The Press-Dispatch
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A-6 Wednesday, July 28, 2021 The Press-Dispatch TRIAL Continued from page 1 Houchins in physical therapy after spine injury By Andy Heuring Former Petersburg resi- dent Adam Houchins is set- tling into his new surround- ings at the Shepherd Center in Atlanta. The Shepherd Cen- ter specializes in spinal inju- ries. Houchins, on July 4, suf- fered a burst fracture of his C7 vertebrae when he dove in- to his sister's swimming pool. Initially, he was supposed to be moved to the Shepherd Center just days after the inju- ry, but an emergency surgery to remove more bone frag- ments had to be performed. Houchins said they then ran into some insurance snags on being able to fly him to Atlanta. So his local union, the Plumbers and Steamfit- ters Local 136, stepped up and paid the $21,000 bill to have Houchins flown to At- lanta on a Lear jet. He arrived last Wednesday after just a 52 minute flight from take off to landing in Atlanta. "I do physical and occupa- tional therapy three hours a day," said Houchins from his temporary room. He is look- ing to be moved into a more permanent room in a few days. He said the therapy will in- crease to six hours a day even- tually. He is currently getting around in a wheelchair he con- trols with his mouth. "Hope- fully, in a few weeks, I can control it with my arms," said Houchins. Right now he has just a little movement in his arms. "I'm in the best place for care," said Houchins of the Shepherd Center. His mother, Janet Graff, said they are "very grateful" Adam was admitted so quick- ly into the Shepherd center. "Some people have to be on a wait list for months. For him to be sent here so soon, we are just very grateful." "We also appreciate the community support. There has just be a great outpour- ing of support." "Continue with the thoughts and prayers. It keeps our spirits up," said Houchins. Above: Adam Houchins in a special rehab chair at the Shepherd Center in Atlanta. Houchins moved there last week and began rehab after a July 4 acci- dent. At left: Houchins is loaded onto a Lear jet for a pri- vate flight from Evansville to Atlanta. the divorce. Also, while the number of days since Sharon Fox was alive was around four days, Robert Fox looked at his cell phone and found it was six days since he'd spoken to her. "It didn't come from Robert. It matches the timeline," Mc- Donald said. Fox went to police and, ac- cording to the prosecution, knew his wife was dead, which he said was due to a text mes- sage and call, but fought when police tried to confiscate the phone to confirm his where- abouts. There are a lot of what-ifs in the case, McDonald told the jury, including what would have happened if Fox hadn't shown up unprompted at the police station, hadn't brought his cell phone with him or hadn't called 911 for the wel- fare check, or if the crime was being tried 15 years ago be- fore Google kept extensive lo- cation data of the pings off the neighbor's wi-fi routers. Fox eventually told police he checked on his wife from outside, and had seen her in bed playing on her tablet the night before she died. Then he told them he saw her dead on the stairs the following night, but because her legs were not visible from the outside, when pressed on how he knew the position of her legs, he told po- lice he was in the house. When police asked whether his DNA would be on the body, he said it would be on the wrists, then changed that to the feet. He later told police his lock- pick broke off in his wife's deadbolt lock. "That's the way things prog- ress in this case, they get stranger and stranger and stranger," McDonald said af- ter discussing Fox's refusal to give the police his cell phone and his changing interviews with police. He said police found two life insurance policies on the wife, a $137,000 policy Fox paid more than $200 a month to retain throughout the di- vorce, and another accidental death policy that would pay $120,000 should Sharon Fox die in an accident. Neither was a recent purchase; Ed Fox had paid on them for years. More- over, Sharon still had her hus- band listed as the beneficiary on her will. McDonald laid the state's case piece by piece, conclud- ing Fox had pushed his wife down the stairs. "The only use he had for her was if she was dead," McDon- ald said. The autopsy revealed lit- tle information other than in- juries to the left side, head wounds and a broken neck, leading the coroner to rule an accidental death. "This sounds like some NBC Dateline stuff," defense attorney Doug Walton told the jury. "You've read the head- line, but not the article." Where McDonald char- acterized Fox as a man who wanted things, Walton fo- cused on his military service, honorable discharge and civil service, discussing his role as family breadwinner, and as a man who liked to do projects with tools in his shed. He talked about him as a man in an acrimonious di- vorce, but who had no arrests for domestic violence or med- ical reports filed that back up his wife's claims. He said people in divorce di- gress to child-like behavior. "Ed Fox has defects. Ed has some flaws." He described him as a man who didn't listen to authority well, and said the prosecution would agree Ed was in the ar- ea. "We're not going to de- ny he was in the house. His cell phone data shows he was there. It's true," said Walton. "Ed was seen there lurking around. Obsessing about his tools...still checking on Sha- ron because he cared about her. You can't just shut that off." But while the prosecution has talked about the case as one stretched over time, Wal- ton is focused on one piece of evidence and one time, and that is the moment Sharon Fox went down the stairs. Fox ordered the lockpicking sets because he knew Sharon would change the locks on the shed, and he intended to get in and take his tools. On the night in question, Walton said his client went to the back of the house, ap- proached the door, saw the light was on in the kitchen and, from outside, saw his wife at the bottom of the stairs. He went inside for a closer look, and realized, Walton said, that he'd found his wife dead while violating his protective order. "Ed did something very cowardly," said Walton, as the defendant began to cry. "He didn't call the police. She's gone and he's scared." According to Walton, Fox then tried to get his son and his neighbor to check on his wife, to no avail. "Ed does the best he's capa- ble of doing despite his cow- ardice, and reaches out to po- lice, voluntarily, asking for a welfare check," said Walton. "Throughout the course of the interviews, Ed lies. Ed lies through his teeth, because he knew he shouldn't be there." Walton contends the state's case is built entirely on cir- cumstantial evidence; an acci- dental death policy from 2014, for example. "None of these circumstan- tial pieces of evidence pres- ents direct evidence Ed Fox was there when Sharon Fox went down the stairs or caused her to go down stairs," he said. He called the evidence rift, "trying to jump from one side of the White River to the oth- er," before warning that a guilty verdict would cause ju- rors sleepless nights. The prosecution presented their first witness, Pike Coun- ty Deputy Jared Simmons, who conducted the welfare check. He said he received the 7:55 p.m. dispatch July 19. He knocked on the door, saw one dog outside and another in, lights on, and then the Jeep parked in the garage, which would indicate someone was home. As he looked in the back door, from that vantage point, he could see Sharon Fox, in her nightgown, surrounded by oranges — one of which had begun to rot. Her cane was on the stairs and she was blue — from that vantage point he could not see her feet. He did a protective sweep of the house, and said he could tell from his experience, she'd been deceased several days. Indiana State Police then took over the scene. Neighbor Faron McLaugh- lin testified he had a call from Fox asking for him to check on his second cousin, Sharon, be- fore the body was found. Mc- Laughlin lived down the road a mile, and agreed at first to check on Sharon, after Fox said his son hadn't heard from his mom in three to four days. When McLaughlin was leaving, however, his wife and daughter discouraged him, saying he didn't want to get in the middle of the divorce. McLaughlin also testified that in early July, Fox had run into a neighbor's ditch and had to have his vehicle pulled out. Fox told him he'd been look- ing for a place to cut firewood, even though McLaughlin said he assumed since it was July and Fox was living in a camp- er, he wouldn't need firewood. He also testified that Sha- ron had fallen previously, and he'd helped her off the floor, and she carried her cell phone with her in case she would need help. Indiana State Police De- tective Tobias Odom told the court he'd arrived at 9 p.m., fresh off vacation to the scene. He accessed recordings of the 911 calls, ran the license on the car, came up with the protective order and awaited CSI. The prosecutor played the 911 call, in which Ed Fox said his son hadn't heard from his mother in four days, and re- quested a welfare check. He told the dispatcher he hadn't been there in a year. "She's got a protection or- der on me, I can't go out there," he said. Dispatch called back to get a description of the car and dogs on the property. McDonald called Robert Fox, the couple's son, who told the court he was nervous about testifying, and hadn't see his mother as often before her death because of COVID. They often talked daily, punc- tuated by occasional stretch- es of not talking. She had difficulty walking and was nervous about the basement stairs, not liking to use them. His father called him to ask if he'd heard from his mother. "I thought it was a little strange," said Robert. He eventually decided to tell his father he'd seen her even though he hadn't. "I didn't think it was any of his business how she was do- ing...they were going through a divorce, and they were sup- posed to not have contact to each other," he said. Eventually when his moth- er didn't answer, he did get worried, however, and called his father back. Ed Fox had al- ready requested the welfare check, Robert said. He add- ed his mother didn't want to get back together, but his fa- ther did. His father called from pris- on to ask the son to take care of a time share situation, and the son saw the order for the lockpick set when looking through his father's emails. He told police. In the cross examination, Walton asked Robert, "Do you love your father? " "I love both my parents, yes," said Robert. He asked him about his fa- ther purchasing him cars, helping with repairs and get- ting him to doctor's appoint- ments. Walton asked details about Sharon's daily habits, like whether she ate snacks in bed, for example. "You weren't there all the time, so you don't know, right? " he asked. "I don't know. I have no idea," responded Robert. "You haven't really been around? " Then Walton asked if Rob- ert had ever seen his mother without her glasses. "She was legally blind with- out her glasses," said Robert. "She could get from one part of house to other without them? " asked Walton. "I don't remember her ever doing that," said Robert. Walton asked about the cou- ple's vacations to Costa Rica, the Smoky Mountains, Bran- son and Hawaii a few months before they filed for divorce. A fter Robert's testimony, Walton argued against the ad- missibility of proceedings that led to the protective order. "The histrionics Mrs. Fox goes into of 35 years of abuse, none of it is corroborated by evidence," the defense attor- ney said, adding it could have a prejudicial effect on the jury. The audio, played for the ju- ry, included Sharon Fox say- ing in June 2018, her husband shoved her at the home. "It was a long 35 years," she said. "There was one instance he threw me into the side of the truck. I got a black eye." Her husband called that a fall. She said situations escalat- ed with pushing and shoving, and the incidents leading to the protective order included twisting her arms. She said he placed her in fear. "You believe he presents a threat of safety to you? " asked her lawyer. "Yes," she said. During the hearing, Ed- ward Fox described himself as having "gently" moved her aside on three occasions, then in a high voice, mimicked her saying she would call the sher- iff. He testified he'd violated the protective order issued May 23 on May 31. "Why is she getting a pro- tective order? There's no rea- son. I wouldn't hurt her for practically anything," he said. The day after Sharon Fox was found dead, Det. Odom testified Fox first called then drove to the Pike County Sher- iff's Office, where he sat out- side on his phone. "His emotional state was fine. I was trying to figure out how to tell him," Odom said. When they entered the vid- eo-taped interrogation room, however, the defendant began to cry and referred to his wife in the past tense. "If no one's told you any- thing, how do you know? " asked the detective, then later followed with, "What do you think's happened? " "I don't know," said Fox. "You said she's passed," said Odom, later adding, "you're acting like you know that she's dead. I'm trying to determine how you know that." A fter Odom asked how of- ten Fox drove by his wife's home, Fox said not often, and there were other blue trucks. Then he refused to give the detective his phone and was arrested for resisting. The court recessed. Testi- mony resumes Wednesday. paperwork. Emails have been sent to students with informa- tion for scheduling appoint- ment times with the counsel- ors. Appointments are avail- able in 15 -minute increments. Volunteers will be available to provide building tours for freshmen and new students. August 2 8 a.m. – 3 p.m. August 3 11 a.m. – 7 p.m. August 4 8 a.m. – 3 p.m. August 5 11 a.m. – 7 p.m. August 6 8 a.m.– noon REGISTER Continued from page 1 The Press-Dispatch 812-354-8500 | www.pressdispatch.net *By enrolling in the Birthday Club, you agree to have your name, town and birth- day, or the person's name and town and birthday of whom you are enrolling, printed in e Press-Dispatch on the week in which the birthday occurs. Joining is easy! Visit pressdispatch.net/birthday or send your full name, address, city, state, zip code, phone number and birthdate to birthdayclub@pressdispatch.net.* Each week, a list of birthdays will be published in the paper! You could win a FREE PRIZE from area businesses and a three-month subscription to e Press-Dispatch. MUST RE-ENROLL EVERY YEAR! Join the One WINNER is drawn at the end of each month net edition yeah, it's that fast! Z M www.PressDispatch.net/Subscribe It's The Press-Dispatch. No matter where you live. 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