INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — On Sept. 21, 1999, police trying into armed robberies of two Pizza Hut eating places discovered two our bodies stuffed in a freezer within the storage at 3950 Thrush Drive on the close to westside of Indianapolis.
Within days of the invention, police made an arrest. The suspect, John Keith Adams, of Indianapolis, was discovered on Sept. 30, 1999 in Independence, Missouri. He waived his Miranda rights and admitted to killing his 28-year-old spouse Robin Adams on April 19, 1999 and 10-month-old son John Ramseys Adams round June 1999.
The prosecutor on the time was ready to strive the case and needed to hunt the loss of life penalty. More than 23 years later, Adams has but to face a jury for the crimes he overtly admitted to committing and the case remains to be nowhere close to going to trial.
Adams remains to be in custody after greater than 20 years. He has spent a lot of the previous twenty years at Logansport State Hospital.
“There will be no appeals or anything. I’m going plead guilty if they want to execute me, they can. If not, I mean, there is no way I’m gonna spend 20 years in a place like this. I mean, if they don’t do it, I will just kill himself,” John Keith Adams stated in an interview with News 8 in October of 1999.
According to the unique possible trigger affidavit, Robin had been shot within the head and John was asphyxiated.
“Robin’s death was instantaneous and quick. She didn’t even know. She was asleep, she didn’t even know what hit her. Little John, I mean, I didn’t want his death to be as prolonged as it was,” Adams stated in 1999.
I-Team 8 has reviewed greater than 450 pages within the case file for Adams.
Detectives replicate on the case
The victims have been found by two Marion County Sheriff’s Office detectives, Doug Scheffel and Chris Hefner. Both males are actually retired.
In 1999, the 2 detectives have been investigating Adams for the armed theft of two Pizza Huts in Indianapolis. A tip led them to the Adams home. On their first go to, they knocked on the door and Adams didn’t reply. They received a search warrant and got here again later in that week.
With a search warrant in hand the detectives returned to the home. The very first thing they observed was a powerful odor of pot in the home, like uncooked, just lately cultivated marijuana. The search led them to the storage.
“I went in looking for evidence of the robberies and Hefner went out to the garage. Hefner was a narcotics detective. He had a nose for narcotics. He was out in the garage and called me, ‘hey, you got to take a look at this,’” Scheffel stated.
Hefner’s previous expertise led him to consider he was about to find some pot.
“I can’t tell you how many times I had seen bales of marijuana or bricks of marijuana in freezers. So I thought, ‘ah, ha.’ I walked over to the freezer and lifted the lid and the initial thing I remember seeing was blood on the interior of the lid and it didn’t click yet,” Hefner stated.
“I thought he found some drugs and he took me over to the freezer and that is where we located the bodies,” stated Scheffel.
The pair discovered the our bodies of Robin and John within the chest freezer.
“That child was put in that freezer alive,” stated Hefner
As it turned out, Adams had been on the home when the 2 detectives first visited. He later advised police he hid in the lounge and was ready to shoot them in the event that they got here inside. Before detectives returned with the warrant, Adams had fled.
“He fled and went to Missouri and we entered his vehicle information after locating the bodies and everything. We entered his vehicle into the NCIS as a person of interest in a homicide case and a police officer in Missouri located him asleep in a car,” stated Scheffel
It was Adams’ roommate, Elliot Peter, who advised police Adams was driving a rented van and was on the run. He had saved the knowledge to himself to offer Adams time to get out of state. Peter advised police he knew Adams had robbed a few pizza locations and led them to storage field that contained gadgets from the robberies. Peter advised police didn’t know in regards to the our bodies within the freezer.
Scheffel went to Missouri to interviewed Adams. He stated Adams was very matter-of-fact in regards to the murders and didn’t present any regret
“It was just like you and I talking and, you know, I never got any real indication of like mental illness, other than the fact that you would think it would take somebody mentally ill to do something like that, but never said, ‘I heard voices in my head to do this,’” stated Scheffel.
Was he competent to face trial on the time?
“I was surprised he was found mentally incompetent,” stated Scheffel.
Adams by no means denied killing his spouse and son. The Marion County prosecutor on the time, Scott Neuman, stated he would search the loss of life penalty towards Adams. The case appeared open and shut, however there’s a hitch.
Adams deliberate to symbolize himself regardless of issues if he was competent to even stand trial, not to mention symbolize himself in a loss of life penalty case. Much to his disapproval, he was assigned a public defender.
In 2001, the courtroom dominated him incompetent to face trial.
“I think it is unusual unless someone is adjudicated incompetent. What I did find unusual is that basically his public defenders keep continuing the competency hearings,” stated Dr. Jody Madeira of the Indiana University Maurer School of Law.
Over the years the courtroom has scheduled dozens of competency hearings and he has been by a number of psychiatric evaluations. Adams has written a number of letters to the decide asking for brand new counsel, and continues to insists on representing himself, however the decide has not dominated in his favor. Every 12 months, he and his court-appointed attorneys are required to come back to courtroom for a competency replace.
“The tricky thing is that it appears that his very pleas for the competency hearing are why he is incompetent. In other words, he wants to become competent so he can represent himself and essentially give himself the death penalty,” stated Dr. Madeira.
Why did Adams kill his spouse and son? He advised detectives he didn’t know learn how to go away his spouse and had apparently met one other girl.
I-Team 8’s makes an attempt to contact counsel for Adams – previous and current – have been unsuccessful.
A distant standing listening to for Adams is scheduled for Dec. 1 at 10 a.m. in Marion County Superior Court 30. I-Team 8 will let you recognize if the judges determine if is time after 23 years for Adams to face trial.