A Cumberland man was sentenced yesterday in connection with the death of his girlfriend’s daughter.
On the afternoon of April 6, 2020, Cumberland Police were called to a residence in the 11000 block of Kirkwood Drive after first responders reported a child in cardiac arrest. Brooklyn Mendheim, 8, was rushed to the hospital, where she later died. One of the nurses who treated her told police she had “extensive, fresh injuries” of the type usually seen in victims of physical and sexual abuse.
The child’s mother, Kimberly Grosklos, and Derrick Duane Dale, Grosklos’s boyfriend, initially tried to convince police the child had intentionally drowned herself in the bathtub. However, one of the other three kids – ages 11, 9 and 4- who were removed from the home broke down in tears and told authorities Brooklyn had been beaten with jumper cables shortly before her death.
An autopsy determined there was no water in the girl’s lungs. Her cause of death was ruled to be caused by nonaccidental trauma and suffocation.
Kimberly Grosklos, 34, received a 20-year sentence earlier this month after pleading guilty to neglect of a dependent resulting in death.
Last month, a jury found 31-year-old Dale, guilty of aggravated battery resulting in death, neglect of a dependent resulting in a death, and battery resulting in serious bodily injury to a person less than 14 years old. He was sentenced on Friday to 35 years.
A joint law enforcement operation resulted in the arrest of eleven Indiana men earlier this month.
Posing as 14-year-olds, detectives posted to social media and chatted with the men about sexual acts and fetishes. Once they eventually asked to meet, they were caught up in the “Hi, I’m John Edwards”-style sting. The accused offenders came from as near as Greenwood and as far away as Greentown.
They didn’t show up empty-handed, either. All of them brought small “gifts” such as sex toys, condoms, liquor, lubricant, and meth.
One man even brought guns.
The Johnson County Sheriff’s Office, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office, and Franklin Police joined forces for the three-day sex sting. This is the third such collaboration in two years, resulting a total of 29 arrests.
The following were arrested May 10 – 12:
– Jeff Hendricks, 49, of Unionville, charged with child solicitation and resisting law enforcement. In his position as deputy director of the American Legion, one of his duties is overseeing youth programs. In a chat, he told the “girl” he wanted to make her fantasies come true “no matter how twisted or perverted.”
– Samual N. Kaufman, 20, of Bloomington, charged with child solicitation.
– Joshua L. Sliter, 30, of Greentown, charged with child solicitation and providing pornography to minors. Traveled 113 miles to meet the “child.”
– Derick O. Sosa, 19, of Indianapolis, charged with child solicitation and resisting law enforcement.
– Jason A. Thornton, 40, of Indianapolis, charged with child solicitation, possession of methamphetamine, habitual traffic violator – lifetime suspension, illegal possession of a firearm and forgery.
– Francisco B. Amaya Marquez, 25, of Indianapolis, charged with child solicitation.
– Dylan C. Muncy, 22, of Indianapolis, charged with providing pornography to minors.
– Chase M. Reese, 30, of McCordsville, charged with child solicitation and providing pornography to minors.
– Nicholas Sorley, 22, of Sharpsville, charged with child solicitation.
Ronald Logan, pictured here during an interview with Inside Edition.
True crime fans were shocked yesterday when new details were revealed in the Delphi Murder case. The documents, obtained via a FOIA request by the Murder Street podcast, sadly confirmed some of the most lurid rumors surrounding the deaths of Libby German (14) and Abby Williams (13).
In a request for a warrant to search the property of Ronald Logan, an FBI agent noted that – although there had been no signs of a struggle -the girls lost a great deal of blood when they died. Their bodies were then “moved and staged” and pieces of their clothing taken. Investigators believe the killer may have taken other souveniers as well, such as photos or videos.
Ronald Logan’s house was less than 1500 feet from where the girls were found. Authorities received fifteen separate tips indicating he was responsible for the murders. His cousin stated in an interview that Logan had asked for help establishing a false alibi for the time of the murders, and GPS data indicated he was near the crime scene. A woman who had once been in a relationship with him said he was physically violent and “always” carried a gun in a fanny pack. A previous search of his property, executed in connection with a parole violation, noted he possessed multiple handguns and knives.
Ronald Logan died in 2020. He was never formally named a suspect in the case.
A Hamilton County man is accused of catfishing a 14-year-old girl he met on Snapchat and exchanging sex with her for vapes.
According to police, Cicero resident Jacob Scott Glenn, 24, posed as a 16-year-old girl when he established contact with the victim on Snapchat. Using the false identity, he lured the minor into an encounter under the pretense of selling her e-cigarettes. Then he took her to a second location and demanded sex for them instead.
Court documents state the minor left her house on Christmas by climbing out a window just after midnight. But rather than the female teen she expected to meet, the 14-year-old was surprised to see Glenn, an adult man. He convinced her to ride with him to a Pilot Travel Center in Daleville, across the Delaware County line. It was only then, after distancing the girl from her home, that the accused predator told her he didn’t want money. He wanted sex.
She complied, and they had at least one other similar encounter in January.
Unfortunately for Glenn, along with being an alleged predator, he’s also not too bright (allegedly). He later sent the victim a TikTok video of his truck, and she followed the link to his actual profile, where his age was listed as 24. Then she found him on another social media site and learned his real name.
Although the girl told friends and two separate teachers what had occurred, somehow it didn’t come to the attention of police until her father found the vape pens in her room. When asked how she acquired them, the 14-year-old confessed everything, prompting her father to contact local authorities. Photo and video evidence corroborating the girl’s story was taken from her phone by Chesterfield Police.
Glenn is currently being held in the Delaware County Jail without bond. He has been charged with promotion of human trafficking of a minor, a Level 3 felony; two counts of sexual misconduct with a minor, a Level 4 felony and two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a misdemeanor.
He was also faces a previous charge for with sexual misconduct with a minor in October 2020. That case is still pending.
April 28, 1978 – Divorced mother Terry Lee Chasteen was taking her three small children – Misty (5), Stephen (4), and Mark (2) – to the babysitter when another driver motioned for her to pull over. Terry pulled to the side of I-465, and the man pulled in behind her, explaining something was wrong with one of her rear tires. He offered to look at it for her, and the young mother gratefully accepted.
Tragically for Terry and her children, their supposed Good Samaritan was actually a conniving, violent criminal named Steven Timothy Judy. Once he had access to Terry’s car, Judy disabled it under the guise of fixing the nonexistant problem with her tire. Then, when she was unable to drive away, he convinced her to accept a ride.
Within an hour, Terry and all three children were dead.
After initially proclaiming his innocence, Judy later confessed to raping Terry before strangling her to death in full view of her children. Then the remorseless killer threw each of the kids, one by one, as far as he could into the cold water of White Lick Creek and watched as they drowned.
Steven Timothy Judy was executed in Indiana’s electric chair on March 9, 1981.
A mushroom hunter stumbled across the dead body of a child yesterday, and the Indiana State Police is requesting the public’s help to identify him.
He is described as an African-American child between the ages of 5 and 8-years-old. The little boy has a thin build, a short haircut, and stood about four feet tall.
Found near a roadside in a wooded area just east of Washington County, police believe he died sometime within the last week. His cause of death is currently unknown. An autopsy is scheduled for Tuesday.
If you have information concerning this child, please contact Detective Matt Busick of the Indiana State Police in Sellersburg (1-812-248-4374 or 1-800-872-6743).
Kristine Bunch, photographed during her incarceration
March 4, 1996 – A Decatur County jury deliberated only three hours before sentencing 22-year-old Kristine “Kristi” Bunch to 60 years in prison for the death of her son Anthony.
Although Prosecutor William O. Smith had not presented evidence of a motive during the trial, Indiana Fire Marshals Bryan Frank and James Skaggs asserted they’d found evidence “the fire was deliberately set, that accelerants had been used to cause the fire, that there were ‘pour patterns’ in the burned-out home where accelerants had been poured, and that the fire had started in two separate locations, one of which was the bedroom in which Anthony was sleeping.”
A report by William Kinard, a forensic chemist with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, had further substantiated those findings.
Ten years later, Bunch filed a petition challenging her conviction. It was then revealed that Kinard had initially disagreed with Skaggs and Frank’s conclusion of arson. However, key portions of the ATF chemist’s report were later deleted or altered in order to coincide with the opinions of the fire marshals.
The Indiana Court of Appeals reversed Bunch’s conviction on March 21, 2012, and all charges were dropped later that year.
By then, she had already lost seventeen years of her life behind bars.
Kristine, who was pregnant at the time of her arrest, is a free woman today and has reconnected with the son she gave birth to in prison.
Heather Nicole Adkins, the Indiana woman accused of abandoning her non-verbal, autistic 5-yr-old by the roadside, has signed an extradition waiver and is on her way back to Ohio.
According to what police in three different states have pieced together, on February 17th, just days before his sixth birthday, Adkins drove her son, Martin “Thomas” Adkins, roughly 75 miles from their home in Shelbyville to an Ohio suburb near Cincinnati. It was there, court documents state, that she left Thomas – wearing only a burgundy and gray sweatsuit and black Shaq gym shoes – on a dark, dead-end street before driving away. He was found by a passing motorist on a nearby road about an hour later. The driver, who described the boy as “soaking wet” and confused, called 911.
“It’s a two-lane road, super dark, no lights, very windy, and it was also freezing,” stated Josh Wanderski, the man who came to the abandoned child’s aid. “He was just on the side of the road. He was waving me down. Luckily I was close so that I could call the police.”
“He didn’t really understand what was going on,” Wanderski told a local news station. “He was really close to the road.”
Although initially no one knew the boy’s identity, the Colerain Township Police Department was able to identify Thomas through social media posts by the following day.
Meanwhile, Adkins was on her way through Kentucky. On February 19th, she was arrested at a Georgetown gas station for banging on car windows and “acting strangely.” (Perhaps not coincidentally, police later confirmed Adkins had been treated at a local hospital for heroin and meth intoxication.) Despite giving the police a fake name, Adkins was quickly identified and arrested for an unpaid fine from 2011. Georgetown police were unaware she was wanted in connection with her son’s abandonment at the time.
By that very next day however, Georgetown PD realized the woman they had in custody was the same woman police in Ohio were looking for, and added a misdemeanor endangering children charge. Adkins then gave a jailhouse interview to a local news station in which she admitted abandoning her son “to save him from me.”
Despite that, court records show Adkins pleaded not guilty during a Feb. 22 court appearance.
A few days later, prosecutors in Ohio’s Hamilton County charged her with kidnapping, a felony, which enabled her extradition. Police are still investigating the matter, and other charges may still follow.
Thomas is currently staying with a foster care family in the Cincinnati Child Protective Service program. He has two brothers, who are with a family friend.
Anyone with information on the case is encouraged to contact the Colerain PoliceDepartment at 513-321-2677.
The grandparents who raised Libby German for most of her life, Becky and Mike Patty
“I imagine there was an opportunity for one or both to separate and try to make a break different ways. Those girls loved each other. They were good friends. Neither one of them left each other’s sides. Both those girls are heroes in my book.” – Mike Patty
For many people who find themselves in a waking nightmare, there is a dividing line of before and after. Before the traumatic event, their lives follow a steady rhythm and familiar order. They’re reliable, if a bit predictable, and things make a certain kind of sense. After, their world is irreparably damaged, and nothing ever quite makes sense again.
In the world Libby German’s family lived in prior to the 13th of February, 2017, it was inconceivable to think something truly terrible had happened, even after they’d initially realized the girls were missing. The kidnapping of two middle school children in broad daylight just didn’t seem like something that could happen in Delphi. So, although they’d been looking for Libby and Abby for roughly two hours before notifying police, the overall mood was one of concern but not yet desperation. They kept telling themselves that one – or even both – of the girls must have fallen on the trail, and the pair were sticking it out together, waiting for someone to find them. Maybe they were lost. Maybe Libby’s phone was somehow been damaged. Maybe the girls didn’t even realize anyone was looking for them…anything but the awful truth.
The exception was Becky Patty, Libby’s grandmother. She’d raised Libby since the age of three, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was deeply wrong. She tried calling AT&T, Libby’s cell service provider, to see if they could locate her phone, but Libby had performed a factory reset on the phone the previous week, and none of the tracking apps had been turned back on since then. Frustrated, Becky hung up without receiving any real help from AT&T. At a loss, the family continued their search.
“Me and my uncle actually crossed the bridge when we were yelling for them down there, and I remember getting to the end of the bridge and looking to the left and seeing, like, someone had fallen down the hill over there,” Kelsi later remarked, referring to some depressions in the grass. “And I didn’t think anything of it.” She continued trying Libby’s phone. At one point, she believed her call connected but the moment of hope was quickly crushed when the line fell silent and couldn’t be reached again. It was then that Libby’s grandparents decided to call police. Assured things would soon be in more capable hands, Kelsi left the trails to report for work, already more than an hour late.
Meanwhile, Abby’s mother Anna Williams was also working. At the restaurant where she waitressed, she found a minute to check her phone before the dinner rush. Unbeknownst to Anna, Becky had been trying to call her to inform her of the situation. After all, if someone was going to be forced to tell the woman that her only child was missing, Becky didn’t want it to be police. Unable to reach Anna by telephone, she’d driven to the Williams home, only to be informed Anna was at work.
By that time, Mike had already called 911 and returned to combing the trails when he literally ran into a pair of responding officers, one each from the Delphi PD and one from the Carroll County Sheriff’s Department. After another brief search and discussion, the grandfather was asked to come file a formal missing persons report. Agreeing, he then called Becky to tell her to meet him at the sheriff’s office. Most of the other extended family members stayed behind to continue canvassing the woods, and people began asking for help on social media.
Shortly after she received the call from her husband Mike, Becky was finally able to speak with Anna. Abby’s mother readily agreed to leave work to meet the Pattys at the station but, like so many others, misinterpreted the severity of the circumstances. As she headed out the door, Anna optimistically told coworkers she’d sort everything out then probably be back in time to finish her shift.
Kelsi, too, was summoned away from work as authorities began questioning the families. Asked about her little sister’s social media, she showed the police two photos Libby had posted to Snapchat. The first was an artsy shot of High Bridge stretching out into the distance, away from the camera. The second photo was one of Abby crossing the bridge. Posted at approximately 2:07, the pictures were proof the girls had still been alive and well roughly half an hour after they’d been dropped off.
Photos taken by Liberty German, 14, moments before her death. Her best friend, Abigail Williams, (photo to the right) died at her side.
Curious about Abby and Libby’s other social media activity, the authorities had members of both families gather the girls’ digital devices from their homes and bring them in for examination. Abby owned a tablet, but she had been forbidden from getting a cell phone until she was 14. She’d also been forbidden from joining Facebook, but it was quickly discovered that not only had she set up a profile, furthermore she had a male Facebook friend her mother knew nothing about.
Of course, Libby had her phone on her when she disappeared, but police believed it had since died or been turned off. It has never been publicly revealed what -if anything- was found on computers and other devices in her home.
It was roughly then that the first controversial decision of the night was made. According to Anna Williams, police decided “almost immediately” that there was no evidence the girls were planning on meeting anyone. Nor, supposedly, were they talking to anyone who was posting under a fake name or concealing their true identity. Without any new information to disseminate or an indication of imminent danger, authorities decided against issuing an Amber Alert.
Still, word continued to spread and worry continued to grow on social media. Missing children were so unusual in the small town that the mayor was notified and responded that very night, and a report about the missing girls aired on local news. A group of approximately 100 people – including Mike, Becky, Anna, other family, friends, and members of various law enforcement entities, including the Delphi Police Department, Delphi Volunteer Fire Department, and Carroll County Sheriff’s Department – converged on the area. People searched in the dark and cold for hours, with nothing more than their flashlights and concern to lead the way.
The mood had grown more somber throughout the night as the temperature steadily dropped and no sign of the girls could be found. Around 10 pm, the group began thinning out as people went home to rest with the understanding that they would return in the morning. Even so, shortly before midnight, the sheriff’s office issued a press release stating there was no reason to suspect foul play.
Then, a few minutes later, authorities made yet another controversial decision. The official search was called off until the next day.
If you have any information pertaining to their murders – or the social media profile “anthony_shots” – please call the Delphi Homicide Investigation Tip Line (844-459-5786), the Indiana State Police (1-800-382-7537), or the Carroll County Sheriff’s Department (765-564-2413). You can also contact Abbyandlibbytip@cacoshrf.com.
Indiana Infamy 