Condemned Killer Will Testify at ISU Professor’s Murder Trial

The Associated Press

Indiana condemned murderer Larry Eyler is expected to be the star witness in the murder trial of an Indiana State University professor charged with helping Eyler stab a man to death in 1982. Jury selection Is scheduled Tuesday in the Vermillion Circuit Court trial of Robert David Little. Little, 53 is being held without bond in Vermillion County Jail. He has been suspended as chairman of the library sciences department at the university in Terre Haute. In December, Eyler pleaded guilty in the bizarre mutilation killing of Steven Agan, 23, of Terre Haute. Eyler named Little, with whom he lived in Terre Haute at the time of the murder, as his accomplice.

At the time, Eyler already was on death row in Illinois for the 1984 dismemberment murder of a young male prostitute in Chicago. Eyler, 38, has been named in court papers as a suspect in more than 20 unsolved murders In Illinois, Wisconsin, Kentucky and Indiana. Vermillion Circuit Judge Don Darnell sentenced Eyler to 60 years in prison and a $10,000 fine in Agan’s death. Darnell also will preside over Little’s trial, which Is expected to last about two weeks. Darnell issued a gag order on January 10, prohibiting police, prosecutors and defense attorneys from discussing the case with the media until the trial is over. A motion by Little’s attorneys to move the trial because of extensive publicity was turned down.

Eyler testified that he and Little were driving around on the day of Agan’s murder looking for a sexual adventure when they saw Agan hitchhiking. They picked him up and took him to an abandoned house near Newport, where Agan was tied to a wooden beam and stabbed repeatedly, Eyler said. Little photographed the murder, according to Eyler’s testimony. Agan’s body was found December 28, 1982, in a field in a rural area near Newport, about 40 miles north of Terre Haute. Eyler is appealing his conviction in the 1984 murder of Danny Bridges, 15, a male prostitute in Chicago. He also has named Little in that crime.