Death of Pravin Varughese

Pravin Varughese, a 19-year-old criminal justice major at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, disappeared on the night of February 12, 2014, after attending a party in Carbondale, Illinois. He was reported missing the next day, and searchers found his body on February 18, 2014, in a wooded area on the east side of Carbondale, near the SIU campus.

Gaege Bethune, a young man Varughese had met that night, told investigators he had given Varughese a ride and that the two got into a fight before Varughese left the vehicle and went into the woods on foot; overnight temperatures had dropped into the low teens. The Jackson County coroner initially ruled the death accidental, attributing it to hypothermia from exposure to the cold and finding no evidence of foul play. No charges were filed at that time.

Varughese's mother, Lovely Varughese, a nurse from Morton Grove, Illinois, disputed the official finding from the start. She commissioned an independent, private autopsy that documented injuries to her son's head and face, which the family's pathologist attributed to blunt-force trauma rather than exposure alone. The local state's attorney recused himself from the case in 2015, and the Illinois Office of the State's Attorney Appellate Prosecutor took over as special prosecutor.

In July 2017, a Jackson County grand jury indicted Bethune, then 22, of Eldorado, Illinois, on two counts of first-degree murder — one predicated on aggravated battery and one on robbery. He pleaded not guilty. At trial in June 2018, Bethune testified that he struck Varughese once above the right eye and admitted he had lied to police. On June 14, 2018, a jury convicted him of first-degree murder predicated on aggravated battery but acquitted him of the robbery-predicated count, after seven hours of deliberation.

Before sentencing, Jackson County Judge Mark Clarke vacated the conviction on September 17, 2018, ruling that wording in the indictment could have confused jurors, and ordered a new trial; Bethune was released on bond. Rather than retry the case, the special prosecutor moved to dismiss the charges, and on January 23, 2019, a judge granted the dismissal. Prosecutors said the investigation would continue and noted there is no statute of limitations on murder in Illinois, but Bethune has not been reindicted.

The case remains unresolved: the cause of death is disputed between the two autopsies, Bethune's conviction was vacated, all charges were dismissed, and no conviction or pending charge currently stands. Varughese's family has continued to mark the case's anniversary at the site where his body was found and established an annual scholarship in his name for criminal justice students at SIU. In May 2023, the university posthumously awarded him a Bachelor of Science degree in criminology and criminal justice.