not even in a job position that was typically held by men. But, I wasn’t at home. I was out in the world trying to make a living. I was a target for harassment. Women often are.
Patricia McCaslin was serving her community as a police officer and raising her children in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Patricia McCaslin was a Patrolman. I was reminded of the show “Cagney and Lacey” that premiered in 1982. It was a show about two female police officers in NYC. It gave many women some very cool role models to look up to. I know it inspired me. They were two officers committed to doing the right thing each day while navigating a very tough world.
Back in 1983 in Indianapolis, Carl E. Robertson was also a police officer. He worked on the narcotics squad. He was supposed to keep the public safe from drugs but also uphold all the other laws like prevent sex work and human trafficking. In those days sex workers were called prostitutes. I’m not going to use that word. I think sex workers should not be slandered and maligned. While I hope that no one has to resort to sex work to make a living, the reality in our society is that many people do find themselves in that situation.
According to an internal investigation; Carl E. Robertson was not upholding the law. Instead he was profiting off the sex workers that he had met on the job. He would arrange parties, allegedly with Indy 500 race teams and others, and take a large cut of the money involved. That’s human trafficking. That is the very thing he was sworn to prevent. One of the sex workers caught up in this was Nancy McCaslin. She was the daughter of Officer Patricia McCaslin.
Nancy told her mother that she and her roommate were promised money for sex at the Indy 500 racetrack in 1983. The two women were driven through the racetrack area in a golf cart. They were taken to an RV where they met Carl Robertson. He introduced himself as a narcotics officer. He told them if they were on drugs he’d have to arrest them. Nancy asked if he knew her mother. He said he did and that they had dated in the past. The women were taken to a party for the Provimi-Veal Racing Team in gasoline alley. Provimi-Veal sponsored cars driven by Tony Bettenhausen and Dennis Firestone. The two women did the work they were hired to do at the party. They were promised $750 each. Afterward, they were taken back to the RV where Robertson asked Nancy for sex. She complied but she testified that he failed to pay her.
(The following day they were only paid $300 each by the race team owner and given a team jacket and hat. That’s less than half of what they were promised.)
Patrolman Patricia McCaslin went to Lt. Alan Rackemann in 1983 with information that her daughter Nancy had shared. This would have been sometime after May 1983, of course.
Then Patrolman Patricia McCaslin went missing in late November 1983. She was a 16 year veteran of the police department at this time. Before her disappearance she had spoken to other police officers about threats made against her life.
Patricia lived in an apartment complex at 5000 U.S 31. (U.S. 31 is the 465 loop on the East Side.) She was last seen about 5 p.m. on November 28th 1983 as she was leaving her apartment building in her 1978 silver Chevrolet.
The first clues in Patricia’s disappearance came in the following days. Patricia’s handbag was found on November 30th along the first block of West Troy Avenue in Indianapolis near South Meridian Street.
On December 1st, Patricia’s car was found at the Lindner’s Dairy Center at 1443 East Prospect in the Fountain Square neighborhood of Indianapolis. The car was reported abandoned in the parking lot at 6:00 a.m. on November 29th. Some of the tires had mud on them. (I wonder if they saved samples of the mud to compare to later sites of interest.) Lindner’s was a local chain of ice cream shops. Some of the locations also sold gasoline and bags of ice. Picture a typical gas station with a mini-mart. That location is a vacant lot today.
If Patricia was taken from Lindner’s did she throw her purse out as a clue? If you follow the map from that Lindner’s location to the spot where her purse was found and then on to the airport it is a logical route to the spot where she was tied to that tree and killed.
Or was Patricia’s purse tossed out by an assailant after her murder while he was on his way to leave her car somewhere that felt “away”, or the opposite of the area of the murder site?
There was a great deal of intrigue surrounding Patricia McCaslin’s disappearance and death. Was she the victim of other misogynistic police officers? Was she targeted by a criminal element because she was a police officer? Gradually, the information about the investigation surrounding Carl E. Robertson came into public knowledge. Carl E. Robertson retired from the police force in 1984. But that did not stop his name from coming up in the subsequent investigation and trial of Patricia’s murder.
Oddly, Patricia’s case was initially considered a murder investigation. After three weeks this was changed to simply a missing persons investigation and homicide investigators were pulled off the case. A 16 year veteran of the police department is missing and presumed murdered and they just shrug their shoulders and move on? If a male police officer was missing and presumed murdered would the response have been the same? I doubt it.
Patricia was missing for two years, almost to the day. It must have been agonizing for her four children and family and friends. Imagine how other female police officers must have felt. Imagine how anyone who had gone to internal affairs about any other officer might have felt.
Patricia’s skeletal remains were found by hunters in late November 1985 near the 4000 block of Bridgeport Rd. That’s very close to the Indianapolis International Airport.
November is deer season and hunters are all over the countryside. Indianapolis residents know that the deer follow the streams in and around the city. So it’s not unusual for deer to be in the city itself. It’s not unusual for hunters to look for them in urban or semi-urban areas.
Patricia’s remains had been scattered by animals in the two years since her disappearance. Police investigators collected what was found on the surface and sifted the soil for days for other smaller bones. A looped and knotted electrical cord was found. Human hair was caught in the knot that matched Patricia’s hair color. By the 30th of November 1985, police announced they believed the remains to be Patricia McCaslin. The cause of death was thought to be a blow to the head. Her skull was fractured. She was found a couple of miles from the spot where Terri Joann Darlington was found.
A suspect was questioned fairly quickly. John R. Willoughby had been suspected since Patricia disappeared. Who was he? Was he involved in the sex trafficking with Officer Carl E. Robertson? Did he know Patricia McCaslin or were they strangers?
John R Willoughby was born 1952. In 1975 he was listed as living in Camby, Indiana. That’s just south of the airport and close to Mooresville. (Terri Joann Darlington lived in nearby Mooresville at the time of her disappearance. She is another murder victim that I am going to keep bringing up in connection with Willoughby.) I found his address in an article from 1975 about his sentencing for stealing a television and stereo. He was given 1-10 years but the sentence was suspended and he was given credit for 255 days in jail. Another charge not listed was dismissed. What was that charge? That article is dated August 4, 1975. Terri Joann Darlington disappeared on September 16th 1975. Willoughby was reported to be the last person to see her alive. He was questioned in her disappearance but never charged. He is believed by her family and those involved in the investigation to have raped and murdered her. (If only his sentence in August 1975 had not been suspended. If he had been sent to prison for ten years instead of set free…Terri might still be alive.)
In December of 1975, Willoughby was back in court answering to a charge of forging a welfare check.
As I searched the newspaper archives I found more about his life. In August of 1977, John R. Willoughby and his wife welcomed a baby boy at Morgan County Hospital.
In an article dated March 29th,1979, Willoughby filed for bankruptcy. His wife is not mentioned in the bankruptcy proceedings. Perhaps they were divorced? He was living in the Brookville Trailer Court at the time. Willoughby worked as a truck driver in the 1980’s.
In 1982 Willoughby and Janet K. Jett were married.
There were no arrests for violent crime. That doesn’t mean he did not commit violent crimes. I was not able to find and mention in the newspapers of arrests for violent acts under the name John R. Willoughby prior to 1986. (We do know he was suspected by Terri Joann Darlington’s family in her 1975 death.)
In 1983 Willoughby became acquainted with Patricia McCaslin. (That is, according to an article from 1986.) Patricia had a side business running a stall at a flea market. Willoughby had purchased T-shirts from Patty’s Place according to the article, which used court testimony as its source. On the night of her disappearance, she reportedly told her children that she was expecting a call from Willoughby. He was supposed to take her to see someone who had something to sell at her flea market. Willoughby stated they had sexual relations and then he hit her, tied her to a tree and left her there. He denied killing her. He later recanted all of that story and said he was pressured by police to make something up. He said he was told if he just made up a story he could leave. He and his wife testified, in a 1990 appeal, that he was not allowed to call a lawyer and she was not allowed to get a message to him that she had hired a lawyer.
During the 1986 trial, the prosecution brought up Terri Joann Darlington. Willoughby’s official position was that a friend of his named “Smokey” had harmed Terri and tied her hands. Willoughby stated that he took Terri and left her in a field. He stated that he later took Smokey there in order to leave her purse with her. Willoughby said he did not kill her. He just left her in the cornfield. He did not think she had a pulse.
John R. Willoughby was convicted of the murder of Patricia McCaslin in 1986. His confession was the main evidence used against him. He appealed in 1990 citing that he had been pressured and coerced to make up a story in which he murdered McCaslin. The fact that he was not allowed to call a lawyer or his wife was also cited in the appeal. He did not succeed in this appeal. (However the judge overseeing the appeal brought up the irregularities that included a sentence of time added for his admitted involvement in the Terri Joann Darlington murder.)
John R. Willoughby died a few years ago, according to Terri Joann Darlington’s family. I was not able to find a date of his death. He is not listed as currently incarcerated.
So, the official story is that Patricia McCaslin’s murder had nothing to do with Carl E. Robertson and the sex trafficking investigation. Patrolman McCaslin was killed by John R. Willoughby. It just happened to be very convenient for Robertson but it was not at all related.
Carl E. Robertson did eventually face charges in 1987 for sex trafficking. Nancy McCaslin and Shirley Pelfrey testified against him. Two members of the racing team testified as well. Richard M. Buck, of Reading, PA., testified that he had attended a sex party in a garage at the racetrack in May of 1983. He said he could not recall all of the people there.
Carl E. Robertson told investigators that they had no evidence against him “because the trailer burned”.
The jury in Robertson’s trial was unable to return a verdict. So, he walked. He got a maintenance job at Eli Lilly. He later retired and died in 2016.
Was Patricia’s murder a convenient coincidence? Possibly. There were many murderers running around Indiana in the 1970’s and 1980’s.
Was John R Willoughby framed for Patricia McCaslin’s murder because he was already heavily implicated in Terri Joann Darlington’s murder? Possibly. There were plenty of crooked police officers in those days too. Would he have been convicted of McCaslin’s murder if Terri Joann Darlington had not been brought up at his trial? Possibly.
I believe John R. Willoughby did rape and murder Terri Joann Darlington in 1975. He wasn’t officially tried and convicted. He did admit in court to helping “Smokey” dispose of her body. So, he admitted to leaving a dead or dying girl in a cornfield. I don’t think Smokey exists. I think Willoughby definitely killed Terri. Her body was found in a field about five blocks from his trailer. Did he also kill McCaslin? Possibly.
There are still so many questions here though. There’s still so much unsettled and unresolved. Willoughby was convicted of Patrolman Patricia McCaslin’s murder. But, was Justice actually done?
If only fingerprints or DNA had been left in her car. If only the mud on the car had been collected and compared to the site where her body was found. Were there fingerprints on her purse? We will never know.
Rest in Peace Patrolman Patricia Ann McCaslin.
Rest in Peace Terri Joann Darlington.
I want to take a moment to thank all the women who have served in law enforcement. Thank you to all who are currently serving our communities. The job you do is incredibly valuable. Your background and experience and perspective is very necessary.
It can’t have been easy to enter that male dominated workforce. I am posting a short article from 1972 about a woman, Merilyn Waldman, who joined the force in Carbondale, Illinois. Her superior seems supportive of her in her position there. The Terre Haute Tribune seems to enjoy belittling and making fun of her.
1972, Terre Haute Tribune:
Women deserve to be able to work and make a living. No one should be treated this way. We are all just people trying to get by.
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