Office of the Pike County Prosecutor

08/01/2026

July 31, 2026

Re: THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW: The Prosecutor’s Office Needs the Right Investigator

PETERSBURG, IN – For twenty-four years I have served the people of Pike County, twenty of them as your elected Prosecutor. In that time, this county has prospered. I do not come to our leaders with requests often, and I do not ask for anything unless I need it to serve Pike County. I am asking now.

I have asked the County Commissioners, and I will ask the County Council, to transfer Detective Sergeant Scott Arnold from the Sheriff’s Department into this Office as our criminal investigator. It is one position traded for another — no new employee, and no new cost to the taxpayer. What changes is that the investigator working our most serious cases answers directly to the priorities of the office that must prove those cases in court.

I trust Scott Arnold. For three years he has held himself to the highest standards of professionalism and accountability, time and again, on the hardest cases we have — child molestation, violent crime, and drug dealing. No one in county government has benefited more from his work than this Office and the victims we serve.

When the detective position he currently holds was created, it was understood that, while he would be primarily dedicated to detective work, he would nonetheless still be required to divide some of his time with patrol and administerial duties. While those additional duties are certainly important, it is simply a fact that when he has been pulled away to duties other than intensive investigation, our cases have noticeably suffered.

I want to be plain about why that matters. Pike County is fortunate to be served by a corps of dedicated law enforcement professionals with diverse skillsets – but just as varied as their talents and personalities are the duties our community calls upon them to perform. The intensive, methodical, and sensitive operations required of a professional tasked with intensive investigations are not facilitated by the constant interruptions and speed changes common to the life of a patrol officer.

Where there are interruptions, there are delays. Behind every one of those delays is a person waiting. The single greatest accomplishment of my twenty-four years in this office has been the number of child predators we have convicted and sent to prison — nearly half of every case I have taken to a jury has involved child s*x crimes. I never wish to sit across from a child-victim and have to explain that we are waiting for paperwork to file her case. Her courage deserves to be met with full expedience.

Scott Arnold’s skills are best used in investigations. Moving him into our Office will serve our county well by empowering a talented investigator with the full time required to allow him to do his best work. He will still work alongside our county’s uniformed law enforcement officers to uphold the law and enhance public safety; but with a singular work emphasis and a streamlined chain of command, he will simply be better able to do what he does best.

Our current Sheriff, Jason McKinney, and our Sheriff-Elect, Buck Seger, both agree this is the right thing for Pike County. I am grateful to them for putting the community first.

So I will ask you plainly. Tell your Commissioners and tell your Council members to give the Prosecutor’s Office the support it needs to protect this community. I only ask for things I need, and I only ask for the things I need at the times I need them most. This is one of those times. Thank you for your support.

Darrin E. McDonald
Prosecuting Attorney

07/30/2026

07/20/2026

July 20, 2026

Re: Linda Jean Kemp, 57, of Petersburg, Sentence Issued for Possession of Methamphetamine (Level 5 Felony)

PETERSBURG, IN – Linda Jean Kemp, 57, of Petersburg, Indiana, was sentenced today to four (4) years in the Indiana Department of Correction pursuant to a plea agreement entered in the Pike Circuit Court before the Honorable Evan C. Biesterveld.

Under the terms of the agreement, Kemp admitted that on October 17, 2025, she knowingly possessed methamphetamine. During the hearing, Kemp admitted that she had a prior 2021 conviction for Dealing in Methamphetamine in Pike County, which raised the offense to a Level 5 Felony. A Level 5 Felony is punishable by between one (1) and six (6) years of imprisonment and up to a $10,000 fine.

The case began with a search warrant issued by Judge Biesterveld which was obtained by Pike County Sheriff’s Department Detective Sgt. Scott Arnold for the rural Petersburg residence Kemp shared with Lloyd C. Coleman, a co-defendant and Kemp’s boyfriend. Coleman was sentenced earlier this month by Judge Biesterveld to ten (10) years in the Department of Correction after he was convicted in June of Possession of a Firearm by a Serious Violent Felon, a Level 4 Felony, after a jury trial in the Pike Circuit Court.

Under the good time credit rules set by the Indiana General Assembly, Kemp can be expected to serve 75% or less of the four-year term, depending on time cuts issued by the Department of Correction.

Darrin E. McDonald
Prosecuting Attorney

07/17/2026

July 17, 2026

Perspective from the Prosecutor’s Office: Pike County Remembers

On July 17, 2006, three young people were murdered in a cornfield in our county. I want to say their names, because they still matter, and because I look at their faces every day.

Spencer White. Keela Lynch. Rebekah Acorn.

Three portraits sit on the bookcase in my office. They show Spencer, Keela, and Rebekah exactly as they were that summer: young, unfinished, with every ordinary thing still ahead of them. The jobs they would have worked. The people they would have married. The children who were never born. All of it taken in an act of senseless violence, out in a sweltering corn field near Pecan Flats on the White River.

None of them should have been anywhere near what happened. Keela and Rebekah did not even know the man who killed them; they had simply come along with friends. Wrong place at the wrong time. That is the particular cruelty of it.

There was a fourth young person in that field, Cameron White, and thankfully he survived. Gravely hurt, he somehow found the strength to get his brother’s cell phone and call for help. Then-Sheriff Todd Meadors, with local farmers who knew that ground, reached him in time. I have never forgotten that. In the middle of something monstrous, ordinary Pike County people did something heroic.

This was the first time in my career I sat with families carrying this kind of loss, and it changed me and everyone it touched. I remember the manhunt, more than two weeks, a case that drew national attention, ending in another stretch of brutal heat when Nicholas Harbison was finally taken into custody. Det. W.W. George, alone (and unarmed as the circumstances happened), confronting and apprehending the fugitive wanted for murder, talking him into surrender. I remember our then-victim advocate, Chelsa Knepp, barely more than a kid herself back then, standing with those three families through every hearing and every hard day, later returning to the scene with them. Court Bailiff, Ron Myers, treating all of those families with warmth and compassion through every excruciating hearing.

I also remember the weight of the decision that came later. At first, the families wanted the death penalty, and I believed then, as I believe now, that their loss and their wishes mattered more than anything I thought about it. As we met in the early stages of the case, it became apparent that the endless appeals associated with a Death Penalty case would work another cruelty on the people most affected by the loss. They graciously agreed to allow Nicholas Harbison to plead guilty with sentence of three life terms without parole, plus fifty years.

I grew up on 9th Street here in Petersburg in the 1980s, back when people believed Pike County was a place you could get away with anything. We are not that county anymore. We have had four total murder cases in the twenty-plus years since 2003, and every one of them got everything this office had, each resulting in a conviction with sentences ranging from fifty-five (55) years to Life.

That did not happen by accident. It happened because a lot of people, sheriffs, officers, farmers, advocates, and families with more courage than I can describe, decided the people we lost were worth fighting for.

Twenty years later, still fighting. Spencer, Keela, Rebekah and Cameron still matter. God bless their families.


Darrin E. McDonald
Prosecuting Attorney

06/15/2026

June 15, 2026

Re: A FEW THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW — Recent Charges Filed in Three Operating While Intoxicated Cases

PETERSBURG, IN – Here are summaries of three cases recently charged by this Office. Each arose from a separate traffic incident, and two of the three trace back to the same weekend in our community.

Dylan S. Woodruff, 33, of Evansville

On June 13, 2026, Indiana State Police Trooper Robert A. Kincaid II responded to a single-vehicle crash on Bruster Branch Road near Cato Winslow Road. The wrecked vehicle was found off the roadway with open alcoholic-beverage cans in and around the driver’s door, and no one was with it. Witnesses confirmed Woodruff had been driving just before the crash and had left the scene on foot before officers could locate him. Woodruff’s driving privileges are suspended under habitual traffic violator status. The State has charged him with Operating a Motor Vehicle While Privileges Are Suspended as a Habitual Traffic Violator and with Obstruction of Justice, both Level 6 Felonies, and with Operating While Intoxicated, a Class C Misdemeanor.

Ryan G. Whann, 19, of Otwell

In the early morning hours of June 13, 2026, Indiana State Police Trooper Timothy Sturm was conducting an unrelated traffic stop on State Road 56 at County Road 825 East when Whann’s vehicle passed the patrol car in the wrong lane of travel within a marked no-passing zone. Trooper Sturm stopped the vehicle a short distance later. Whann showed signs of impairment and failed standardized field sobriety tests, and before giving his true name he provided the trooper with another person’s driver’s license and identified himself falsely. The State has charged him with Obstruction of Justice, a Level 6 Felony; Operating While Intoxicated Endangering a Person, a Class A Misdemeanor; and Reckless Driving, a Class C Misdemeanor.

Rustin W. Ward, 25, of Petersburg

On June 13, 2026, Indiana State Police Trooper Timothy Sturm observed Ward operating an off-road vehicle on State Road 61 at Royalty Road and initiated a traffic stop. The trooper observed signs of impairment, a passenger was in the vehicle, and Ward submitted to a certified chemical test showing a blood alcohol concentration of 0.176. A criminal history check revealed a prior conviction for Operating While Intoxicated in Gibson County (Cause 26D01-2505-CM-000462), dated May 12, 2025. Because of that prior conviction within the past seven years, the State has charged Ward with Operating While Intoxicated Endangering a Person, a Class A Misdemeanor, enhanced to a Level 6 Felony.

For the reader’s reference: A Level 6 Felony is punishable by between 6 months and 2 ½ years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000; a Class A Misdemeanor by up to 365 days and a fine of up to $5,000; and a Class C Misdemeanor by up to 60 days and a fine of up to $500.

The Office of the Pike County Prosecutor advises that under our Constitution, all individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law and, until such time, all charges are merely allegations and should be considered as such.

Auth: 6/15/2026

Darrin E. McDonald
Prosecuting Attorney

06/05/2026

June 5, 2026

Re: Lloyd C. Coleman Found Guilty of Unlawful Possession of a Firearm by a Serious Violent Felon

PETERSBURG, IN – After a two-day jury trial in the Pike Circuit Court, the Honorable Evan C. Biesterveld presiding, a Pike County jury on June 4, 2026 returned a verdict finding Lloyd Christopher Coleman, 59, of 1565 W. County Rd 50 South, Petersburg, guilty of Unlawful Possession of a Firearm by a Serious Violent Felon, a Level 4 Felony under I.C. 35-47-4-5. The jury acquitted Mr. Coleman on a companion count of Possession of Methamphetamine. The case is Pike Circuit Court Cause No. 63C01-2510-F4-000288.

The case was submitted to the jury in bifurcated fashion, with the first phase asking the jury to consider whether Mr. Coleman possessed one or more fi****ms on October 17, 2025, in Pike County, Indiana, in violation of Indiana law. The jury deliberated for slightly less than two hours before returning its verdict that Mr. Coleman did possess one or more fi****ms on that date, and that he was not guilty of possessing methamphetamine. After the verdict, Mr. Coleman waived his right to contest his status as a serious violent felon and admitted to a prior conviction for Dealing in Methamphetamine entered against him in a previous Pike Circuit Court case in February 2005.

The investigation began in October 2025 after Pike County Sheriff's Department Detective Sgt. Scott Arnold obtained a search warrant issued by the Pike Circuit Court authorizing a search of Mr. Coleman's residence at 1565 W. County Rd 50 South, Petersburg. Det. Sgt. Arnold testified at trial that, during the ex*****on of that warrant, officers recovered eight fi****ms from the residence. The State's case at trial included evidence concerning Mr. Coleman's relationship to the residence, his knowledge of and access to the fi****ms recovered, his absence from the property on the day of the search, and statements he made in the days that followed. Det. Arnold and Prosecutor’s Staff, led by Legal Assistant Lisa Johnson, worked tirelessly in the lead up to the trial in uncovering messages and correspondence from Mr. Coleman which were essential to the State’s theory of the case.

A Level 4 Felony under Indiana law is punishable by between 2 and 12 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.00. Sentencing is scheduled before Judge Biesterveld on June 30, 2026, at 9:00 a.m. Coleman is presently serving a sentence out of Pike County of six (6) years on a probation violation from a 2017 Methamphetamine conviction.

The State recognizes the work of Det. Sgt. Scott Arnold of the Pike County Sheriff's Department, who served as the lead investigator, as well as Sheriff Jason McKinney, Chief Deputy Dallas Killian, Deputy Bryce Manning, and Deputy Glenn Landstrom, who assisted in the ex*****on of the search warrant. The State also acknowledges the professional advocacy of defense counsel Ivan A. Arnaez of Evansville, and the careful consideration given to the case by Judge Biesterveld and the Pike County jurors who heard the evidence and returned the verdict.

Darrin E. McDonald
Prosecuting Attorney

06/05/2026

The Petersburg police department is a proud member of the Indiana Internet crimes against children task force. June is internet safety month. Check out the following video to learn more about protecting you and your family.

https://bcove.video/4e6ShMM

06/01/2026

June 1, 2026

Re: Kevin E. Evans, 64, of Jasper and Mary L. Hall, 61, of Washington Charged Following Methamphetamine Seizure

PETERSBURG, IN – The Pike County Prosecutor’s Office has filed felony charges against Kevin E. Evans, 64, of Jasper, Indiana, and Mary L. Hall, 61, of Washington, Indiana, following a traffic stop on May 29, 2026, that resulted in the seizure of approximately 57 grams (two ounces) of suspected methamphetamine and additional controlled substances.

Evans has been charged with Possession of Methamphetamine, a Level 3 Felony under I.C. 35-48-4-6.1(d)(1); Maintaining a Common Nuisance, a Level 6 Felony under I.C. 35-45-1-5(a)(3)(C); and Operating a Vehicle While Intoxicated, a Class C Misdemeanor under I.C. 9-30-5-1.

Hall has been charged with Possession of Methamphetamine, a Level 6 Felony under I.C. 35-48-4-6.1, with an Enhancing Circumstance under I.C. 35-48-1.1-18(1) based on a prior conviction for Dealing in Methamphetamine, which raises the offense to a Level 5 Felony.

According to the Probable Cause Affidavit, Deputy Kane Osgatharp of the Pike County Sheriff’s Office observed Evans’ vehicle, a 2004 Ford F-150, crossing the white fog line twice and then crossing the yellow centerline on State Road 356 near County Road 900 East. Deputy Osgatharp initiated a traffic stop, and the vehicle came to a stop in the Hill’s Auction parking lot on North State Road 257 in Otwell. Evans was the driver; Hall was the passenger.

During the stop, Deputy Osgatharp observed Evans exhibiting signs consistent with drug impairment, including rapid and muttered speech, grinding of teeth, pinpoint pupils, poor balance, and excessive sweating. Evans was unable to satisfactorily complete standardized field sobriety testing. A preliminary breath test returned a result of 0.000, likely ruling out alcohol as the cause of impairment.

Indiana State Police Trooper Gage Cummings responded to the scene with a K9 unit, which conducted a free air sniff around the vehicle and alerted to the odor of narcotics. A probable cause search of the vehicle revealed a lunch box in the back seat containing a clear plastic baggie with a white crystal-like substance that field tested positive for methamphetamine, weighing approximately 57 grams. The lunch box also contained prescription pill bottles, one bearing the name of another individual, which held eleven Clonazepam pills, three Hydrocodone pills, and sixty Oxycodone pills, all prescription-only medications. A roadside oral fluid test administered by ISP Trooper Timothy Sturm tested positive for methamphetamine and amphetamine, and a subsequent chemical test at Daviess Community Hospital confirmed the presence of THC, methamphetamine, and amphetamine in Evans’ system.

During the search, officers also located in Hall’s purse a small container containing a brown powder substance that field tested positive for methamphetamine, as well as five loose pills, two Oxycodone and three Hydrocodone, for which Hall had no valid prescription. Hall admitted to officers that the substance was methamphetamine.

A Level 3 Felony carries a potential sentence of three to sixteen years in the Indiana Department of Correction. A Level 5 Felony carries a potential sentence of one to six years. A Level 6 Felony carries a potential sentence of six months to two and one-half years. A Class C Misdemeanor carries a potential sentence of up to sixty days.

The State has filed Motions for Enhanced Bond for Evans; the State has requested bond in the amount of $500,000, 10% permitted, based on his prior felony drug convictions, including a prior conviction for Dealing in Methamphetamine.

This investigation was conducted by Deputy Kane Osgatharp of the Pike County Sheriff’s Office, with assistance from Deputy Alyssa Lee of the Pike County Sheriff’s Office, Indiana State Police Trooper Gage Cummings, and Indiana State Police Trooper Timothy Sturm.

The Office of the Pike County Prosecutor advises that under our Constitution, all individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law and, until such time, all charges are merely allegations and should be considered as such.

Auth: 6/1/2026

Darrin E. McDonald
Prosecuting Attorney

05/29/2026

May 29, 2026

Re: Conservation Officer Joe Haywood Discovers Creek Garbage Dump and Secures Full Clean-Up

PETERSBURG, IN – On April 25, 2026, Indiana Department of Natural Resources Conservation Officer Joe Haywood discovered a garbage dump in a Pike County creek near the intersection of 1175 South and 550 East. The creek is a tributary of the Patoka River.

Officer Haywood first attempted to clear the trash himself but was unable to do so given the weight of the garbage in the water. In the meantime, he noted that among the garbage were several clear trash bags, some of which contained addressed envelopes. He used the addresses as a starting point to conduct several investigative interviews until he had identified the individual responsible for the garbage dump.

On May 19, the individual was offered one week to clear the garbage at their own expense in exchange for avoiding a citation for Littering as a Class A Infraction. Officer Haywood, with the assistance of Conservation Officer Roy “Ken” Tincher, personally observed the clean-up, ultimately confirming that all garbage was cleared and properly disposed of within the agreed time.

Our Office commends Officer Haywood for his work. Our waterways are precious natural resources, and proactive policing like this goes a long way to ensuring we protect them, both for ourselves and for future generations of Hoosiers. It’s a good thing to keep in mind this weekend; the nice weather we’re expecting is an opportunity to get out and enjoy the best of the natural world around us. Have a safe weekend, Pike County.


Logan T. Tedrow
Deputy Prosecuting Attorney