Chalkboard Thoughts

     Linda Sue Ferry and her husband Billy had three children; Shawn, Shonda and Sharon. Billy worked at a dental lab in Lafayette. Linda was a devoted Mom.     It was Friday and Linda Sue Ferry and her family were going to go canoeing on Saturday. School was starting again soon and this weekend was a last little summer weekend break. They needed some picnic supplies and snacks for the trip so on Friday August 19, 1977, Linda headed to the grocery store.     Indiana has so many creeks and rivers and canoeing and tubing is a wonderful way to spend a summer day cooling off. Sand bars in a creek can be like mini Daytona Beaches in Indiana in August.    The Ferry family lived in Mulberry, Indiana. It’s a small town between Frankfort and Lafayette. It’s northwest of Indianapolis.  Mulberry is a small town now and would have been small then too.    Linda headed  to the all night grocery st...

      Cheryl Bolin was 11.  She was heading home after a sleepover with her best friend.  She was on her bike and she had a green bag of her overnight things and her rolled up sleeping bag. She and her friend had a well known routine for this trip.  They would go together down the road halfway and then her friend would turn back leaving Cheryl to go the last half alone. It was only a mile total so Cheryl was alone for just a half a mile. That’s just about the length of seven football fields.      Usually her parents were watching for her as she made this trip down Lake Valley Road but today they weren’t.  Her mother was in the hospital and her Dad was sick at home. They lived in a very rural area and it had always seemed very safe. They knew all their neighbors. Cheryl had made the trip before. No one can blame her parents. They did nothing wrong. There’s no one to blame but Cheryl’s killer.     It was Augus...

       In 2019, Parabon Nanolabs solved the long cold  1972 murder case of Indiana State University student Pamela Milam. Her killer was infamous in Indiana in the 1970’s with many victims.  It’s a tangled story but let’s start at the point that the public in Indiana first becomes aware of Jeffrey Hand.     On June 16th, 1973 newlyweds, Carol and Jeffrey Wayne Thomas were traveling back to their home in Evansville after visiting family in Chicago.  Like so many young people in those days; they were hitchhiking.  For young people it seemed an easy and cheap way to get around. The trip to Chicago had gone okay and now they were headed back home.    They got a ride from a young blonde white man south of Terre Haute.  Jeffrey Lynn Hand said he lived in Gibson County but he could take them all the way home to Evansville as it was not that much farther.  They were very grateful. Carol and Jeffrey Wayne had had s...

     28 year old Linda Unverzagt was living the late 70’s dream as a part time disco dancing instructor.  She led classes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.  On Tuesdays and Thursdays she was a student and took a belly dancing class at the same location. Disco was all the rage in 1978. That week Alicia Bridges iconic disco hit “I Love the Nightlife”was at number 13 on the Billboard charts and climbing. I always think of Linda now when I hear disco songs.     But dance was only a hobby for Linda. She held down a full time job as a utility clerk at Indiana Bell. It was a good Union job and Linda was a member of the Communication Workers of America, local 5714. She had worked there for ten years. (Her Union would go on to raise a large reward fund to try to find her killer.)    Linda was also a mother to a 3 year old little girl, Amanda. Linda and her husband had married and divorced twice but remained friends. Linda and he...

   Terry Lee Chasteen worked as a checker at a west side Indianapolis supermarket.  She was divorced and had three little children; a 5 year old girl Misty Ann, and two younger boys, Steven Michael 4, and 3 year old Mark Louis. She was on her way to drop them off at the babysitter so she could head to work. It was a typical day for this busy young mother.  She was driving on I- 465, the interstate loop that encircles Indianapolis, on Friday, April 27th,1979. Suddenly a young blonde construction worker in a utility truck signaled for her to pull over. Fearing something was wrong with her car; she pulled over.     Steven Timothy Judy approached her car and told her that one of her wheels was wobbling and seemed as if it was about to fall off.  He feigned trying to work on her car and for some strange reason he popped the hood and disconnected a wire so that the car wouldn’t start.      He convinced her that he w...