Release Date: 
Tuesday, September 27, 2005

*** MEDIA ADVISORY *** September 27, 2005                                                  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE  PROSECUTING ATTORNEY SEEKS LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE IN KEIM MURDER MEDIA CONTACT:  Curtis T. Hill, Jr., 296-1888             Elkhart County Prosecuting Attorney Curtis T. Hill, Jr. announced that he has filed pleadings in the Elkhart Circuit Court requesting that the three (3) individuals accused in the August 4, 2005 murder of forty-one (41) year old Barbara Keim of Middlebury, Indiana, face life imprisonment without parole for their alleged involvement in her abduction and death.  Prior to Keim’s body being discovered by law enforcement officers in a cornfield, Keim had been the subject of a missing persons report from Middlebury just days before.  The Middlebury Marshal’s Office along with Indiana State Police and with assistance from the Goshen Police Department, Elkhart County Sheriff’s Department, and Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Department, as well as investigators of the Elkhart County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, secured information leading to the arrests of Spenser A. Krempetz age eighteen (18), Aaron D. McDonald age seventeen (17), and Hannah L. Stone age seventeen (17), the daughter of the victim Barbara Jo Keim.Under Indiana law, the maximum penalty for an offense of murder is sixty-five (65) years, although the prosecuting attorney may seek the death penalty or life imprisonment without parole upon alleging the existence of qualifying statutory aggravating factors.“Although law enforcement acted quickly in apprehending Krempetz, McDonald, and Stone for this brutal killing, the case has remained under investigation and review as we have continued to put the various pieces of the puzzle together”, said Hill.  “We have alleged that Barbara Jo Keim was murdered as a result of a conscious plan to do so by her own daughter and her daughter’s two (2) cohorts.” “Based upon the circumstances of this murder as I now know them to be and based upon Indiana law, I believe it to be appropriate that the murderers of Barbara Jo Keim never darken the door of a free community”, said Hill.Judge Terry C. Shewmaker has scheduled the Request for Life Imprisonment Without Parole for initial hearing on Thursday, September 29, 2005 at 8:30 a.m.***