Killing of Carol Jenkins

Carol Marie Jenkins was born April 21, 1947, in Franklin, Indiana, and raised in Rushville, Indiana, by her mother and stepfather along with five siblings. She graduated from Rushville High School in 1965 and later worked at a Ford Motor Company plant in Connersville. In September 1968, amid a plant strike, she took temporary work as a door-to-door saleswoman for a Collier's Encyclopedia sales crew.

On September 16, 1968, Jenkins's sales crew's route changed at the last minute, sending them to Martinsville, Indiana, a city with a documented history of racial segregation. While canvassing alone, Jenkins was followed and racially harassed by two young white men in a car. She sought help from a young married couple, Donald Lee and Norma Jean Neal, who let her into their home and called police. After leaving the Neal residence and setting out to meet her colleagues, Jenkins was attacked around 9 p.m. on East Morgan Street: one assailant held her arms while the other stabbed her once in the chest with a flat-blade screwdriver, fatally wounding her heart. She was pronounced dead at Morgan County Hospital at 9:25 p.m.

The initial investigation identified and cleared two men who had followed and taunted Jenkins earlier that evening, as their alibis for the time of the murder were verified. Despite a reward offered by the NAACP and P. F. Collier and Son, and despite pressure from the NAACP on federal authorities, the case went cold within weeks and remained unsolved for over 30 years.

In 2000, Jenkins's mother received an anonymous call from a woman later identified as Connie McQueen, who said more than one person had been involved and that a screwdriver was used. Renewed investigation by Indiana State Police cold case detectives followed. McQueen, who had been seven years old at the time and riding in the back seat of her father's car, gave investigators a detailed account of the killing, including the color of a yellow scarf Jenkins had been wearing—a detail investigators had withheld from the public and which corroborated her account.

Richmond was arrested on May 8, 2002, at an Indianapolis nursing home and charged with first-degree murder. He was later declared incompetent to stand trial due to declining health, and died of bladder cancer on August 31, 2002, having reportedly confessed to the killing on his deathbed. His alleged accomplice was never identified. The Neals, who had assisted Jenkins and cooperated with police, faced harassment from some local residents and eventually left the city. In 2017, Martinsville officials formally apologized to Jenkins's family and dedicated a memorial to her at City Hall; a community park in Rushville was also renamed in her honor.