INDIANAPOLIS — When is a confession to murder not enough to take an admitted killer to trial?
When a judge rules the suspect should never have been taken into custody in the first place.
That’s the dilemma Alicia Harden faces in solving the murder of her son in February of 2020.
It was just a few weeks before the COVID pandemic swept the world and police think 20-year-old Jeremiah Harden was in the 5000 block of Eagles Watch Drive to do a marijuana deal.
Instead, the Pike High School grad was shot to death, his car rolling into a house in the quiet neighborhood.
Witnesses saw two people run away.
One of them dropped a cell phone which led investigators two weeks later to an apartment where the cell phone owner allegedly lied about his identity.
IMPD homicide detectives arrested the cell phone owner, a drummer, along with his roommate who had answered the door.
While in custody, the roommate waived his right to remain silent and request for an attorney and after several hours, as soon as police told him the drummer contradicted his account of the killing, the roommate confessed, claiming self-defense.
Two years later, the suspect’s private attorney filed a motion to suppress his client’s statement, arguing that police were after the drummer who owned the discarded cell phone and lied about his name and not the 22-year-old man who admitted he killed Harden.
A judge agreed and the Marion County Prosecutor dropped the case against the suspect and he was released from jail.
Alicia Harden got the news in a phone call from the deputy prosecutor assigned her son’s case.
”I’m so confused. I asked her, ‘What happened to the witnesses? Why did they drop it? I thought he admitted to the crime?’ I asked her these things and she said, ‘Unfortunately we could not hold him.’
”This is all new. I’ve never really experienced anything like this dealing with murder in my family so I don’t know how they handle things like that.”
A check of police and court records indicate neither the roommate or the drummer have been in any trouble since the Harden killing.
Alicia is still stunned and grieving the loss of her son.
”Every day I’m trying to figure out what happened and just to know that the suspect or suspects is out here and they’re not being held accountable is bad, it makes me sad, it makes me angry at times that they’re out here living their lives after taking someone else’s life.”
A source tells Fox 59 News that investigators had information that a third person may have been involved in the robbery murder and Alicia came up with the name “T Money.”
As the case was dismissed, it could be reopened with new evidence or witness accounts.
Anyone with information into the murder of Jeremiah Harden on February 27, 2020, in the 5000 block of Eagles Watch Drive can call Crime Stoppers at (317) 262-TIPS and earn an award of up to one thousand dollars.
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