Chalk Wessell was known by many in this county seat in southwestern Indiana as a small-time drug peddler, a lanky smart-mouth with a violent streak that led to an order of protection being issued against him last fall.
But when a police officer spotted him at a local gas station late last week, his only outstanding violation was for driving on a suspended license. Officers impounded his vehicle and later discovered a stolen .35-caliber handgun, a plastic bag of “crank” and another stuffed with marijuana.
By that time, though, Wessell was gone, having walked away from the gas station. Five days later, four people were dead, allegedly killed by Wessell, 19, and Steve Hale, 21, a companion he had recruited to drive him on one of his “deals.”
Wessell too is dead from a gunshot wound. Hale is charged with murder and being held on a $1 million bond.
On Friday, authorities disclosed new information that helped fill in some of the blanks about the rampage, which wound its way over back-country gravel roads in Indiana and then southeastern Illinois.
The first victim, Jeremiah Miller, an acquaintance of Wessell’s, was fatally shot “execution style . . . a bullet in the head at close range,” said Daviess County Prosecutor Robert Leonard. “So there was something between them.”
Authorities said they had found drugs–small amounts of white and yellow powder mixed on a tray–on the dashboard of the green Chevrolet Camaro stolen from another slaying victim, Pam Cook, and later found near Albion, Ill.
The spree ended in Albion as police searching farm fields after the last victim was shot, found Wessell’s body and took Hale into custody.
The string of killings shook the cluster of communities that dot the rolling farmland, where cars compete for space with horse-drawn buggies driven by Amish residents. But it also left questions about whether the deaths could have been averted had police detained Wessell at the gas station.
“If they’d arrested him, none of this would have happened,” said Heather Sims, the live-in girlfriend of Hale.
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Sitting in her landlord’s front room Thursday night, Sims said she had been told by an attorney who had attended Hale’s bond hearing that he had admitted he and Wessell fatally shot Larry Sams, the fourth victim, near Albion after Sams and a friend, David Chalcraft, confronted them on Chalcraft’s property. Chalcraft, shot at point-blank range, survived by playing dead.
The slayings came just one day after police finally issued an arrest warrant for Wessell on the stolen gun and drug charges. Leonard defended the action of police, noting that there were no outstanding arrest warrants for Wessell when he was stopped on March 27.
Leonard acknowledged that authorities were no closer to understanding what prompted the killing spree.
County Coroner Martin Curtis said that while his autopsy showed Wessell died from a single gunshot wound to the head, it did not answer a major question: whether Wessell committed suicide or was shot by Hale.
Some nine hours after Miller was shot about 4 a.m., authorities say, Wessell and Hale drove past Marlin Knepp, 26, who was on a tractor headed to pick up a load of sawdust for the family dairy farm.
A witness said a car stopped about 200 feet ahead of the tractor before one of the two occupants got out, walked toward Knepp and shot him from about 4 feet away. The shooter then walked back to the car, which drove slowly away at about 20 miles per hour, the witness said.
That was about an hour before Pam Cook, a mother of four, was fatally shot on her front porch near Odon, Ind.
On Friday, neighbors finished putting up a white tent behind the Oak Grove Mennonite Church, where Knepp’s body lay in an oak coffin. Fewer than a dozen people usually attend the church, but the community knew the tent would be needed for an outpouring of support for Knepp’s family at Saturday’s funeral.