Police await results of autopsies in 5 Ind. deaths

LAU­REL, Ind. (AP) — Police remained tight-lipped Tues­day about their inves­ti­ga­tions into the deaths of five peo­ple in a sparsely pop­u­lated rural Indi­ana neigh­bor­hood where res­i­dents sel­dom even lock their doors.

The mys­tery began Sun­day after­noon when a dri­ver found a 4-year-old girl walk­ing alone on a road near Lau­rel, about 50 miles south­east of Indi­ana. Author­i­ties were called and after talk­ing with the girl, offi­cers found four dead adults inside the child's fam­ily home. Some of them had been shot. A fifth body was found on a nearby property.

Indi­ana State Police have released few details as they inves­ti­gate the slay­ings, leav­ing res­i­dents to spec­u­late on whether the dan­ger has passed.

"Peo­ple who haven't locked their doors in years, they're def­i­nitely lock­ing up tight now," said Ryan Ren­fro, who lives nearby. "I actu­ally took off work today because I'm here with my elderly grand­par­ents and I didn't want to leave them here alone until they caught who they are look­ing for."

Sgt. Jerry Goodin, a spokesman for the Indi­ana State Police, did not say whether the shooter or shoot­ers were believed to be among the deceased. He did say Tues­day that no man­hunt was being con­ducted. He said inves­ti­ga­tors were hop­ing that autop­sies per­formed Mon­day and Tues­day would yield clues on how the five were killed and who killed them.

"We don't know yet. We're hop­ing the autop­sies will tell us that. Right now we don't have a man­hunt because we don't have any sus­pects. We don't have any­body to hunt," Goodin said.

Police declined to release the vic­tims' names Mon­day. But peo­ple in this area, where many are related by blood or through mar­riage, talked about their rel­a­tives who had been killed. Those included four mem­bers of one fam­ily — a man, his estranged wife and their two adult chil­dren — as well as a neigh­bor who had gone to visit a mem­ber of the household.

Jewel Comp­ston said her son, Henry Smith, 43, left the house they share Sun­day morn­ing to go to the home where the four bod­ies were found.

"He never made it back," she said, tear­ing up.

Comp­ston said police told her early Mon­day that Smith had been shot to death.

Police wouldn't com­ment on pos­si­ble motives, but neigh­bors said they had com­plained about drug activ­ity in the area, and the sis­ter of one vic­tim said the fam­ily had been involved with drugs.

Teresa Richard­son said the home where the bod­ies were found belonged to her sister's estranged hus­band, who lived there with their adult daugh­ter and son. She said her sis­ter was vis­it­ing them Sunday.

She said police called her Mon­day after­noon and con­firmed the four dead inside the home were her sis­ter, Angie Napier, her sister's estranged hus­band, Roy Napier, daugh­ter Melissa Napier and son Jacob Napier.

Teresa Richard­son called the deaths a "sense­less mas­sacre" and said she blamed it on drugs. She said her sis­ter and Roy Napier would have argu­ments that some­times got phys­i­cal, but she didn't think any of the fam­ily mem­bers would have turned on the others.

Posted by Scott Mahoney on Sep 27 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.