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A Brutal Beating Death In Indiana

Jim Burroway

April 27th, 2007

Aaron HallThree suspects have been charged in the brutal beating death of 35-year-old Aaron Hall in Crothersville, Indiana. Garret Gray, 19, and Coleman King, 18, are charged with murder, and Robert James Hendricks, 21, was charged with assisting a criminal.

According to Jackson County Sheriff’s Detective Robert Henley, the suspects told police that they beat Hall because he made an “obscene motion and homosexual suggestion” to King. That’s when King “went crazy on Hall,” and started beating him with fists. Gray joined in, and at one point King removed his boot and started hitting Hall with it.

The beating continued for several hours. At one point, Gray and King paused to take pictures of themselves with their arms around Halls beaten body. The photo showed Hall with a swollen lip, a black eye, and appeared badly beaten. They sent that text message photo to Gray’s friend, who later called police

Afterwards, Hendricks helped King and Gray to drag Aaron Hall out of the house by his feet, with his head hitting the stairs on the way out. They loaded him into Hendrick’s truck and dumped him in a ditch. According to one report, Hall was still alive but his breathing was labored. Days later, King, Gray, and Hendricks retrieved Hall’s body from a nearby field, wrapped it in a tarp and hid it in Grays garage.

Police found Hall’s body in the garage on Sunday.

Comments

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it stinks
March 4th, 2007 | LINK

I agree, smalltown, there is more here stinking than a dead corpse. Did you also know that Gray is a reserve deputy with the Jackson County Sheriff’s department? Apparantly Gray is not coaching his son well. They could have simply left the body in the ditch rather than going back to retrieve it. Then investigators could simply claim the death was accidental, and the victim wandered there on his own. If someone MUST be blamed, as you mentioned a cigarette butt tossed in the general vicinity has proven effective in the past.

Timothy Kincaid
April 27th, 2007 | LINK

If I read this right the victim wasn’t even gay. He teased one of the others saying that he was… and was beaten to death for his teasing.

And the anti-gays oppose teaching tolerance.

Emproph
April 27th, 2007 | LINK

Oh come hither now Timothy. ;-)

They always support the tolerance of their intolerance..

Lynn David
April 28th, 2007 | LINK

The way I read one of the first reports from a Indy TV station it seemed that Hall was accusing King of being gay. Thus Hall who died was just as homophobically bigoted as the three who killed him. Some people want to compare the situation to that of Matthew Shepard. A group turning on a person out of fear of being perceived as being gay. I still don’t get it. Yes, this was a crime motivated out of hatred of gay people, but considering that Hall was likely a bigot also, it seems to me that alchohol was more to blame.

I just don’t see this as a crime to use to show the need for hate crime legislation. If I were an Indiana prosecutor and Indiana had such hate-crime laws (which barely even see the light of day in our legislature), I would not prosecute the case as a hate crime.

Well, ok… that’s the way I would have seen it considering the info from one report which said that Hall accused King of being gay. Now a Hoosier blogger, Melissa McEwan, reports that WHAS-TV report that police say “Hall grabbed one of the suspects, Coleman King, in his private area and asked for oral sex.” So that… hell, what aware gay man would do that among three other guys… espescially in Indiana… especially in small-town Indiana (nearby a church [Old Paths Baptist Church] which appeared to try to outdo Phelps in bigotry a few years ago)?

Eh…. that’s Indiana for you…. death and the taxes are next. A gay farm owner can’t get anywhere.

smalltown IN
April 28th, 2007 | LINK

Well, this should have our “good old boys” in the justice system jumping for joy. If the gay community makes a fuss over the death of Hall portraying it as a hate crime, it will take the focus off the real problem in this area.
The fact is, Garrett Gray is the son of Deputy Coroner, Terry Gray. Remember him – he was the spokeperson for the Neace family when their daughter Katie Collman was found murdered. These three boys beat Aaron Hall inside the Gray home.
Furthermore, after death, a body will start to putrefy within three days. Hall’s body (dead 10 DAYS) was found inside Terry Gray’s garage.
As long as the crime is played out as a hate crime, it will take people’s minds off the fact that the Deputy Coroner did not notice the stench of Hall’s body within his own garage. Nor did he notice any blood splatter from the beating within his own home. We’ll just assume that three drunk boys cleaned up so well that it was undetectable.
It will come as no surprise if we soon find that the three boys made a false confession. Maybe some fabricated forensic evidence and a cigarette butt can point the crime in a new direction. Who knows, it’s worked before.

it stinks
May 4th, 2007 | LINK

I agree, smalltown, there is more here stinking than a dead corpse. Did you also know that Gray is a reserve deputy with the Jackson County Sheriff’s department? Apparantly Gray is not coaching his son well. They could have simply left the body in the ditch rather than going back to retrieve it. Then investigators could simply claim the death was accidental, and the victim wandered there on his own. If someone MUST be blamed, as you mentioned a cigarette butt tossed in the general vicinity has proven effective in the past.

it stinks
July 21st, 2007 | LINK

Now we find out that not only did the deputy coroner not smell the body, but a local police officer who searched the Gray home two days before Hall was discovered there also did not smell the body and did not notice any blood stains.
http://www.bloomingtonalternative.com/content/8488

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