Gerald Wayne Bivens and His Crime Spree
*****This is a true story based on my memory, documents that I possess, and court documents from Carroll County. If there are errors they are slight and unintended. It is probably the longest story I've ever typed out, so be prepared. I hope you find it entertaining.*****
Gerald Wayne Bivins was pronounced dead on March 14, 2001 at 12:26 a.m. Another murder? Another unsolved? Hardly. Jerry was pronounced dead in the Michigan City Prison due to lethal injection. The cause of death on the death certificate was cardiac arrest due to that injection. So what were the events that led to this action being taken?
Arrest-wise, it all began in Carroll County. Specifically with the Delphi City Police. While the death penalty sentence did not come out of Carroll County, the beginning of this story certainly did.
I graduated from the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy at the end of 1989 and was off and running. We had serious crimes in Delphi, although not a huge amount. I was feeling pretty comfortable with the job by 1991 and was ready for whatever came my way. The bigger the crime, the better. In January of 1991 I was patrolling late when I heard a dispatch to watch for a suspect vehicle coming north on State Road 39 from the Lebanon area. The vehicle was wanted stemming from a murder at the rest stop on I65 in Boone County. I was set up south of town and more than ready to make a felony stop. After waiting for enough time I left the area. I never saw the car with the suspected murderer and I was highly disappointed. The case interested me, however. In fact, I cut out the sketches of the suspects from the Lafayette Journal-Courier and placed them in my file cabinet at the police station. That murder would go unsolved for quite some time.
Flashing forward to the last day of the year in 1991 and on that day my department was notified about a stolen check being cashed in town. This was a stolen check that was used to buy cigarettes and other items at Dave’s IGA. The total of the check was $49.38 since the presenter got twenty dollars in cash, also. I also remember another check involved in this case being cashed at Wallmann’s Food Liner.
If memory serves me, I was working the day shift with my chief of police, Rolland 'Dick' Roe on that day. We were working together and were getting ready for New Year's Eve. At some point, the calls came in on these two crimes and Roe assigned them both to me, especially since they both had the same information.
When I worked as a policeman I loved substance cases. I guarantee you that I was not happy working the earlier part of New Year's Eve and not the night part. I loved alcohol and drug cases so much that I eventually worked undercover for two years on a drug task force, making buys not only in Delphi but in most of the surrounding counties. I also arrested 42 or 44 drunk drivers in the last 12 months that I worked. I was not well liked………
When Roe assigned me the two check cases I began looking at the checks and found that they were from an account of an insurance agent in Clinton County who I knew. I contacted the officials there and found out that the agent had had his house burglarized while he was away at a funeral viewing a few weeks prior. I examined the checks and the information that I had been given. I didn’t have a whole lot to go on at this point, but I felt good about the case. So good, in fact, that I looked at Roe and told him that I would solve this case and guaranteed it. It wasn’t going to be easy and it was not going to be quick. And I had no idea where it would all lead. Or that it was to end in Bivins’s death, a man I had never met at this point.
The investigation began. In conversations with a Clinton County Sheriff Deputy, Mike Hensley, I was told that they also had checks that they were working on at the same time. In fact, one of the stolen checks was written to an Elmer Fuller and cashed at a Salin Bank in Lafayette. Hensley also had a driver’s license for Fuller from the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. It appeared that Fuller turned this license in when he got a new one reflecting a new address. Hensley had contacted Fuller and the picture on the license was not his. The plot thickens.
I drove to an empty lot in Frankfort. I was there checking out one of the addresses for this case. Obviously, this was a fake address. I stopped by and got the license that the deputy had gotten from the B.M.V. The address was 1418 Kossuth Street in Lafayette. Would this be another bad address and another false lead? Maybe, but there was at least one connector to this address. Obviously, Deputy Hensley had done his homework, something you don’t always see these days. In addition to the license, Hensley provided me with an accident report from the town of Kirklin and one of the drivers, a man named Ronald Chambers, had that same address. It got more odd. It was determined that the license plate on the other vehicle was stolen. Now I had some red meat! I didn’t know if the meat was expired, but it didn’t smell right.
The next address to make its way into this case was 3810 B-Sickle Court in Lafayette. Where did this one come from? In one of the worst mistakes ever made by Jerry Bivins, he had placed a call to an insurance agent in Frankfort and indicated that he was the owner of the vehicle with the stolen plate involved in the Kirklin wreck. The net was starting to tighten. It had taken right at a month-and-a-half to get this far. You might think that is a lot of time, but it wasn’t really.
You see, the Delphi City Police is a small department in a small town. We had maybe six or seven officers at the time and we provided 24-hour police coverage. All of the officers were assigned to regular patrol duties. When a criminal case came into the department it was worked by the officer on duty. At least at first. Most of the time it stayed with that officer, but if it was a bigger case that had activity coming in at all different shifts, others would help with the investigation. Other times the information would be there waiting on the officer working the case. That is life in a small department. Larger departments have officers assigned to be full-time detectives. But in Delphi, you did a little bit of everything.
So now I have a lot of information. I had the stolen check, the license of Fuller with the Lafayette address on it, the new Lafayette address from the insurance agent, a couple names in the thick of the information, and a lot of questions. One of the biggest questions was this: If the picture on the Elmer Fuller driver’s license wasn’t Elmer Fuller, just whose was it? Could it be one of the two new names in the case? Chambers or Bivins? Time to make another trip. This time to a man I used to work with in Delphi who would later become sheriff of Tippecanoe County, Detective Tracy Brown.
Brown was a sharp patrolman at Delphi. We were never on the road together, however. Brown was on the road when I was a radio operator. We ran together a lot, though. We were friends, we socialized together and even lived down the hall from each other in one of the apartment buildings downtown in Delphi. There were many evenings and nights when I would get out from my shift dispatching and would ride on patrol with Brown. I learned a lot during my pre-officer time with him.
I made a phone call and drove to the new jail in Lafayette to meet with Brown. I took all of the documents I had for this case and laid it out for him. Brown was already familiar with Bivins and immediately identified the photograph on Elmer Fuller’s driver’s license as that of Gerald Wayne Bivins. Brown also produced a 1990 photograph of Bivins from the files at the jail. It was very easy to tell that the pictures matched. I was one step closer. Now all I needed was to connect the last two dots and make sure he was the one who presented the check to the cashier at Dave’s IGA.
I developed a photo line-up and took it to the cashier. It took less than a minute to seal Jerry’s fate in Carroll County. Photo number five did it. He was done. It was a matter of time as to how we wanted to handle the situation. Usually, when you have got a guy dead to rights, you get a warrant and take him to jail. And that is what I would have normally done, but now there was a twist. A bigger prize. A bigger crime. Potentially someone to take care of. Or so went Brown’s theory, anyway.
There had been several conversations between the old Delphi friends about Mr. Bivins over the last several weeks. Somehow, Brown had gotten it in his head that Bivins was a bigger fish than the thief, forger, and disposer of stolen property arrestee that he was about to be in Carroll County. In fact, Brown called an area investigator meeting that we hosted to discuss his ideas. We were basically laughed at, but that was alright. Most of the good ideas in law enforcement are laughed at, at first. Too much pride and ego charging through a room full of cops.
What was Brown’s theory? Brown had put together some information and felt like Bivins was a viable suspect or a participant in the January murder of a preacher named William Radcliffe from White County who was killed just north of Lebanon which ended a night of a crime spree that stretched from Lafayette to there. It had all started at the Lazarus store, at the Tippecanoe Mall with the theft of some jeans and a security guard being threatened with a gun. Then to the Holidome in Lebanon where a man was tied up with a phone cord and robbed. It ended with an execution of the good minister at the northbound rest stop just south of State Road 47. Detective Brown made a good case as I listened to him talk. The trust I had for my old friend carried me into the overlap of the beginning strategy for his case and the ending strategy for mine.
Brown and I stayed in close communication with each other. We were in hopes of taking the Carroll County charges and rolling them into getting to the bottom of the reststop murder. Of course, Brown could be wrong. Like I said earlier, there was someone to take care of. And if there was any way that we could use my charges to give relief to the widow Radcliffe, we were both all in. Reverend Radcliffe’s murder was about as stupid and unnecessary as you can get. He had been to Indianapolis to visit a member of his church in the hospital and was coming home. Seeing his car was running a little hot, he pulled into the rest stop to add some water and use the restroom. While Radcliffe was on the payphone calling his wife to explain his upcoming tardiness, Bivins and Ronald Chamber, saw and approached him. Scott Weyls stayed in the car. Radcliffe caught Chamber’s attention due to the fact that he had a ‘fat wallet’. He and Bivins followed Radcliffe into the bathroom and confronted him. They robbed him of his fat wallet and all his money. Bivins then had the good reverend get on his knees and face away from him just prior to executing him. After Bivins was found guilty in Boone County court, Prosecutor McClure, I believe it was, asked Jerry why he shot him. Bivins replied, very matter of fact, that ‘I wanted to know what it felt like to kill a man’. It was some of the most chilling testimony I had ever heard in my then-young career.
I worked with the local prosecutor’s office and got my charges ready to go on Bivins. Again, Brown and I stayed in contact with each other. He was watching B-Sickle Court and Jerry’s house. Brown was getting antsy and told me that he felt Bivins was about to move from his home to God only knows where. Finally, a call came to me telling me that we had to hurry up and get the warrant and it had to be right now. Brown said that Bivins’ truck was loaded and sitting in the front yard of the house. He was getting ready to bolt. The race was on!
I got the charging papers and got them notarized by one of our dispatchers, called the Circuit Court judge at home, and asked him if I could stop by. I’m sure I explained why, but I really don’t remember. All I remember was jumping in the Diplomat patrol car and racing to his house. He signed the warrant and I radioed ahead to Brown. Brown indicated that I better step on it as Biven seemed to be wrapping up getting his stuff loaded. Off I went and I probably was a little over the speed limit. I don’t remember much about the trip down State Road 25, but I do remember turning left onto I65. I got on the ramp and hammered the Dodge’s accelerator. I had been talking back and forth with Brown and we were running out of time. As soon as I punched it I looked over to my right and saw what appeared to be two unmarked cars. Hey, I’m just a patrolman from little ole Delphi. I could be in trouble. I didn’t feel any better when they both went from a dead stop to the rear bumper of my car! I thought, ‘screw it’, and just kept on going. We all got off on State Road 26 and they followed me to Creasy Lane and then into Bivin’s housing development. Cool, they were with me. Phew……………
Brown and I had been radioing back and forth and we coordinated when we were going to pull up, him from one way and me from another. We all pulled up together. There Bivins was standing in the yard with a female who turned out to be his significant other, a packed truck, and an ‘oh shit’ look on ‘Elmer Fuller’s’ face. He was indeed ready to leave for a move to Kentucky. I read him the warrant and handcuffed him. With his hands behind his back, he looked over to the female and said that she needed to take his wallet so she could bond him out. He reached in and grabbed it and handed it to her. As she was about to grab it, a light went on in my head. I grabbed it prior to her getting it. I looked through the contents and sure enough, there was a driver’s license with Elmer Fuller’s information and Gerald Bivins’ face. That was the first of many times Jerry tried to pull one over on us with this case and the murder of William Radcliffe. They got worse and more desperate as the time passed. One such time resulted in the arrest of three innocent young men for the murder. That didn’t stick either.
Bivens was eventually convicted for forgery in Carroll County. Brown and several other detectives worked on him for the murder. I helped with looking for evidence, strategy meetings, and even guarding Bivins at the Eisenhower Bridge as divers looked for the murder weapon. I often regret not having time and money to go visit Jerry in prison. I liked him, but more than that, I wanted to learn from him. He was probably one of the biggest cons I will have ever met. For instance, how did he have Elmer Fuller’s information that he used to open bank accounts, Zales charge accounts, and other such transactions? He would get on the phone and call from the phone book telling people he was calling from an attorney’s office. He did that with Fuller. He told Fuller that the office was looking for the beneficiary of a will that had in probate and the name matched. He just needed the social security number to verify. You have to remember that this was 1991………
http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/row/bivinsg.htm
http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/US/bivins702.htm
http://leagle.com/decision/19921208598NE2d610_11189.xml/WEYLS%20v.%20STATE
Gerald Wayne Bivins was pronounced dead on March 14, 2001 at 12:26 a.m. Another murder? Another unsolved? Hardly. Jerry was pronounced dead in the Michigan City Prison due to lethal injection. The cause of death on the death certificate was cardiac arrest due to that injection. So what were the events that led to this action being taken?
Arrest-wise, it all began in Carroll County. Specifically with the Delphi City Police. While the death penalty sentence did not come out of Carroll County, the beginning of this story certainly did.
I graduated from the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy at the end of 1989 and was off and running. We had serious crimes in Delphi, although not a huge amount. I was feeling pretty comfortable with the job by 1991 and was ready for whatever came my way. The bigger the crime, the better. In January of 1991 I was patrolling late when I heard a dispatch to watch for a suspect vehicle coming north on State Road 39 from the Lebanon area. The vehicle was wanted stemming from a murder at the rest stop on I65 in Boone County. I was set up south of town and more than ready to make a felony stop. After waiting for enough time I left the area. I never saw the car with the suspected murderer and I was highly disappointed. The case interested me, however. In fact, I cut out the sketches of the suspects from the Lafayette Journal-Courier and placed them in my file cabinet at the police station. That murder would go unsolved for quite some time.
Flashing forward to the last day of the year in 1991 and on that day my department was notified about a stolen check being cashed in town. This was a stolen check that was used to buy cigarettes and other items at Dave’s IGA. The total of the check was $49.38 since the presenter got twenty dollars in cash, also. I also remember another check involved in this case being cashed at Wallmann’s Food Liner.
If memory serves me, I was working the day shift with my chief of police, Rolland 'Dick' Roe on that day. We were working together and were getting ready for New Year's Eve. At some point, the calls came in on these two crimes and Roe assigned them both to me, especially since they both had the same information.
When I worked as a policeman I loved substance cases. I guarantee you that I was not happy working the earlier part of New Year's Eve and not the night part. I loved alcohol and drug cases so much that I eventually worked undercover for two years on a drug task force, making buys not only in Delphi but in most of the surrounding counties. I also arrested 42 or 44 drunk drivers in the last 12 months that I worked. I was not well liked………
When Roe assigned me the two check cases I began looking at the checks and found that they were from an account of an insurance agent in Clinton County who I knew. I contacted the officials there and found out that the agent had had his house burglarized while he was away at a funeral viewing a few weeks prior. I examined the checks and the information that I had been given. I didn’t have a whole lot to go on at this point, but I felt good about the case. So good, in fact, that I looked at Roe and told him that I would solve this case and guaranteed it. It wasn’t going to be easy and it was not going to be quick. And I had no idea where it would all lead. Or that it was to end in Bivins’s death, a man I had never met at this point.
The investigation began. In conversations with a Clinton County Sheriff Deputy, Mike Hensley, I was told that they also had checks that they were working on at the same time. In fact, one of the stolen checks was written to an Elmer Fuller and cashed at a Salin Bank in Lafayette. Hensley also had a driver’s license for Fuller from the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. It appeared that Fuller turned this license in when he got a new one reflecting a new address. Hensley had contacted Fuller and the picture on the license was not his. The plot thickens.
I drove to an empty lot in Frankfort. I was there checking out one of the addresses for this case. Obviously, this was a fake address. I stopped by and got the license that the deputy had gotten from the B.M.V. The address was 1418 Kossuth Street in Lafayette. Would this be another bad address and another false lead? Maybe, but there was at least one connector to this address. Obviously, Deputy Hensley had done his homework, something you don’t always see these days. In addition to the license, Hensley provided me with an accident report from the town of Kirklin and one of the drivers, a man named Ronald Chambers, had that same address. It got more odd. It was determined that the license plate on the other vehicle was stolen. Now I had some red meat! I didn’t know if the meat was expired, but it didn’t smell right.
The next address to make its way into this case was 3810 B-Sickle Court in Lafayette. Where did this one come from? In one of the worst mistakes ever made by Jerry Bivins, he had placed a call to an insurance agent in Frankfort and indicated that he was the owner of the vehicle with the stolen plate involved in the Kirklin wreck. The net was starting to tighten. It had taken right at a month-and-a-half to get this far. You might think that is a lot of time, but it wasn’t really.
You see, the Delphi City Police is a small department in a small town. We had maybe six or seven officers at the time and we provided 24-hour police coverage. All of the officers were assigned to regular patrol duties. When a criminal case came into the department it was worked by the officer on duty. At least at first. Most of the time it stayed with that officer, but if it was a bigger case that had activity coming in at all different shifts, others would help with the investigation. Other times the information would be there waiting on the officer working the case. That is life in a small department. Larger departments have officers assigned to be full-time detectives. But in Delphi, you did a little bit of everything.
So now I have a lot of information. I had the stolen check, the license of Fuller with the Lafayette address on it, the new Lafayette address from the insurance agent, a couple names in the thick of the information, and a lot of questions. One of the biggest questions was this: If the picture on the Elmer Fuller driver’s license wasn’t Elmer Fuller, just whose was it? Could it be one of the two new names in the case? Chambers or Bivins? Time to make another trip. This time to a man I used to work with in Delphi who would later become sheriff of Tippecanoe County, Detective Tracy Brown.
Brown was a sharp patrolman at Delphi. We were never on the road together, however. Brown was on the road when I was a radio operator. We ran together a lot, though. We were friends, we socialized together and even lived down the hall from each other in one of the apartment buildings downtown in Delphi. There were many evenings and nights when I would get out from my shift dispatching and would ride on patrol with Brown. I learned a lot during my pre-officer time with him.
I made a phone call and drove to the new jail in Lafayette to meet with Brown. I took all of the documents I had for this case and laid it out for him. Brown was already familiar with Bivins and immediately identified the photograph on Elmer Fuller’s driver’s license as that of Gerald Wayne Bivins. Brown also produced a 1990 photograph of Bivins from the files at the jail. It was very easy to tell that the pictures matched. I was one step closer. Now all I needed was to connect the last two dots and make sure he was the one who presented the check to the cashier at Dave’s IGA.
I developed a photo line-up and took it to the cashier. It took less than a minute to seal Jerry’s fate in Carroll County. Photo number five did it. He was done. It was a matter of time as to how we wanted to handle the situation. Usually, when you have got a guy dead to rights, you get a warrant and take him to jail. And that is what I would have normally done, but now there was a twist. A bigger prize. A bigger crime. Potentially someone to take care of. Or so went Brown’s theory, anyway.
There had been several conversations between the old Delphi friends about Mr. Bivins over the last several weeks. Somehow, Brown had gotten it in his head that Bivins was a bigger fish than the thief, forger, and disposer of stolen property arrestee that he was about to be in Carroll County. In fact, Brown called an area investigator meeting that we hosted to discuss his ideas. We were basically laughed at, but that was alright. Most of the good ideas in law enforcement are laughed at, at first. Too much pride and ego charging through a room full of cops.
What was Brown’s theory? Brown had put together some information and felt like Bivins was a viable suspect or a participant in the January murder of a preacher named William Radcliffe from White County who was killed just north of Lebanon which ended a night of a crime spree that stretched from Lafayette to there. It had all started at the Lazarus store, at the Tippecanoe Mall with the theft of some jeans and a security guard being threatened with a gun. Then to the Holidome in Lebanon where a man was tied up with a phone cord and robbed. It ended with an execution of the good minister at the northbound rest stop just south of State Road 47. Detective Brown made a good case as I listened to him talk. The trust I had for my old friend carried me into the overlap of the beginning strategy for his case and the ending strategy for mine.
Brown and I stayed in close communication with each other. We were in hopes of taking the Carroll County charges and rolling them into getting to the bottom of the reststop murder. Of course, Brown could be wrong. Like I said earlier, there was someone to take care of. And if there was any way that we could use my charges to give relief to the widow Radcliffe, we were both all in. Reverend Radcliffe’s murder was about as stupid and unnecessary as you can get. He had been to Indianapolis to visit a member of his church in the hospital and was coming home. Seeing his car was running a little hot, he pulled into the rest stop to add some water and use the restroom. While Radcliffe was on the payphone calling his wife to explain his upcoming tardiness, Bivins and Ronald Chamber, saw and approached him. Scott Weyls stayed in the car. Radcliffe caught Chamber’s attention due to the fact that he had a ‘fat wallet’. He and Bivins followed Radcliffe into the bathroom and confronted him. They robbed him of his fat wallet and all his money. Bivins then had the good reverend get on his knees and face away from him just prior to executing him. After Bivins was found guilty in Boone County court, Prosecutor McClure, I believe it was, asked Jerry why he shot him. Bivins replied, very matter of fact, that ‘I wanted to know what it felt like to kill a man’. It was some of the most chilling testimony I had ever heard in my then-young career.
I worked with the local prosecutor’s office and got my charges ready to go on Bivins. Again, Brown and I stayed in contact with each other. He was watching B-Sickle Court and Jerry’s house. Brown was getting antsy and told me that he felt Bivins was about to move from his home to God only knows where. Finally, a call came to me telling me that we had to hurry up and get the warrant and it had to be right now. Brown said that Bivins’ truck was loaded and sitting in the front yard of the house. He was getting ready to bolt. The race was on!
I got the charging papers and got them notarized by one of our dispatchers, called the Circuit Court judge at home, and asked him if I could stop by. I’m sure I explained why, but I really don’t remember. All I remember was jumping in the Diplomat patrol car and racing to his house. He signed the warrant and I radioed ahead to Brown. Brown indicated that I better step on it as Biven seemed to be wrapping up getting his stuff loaded. Off I went and I probably was a little over the speed limit. I don’t remember much about the trip down State Road 25, but I do remember turning left onto I65. I got on the ramp and hammered the Dodge’s accelerator. I had been talking back and forth with Brown and we were running out of time. As soon as I punched it I looked over to my right and saw what appeared to be two unmarked cars. Hey, I’m just a patrolman from little ole Delphi. I could be in trouble. I didn’t feel any better when they both went from a dead stop to the rear bumper of my car! I thought, ‘screw it’, and just kept on going. We all got off on State Road 26 and they followed me to Creasy Lane and then into Bivin’s housing development. Cool, they were with me. Phew……………
Brown and I had been radioing back and forth and we coordinated when we were going to pull up, him from one way and me from another. We all pulled up together. There Bivins was standing in the yard with a female who turned out to be his significant other, a packed truck, and an ‘oh shit’ look on ‘Elmer Fuller’s’ face. He was indeed ready to leave for a move to Kentucky. I read him the warrant and handcuffed him. With his hands behind his back, he looked over to the female and said that she needed to take his wallet so she could bond him out. He reached in and grabbed it and handed it to her. As she was about to grab it, a light went on in my head. I grabbed it prior to her getting it. I looked through the contents and sure enough, there was a driver’s license with Elmer Fuller’s information and Gerald Bivins’ face. That was the first of many times Jerry tried to pull one over on us with this case and the murder of William Radcliffe. They got worse and more desperate as the time passed. One such time resulted in the arrest of three innocent young men for the murder. That didn’t stick either.
Bivens was eventually convicted for forgery in Carroll County. Brown and several other detectives worked on him for the murder. I helped with looking for evidence, strategy meetings, and even guarding Bivins at the Eisenhower Bridge as divers looked for the murder weapon. I often regret not having time and money to go visit Jerry in prison. I liked him, but more than that, I wanted to learn from him. He was probably one of the biggest cons I will have ever met. For instance, how did he have Elmer Fuller’s information that he used to open bank accounts, Zales charge accounts, and other such transactions? He would get on the phone and call from the phone book telling people he was calling from an attorney’s office. He did that with Fuller. He told Fuller that the office was looking for the beneficiary of a will that had in probate and the name matched. He just needed the social security number to verify. You have to remember that this was 1991………
http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/row/bivinsg.htm
http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/US/bivins702.htm
http://leagle.com/decision/19921208598NE2d610_11189.xml/WEYLS%20v.%20STATE
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