Marsa Lynn Hacker Gipson would be 63 years old today, probably contemplating retirement, enjoying the successes of her children, spoiling her grandchildren.
Instead, she’s buried in Riverside Cemetery at Spencer, the victim — 35 years ago this week — of one of the most horrifyingly heinous criminal deaths in Putnam County and west-central Indiana history.
Gipson was the 28-year-old Arcadia mother of two who was tragically and inexplicably killed when someone heaved a 22-pound rock off the Manhattan Road overpass above westbound Interstate 70 in Putnam County as she and a male companion made their way through the darkness.
Since that fateful day — Aug. 27, 1991 — those of us of a certain age never drive under that overpass without apprehension, thinking of the random nature of the fatal incident.
That’s what has always made this case so horrifying: It could have been any one of us, innocently traveling westbound, as Gipson was in her 1984 Chevrolet Camaro, en route to Terre Haute at 1:15 in the morning to pick up her two children, ages 9 and 10, who had been staying with their grandparents before school resumed.
Putnamville State Police Det. Brian Maudlin told the BannerGraphic the case remains active and still considered open, despite 35 years without resolution.
“We never close these unsolved homicides,” he said, noting that new technology often allows evidence to be re-evaluated.
“Occasionally we do get tips on this and other cases,” Maudlin added, although former Putnam County Prosecutor Tim Bookwalter said five years ago that nothing new had come up on the case in a number of years.
Calling the incident an unintended prank that “went horribly awry,” Denny Bridges, the current Putnam Superior Court judge with something like 120 days left before retirement, was chief of detectives at the Indiana State Police Putnamville Post at the time. He theorizes the perpetrators were expecting to bounce the rock — a piece of riprap taken from the yard of a nearby resident — off the hood or top of a vehicle for some perverse joy.
Instead, it smashed through the windshield of Marsa Gipson’s car, rupturing her aorta, breaking her collarbones and crushing her skull. She likely never saw it coming and died almost instantly.
A second rock hit the hood of the car and then bounced into the windshield, striking her friend, 29-year-old Stanley Hamby. Miraculously able to gain control of the car, he steered it to a stop about a half-mile down the interstate.
Unbelievable as it seems — making you wonder if there were more than two persons on the overpass that night — immediately after the rocks struck Gipson’s car, and while Hamby attempted to stop passing motorists for help, two more rocks were hurled from the overpass, striking a semi driven by Kimberly Schutler, 23. She was remarkably uninjured as the rock hit the metal frame of the truck. A second rock crashed through the sleeper compartment, striking passenger James Polites, 29, and shattering his leg. Hamby and Polites were airlifted to Methodist Hospital at Indianapolis. Gipson, of course, wasn’t so lucky.
“How dumb can you be, dropping a 22-pound rock from 20 feet onto a speeding car (estimates were Gipson was traveling at 59 mph at the time) and not thinking there wouldn’t be consequences?” Bridges pointedly asked in an interview this week.
Det. Maudlin, who is also closing in on retirement, called it “such a senseless act,” adding that “they don’t know who they’re dropping that rock on, which makes our job even more difficult.”
The detective said he himself was spooked at an overpass near Indianapolis when he was working that area as a young officer.
“I had somebody drop a scarecrow from an overpass one time, and as it pops into my headlights, I’m thinking I ran over a body.
“When I got stopped, I went chasing up that hill but whoever did it ran off,” Maudlin added, admitting the incident left him both shaken and stirred.
On the Manhattan Road overpass, two suspects were observed in silhouette due to the darkness, while a dark-colored pickup truck was seen fleeing the area after the rock-throwing incidents. A similar vehicle was spotted by witnesses when the rocks were lifted from a yard down the road earlier.
Bridges, who worked with Troopers Jeff Herron, Brian Smith and Todd Smith on the case, said the suspects didn’t go back to school and brag about it or boast about the incident after a couple drinks at the local pub as might be expected of young people.
“They didn’t commit the cardinal sin of most criminals,” Bridges said, “They kept their mouths shut. They didn’t talk about it and never have. That’s how crimes go unsolved.”
Not surprisingly, the rock-throwing incidents stopped after Aug. 28, 1991, and there had been at least eight similar, albeit minor, incidents before the Marsa Gipson fatality.
Advances in the use of DNA and using ancestry websites to find suspects have helped solve many cases recently but hasn’t helped this one yet. Investigators tried to get suspect DNA off the rocks but were unsuccessful.
“We had all kinds of circumstantial evidence,” Bridges recalled, although not enough for authorities to prosecute the case.
At one point in the case, two young men were brought to the Putnam County Jail as potential suspects, matching the descriptions from witnesses and possibly linked to a pickup truck seen on the overpass. However, they were cut loose before ever being charged.
Interestingly enough, Bridges notes the two soon left the area, with one going south and the other north. He and other ISP officials tried to put one of the suspects under surveillance in Evansville but that also failed to pan out.
“Never say never,” Bridges responded to a question about whether the case will ever be solved. “I don’t like to ever give up hope.”
Marsa Gipson’s daughters are 44 and 45 today, while the likely perpetrators, described in 1991 as being in their late teens to early 20s, would be somewhere between 50 and 60 now, never answering for their brutal crime and undoubtedly still looking over their shoulders, waiting for a knock at the door or a police siren behind them.
Who could have done this? Why would they do this? Why Marsa Gipson? Will we ever know?
After 35 years, we all still have the same sad questions …