Three women were killed at motels along Interstate 65 in the late 1980s: Vicki Heath in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, in February 1987, and Margaret "Peggy" Gill and Jeanne Gilbert in northwest Indiana on a single night in March 1989. A fourth woman was attacked in Columbus, Indiana, in January 1990 and survived. For more than thirty years no one was named. On April 5, 2022, the Indiana State Police and the FBI announced that DNA evidence had led them to Harry Edward Greenwell, a man from Kentucky who had died in Iowa in 2013.
Greenwell was never arrested, charged or tried. The killings are attributed to him by two police agencies, and no court has ever weighed the case.
Greenwell was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1944. Police described him as a man with an extensive criminal history that ran from 1963 to 1998. In April 1963 he was convicted of robbery in Louisville and sentenced to two years in the Kentucky State Penitentiary. Police said he had been in and out of prison several times and had escaped from jail twice, and that he was known to travel frequently through the Midwest. He died in Iowa in January 2013, at the age of 68. His work, his family and his later years are not on record in any detail.
Vicki Heath was 41 years old. She was killed on February 21, 1987, at a motel along Interstate 65 in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. The Elizabethtown Police Department carried the case for decades. In 2022 its deputy chief of operations spoke of the department's long-term dedication to it and of hoping that the identification would bring "long overdue closure."
Two years later, on March 3, 1989, two more women were killed at motels along the same highway in Indiana. Margaret "Peggy" Gill, 24, died in Merrillville. Jeanne Gilbert, 34, died in Remington. Gilbert was the mother of two children. At the 2022 announcement her daughter thanked the agencies for keeping the cases active, said her mother "is still in my family's hearts" and said of her: "I celebrate her."
Investigators came to treat the Merrillville and Remington cases and the Elizabethtown case as the work of one man.
On January 2, 1990, a woman was attacked at a motel in Columbus, Indiana. She survived and gave police a description of the man. She is the only known survivor of the attacks that police tie to Greenwell, and police referred to her only as the surviving victim. A sketch drawn from her description, police said in 2022, resembled photographs of Greenwell. Police came to treat her case as part of the same series.
On April 5, 2022, the Indiana State Police and the FBI held a news conference in Indiana. The Indiana State Police stated that Harry Edward Greenwell had been identified as the person responsible for the four attacks. DNA evidence led police to name him. The FBI's Houston field office assisted.
The state police superintendent, Douglas Carter, described the work as a "relentless and dogged pursuit" and said it was amazing what could happen "over the course of generations." The special agent in charge of the FBI's Indianapolis office, Herbert Stapleton, told the families that the announcement could not take away the pain of their loss, and that Greenwell could not be prosecuted because he was dead.
Police also said they were contacting other departments in the Midwest, because Greenwell might be connected to other unsolved crimes. None has been named.
Established by police announcement: that the Indiana State Police and the FBI named Greenwell in April 2022 as responsible for the deaths of Vicki Heath, Margaret Gill and Jeanne Gilbert and for the Columbus attack.
Not established by any court: all of it. No charge was ever filed, no jury or judge has weighed the evidence, and Greenwell was never able to answer it. His death in 2013 ended any possibility of a prosecution.
Left open: whether he was involved in other crimes. Police have said only that other cases are being looked at.
1944: Harry Edward Greenwell is born in Louisville, Kentucky.
April 1963: convicted of robbery in Louisville.
February 21, 1987: Vicki Heath is killed in Elizabethtown, Kentucky.
March 3, 1989: Margaret "Peggy" Gill is killed in Merrillville, Indiana, and Jeanne Gilbert in Remington, Indiana.
January 2, 1990: a woman is attacked in Columbus, Indiana, and survives.
January 2013: Greenwell dies in Iowa, aged 68.
April 5, 2022: the Indiana State Police and the FBI announce that DNA evidence led them to name him.