Marsa Lynn Hacker Gipson would be 63 years old today, probably contemplating retirement, enjoying the successes of her children, spoiling her grandchildren.<\/p>\n
Instead, she\u2019s buried in Riverside Cemetery at Spencer, the victim \u2014 35 years ago this week \u2014 of one of the most horrifyingly heinous criminal deaths in Putnam County and west-central Indiana history.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Since that fateful day \u2014 Aug. 27, 1991 \u2014 those of us of a certain age never drive under that overpass without apprehension, thinking of the random nature of the fatal incident.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Putnamville State Police Det. Brian Maudlin told the BannerGraphic the case remains active and still considered open, despite 35 years without resolution.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe never close these unsolved homicides,\u201d he said, noting that new technology often allows evidence to be re-evaluated.<\/p>\n
\u201cOccasionally we do get tips on this and other cases,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
Calling the incident an unintended prank that \u201cwent horribly awry,\u201d 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 \u2014 a piece of riprap taken from the yard of a nearby resident \u2014 off the hood or top of a vehicle for some perverse joy.<\/p>\n
Instead, it smashed through the windshield of Marsa Gipson\u2019s car, rupturing her aorta, breaking her collarbones and crushing her skull. She likely never saw it coming and died almost instantly.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Unbelievable as it seems \u2014 making you wonder if there were more than two persons on the overpass that night \u2014 immediately after the rocks struck Gipson\u2019s 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\u2019t so lucky.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow 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\u2019t be consequences?\u201d Bridges pointedly asked in an interview this week.<\/p>\n
Det. Maudlin, who is also closing in on retirement, called it \u201csuch a senseless act,\u201d adding that \u201cthey don\u2019t know who they\u2019re dropping that rock on, which makes our job even more difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n
The detective said he himself was spooked at an overpass near Indianapolis when he was working that area as a young officer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had somebody drop a scarecrow from an overpass one time, and as it pops into my headlights, I\u2019m thinking I ran over a body.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I got stopped, I went chasing up that hill but whoever did it ran off,\u201d Maudlin added, admitting the incident left him both shaken and stirred.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Bridges, who worked with Troopers Jeff Herron, Brian Smith and Todd Smith on the case, said the suspects didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey didn\u2019t commit the cardinal sin of most criminals,\u201d Bridges said, \u201cThey kept their mouths shut. They didn\u2019t talk about it and never have. That\u2019s how crimes go unsolved.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Advances in the use of DNA and using ancestry websites to find suspects have helped solve many cases recently but hasn\u2019t helped this one yet. Investigators tried to get suspect DNA off the rocks but were unsuccessful.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had all kinds of circumstantial evidence,\u201d Bridges recalled, although not enough for authorities to prosecute the case.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cNever say never,\u201d Bridges responded to a question about whether the case will ever be solved. \u201cI don\u2019t like to ever give up hope.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marsa Gipson\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Who could have done this? Why would they do this? Why Marsa Gipson? Will we ever know?<\/p>\n
After 35 years, we all still have the same sad questions \u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marsa Lynn Hacker Gipson would be 63 years old today, probably contemplating retirement, enjoying the successes of her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[124626,75,84,83,9,24,12,63],"class_list":["post-331193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-banner_graphic","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}