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Indiana Jury Takes 17 Minutes to Convict William Clyde Gibson III of Murdering His Mother's Best Friend

Christine Whitis, 75, had gone to the house after his mother's death. Prosecutors said the verdict would be followed by a death-penalty phase.

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Illustration of a red-brick small-town courthouse on a fall afternoon, with bare trees and leaves in the parking lot. Not the actual courthouse.

Christine Whitis, 75, was killed in the Indiana home of her late best friend. On October 25, 2013, a jury took 17 minutes to convict the friend's son, William Clyde Gibson III, of her murder.

The jury of 12 was drawn from Dearborn County under an agreement between the parties, and the case was tried in Floyd Superior Court before Judge Susan L. Orth. Prosecutors presented their case over four days and the defense over one, and prosecutors told jurors the evidence included Gibson's own confession on video and in letters. Defense attorney J. Patrick Biggs argued that Gibson had been drinking since his mother died a few months earlier and was not in the right state of mind. "I think it is at least somewhat of a sense of relief for the victim's families to be able to see 12 independent people reach a verdict of guilty," Floyd County Prosecutor Keith Henderson said. The penalty phase was set to begin the following Monday.

According to the Indiana Supreme Court, an intoxicated Gibson invited Whitis into his mother's home on April 18, 2012. His sisters found her body there the next day and called police, who arrested Gibson as he drove Whitis's van; his blood alcohol level was .23. The jury recommended death, the judge imposed it and the Indiana Supreme Court affirmed in 2015. Gibson later pleaded guilty to the 2002 murder of Karen Hodella, receiving 65 years, and to the murder of Stephanie Kirk, whose body police exhumed from the yard; he was sentenced to death for Kirk's killing, and that sentence was affirmed in 2016.

Gibson was tried first for the last of the three killings he was convicted of; Karen Hodella had died a decade earlier, and Stephanie Kirk less than a month before Whitis.

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