Knoxville Police Seek Man in Hendricks County Slaying
by Thomas Leyden
Authorities at Knoxville, Tennesse are seeking an Indianapolis man who is believed to be in that city, and who is wanted for questioning here in connection with the mysterious death of Donald J Kidwell, Indianapolis police said Wednesday. Police declined to identify the suspect except to say that he is 23 years old and was arrested at Manhattan, Kansas two days before Kidwell’s body was found in his car trunk July 5 at Hendricks County. The suspect told the Kansas Highway Patrol that he was being sought by Indiana police in connection with the death of a man found in a car trunk, according to Indianapolis Police Department vice investigator Thomas D. Rodgers. The man became a suspect in the local slaying when he told Kansas authorities that he knew about a body in a trunk before Kidwell’s body was found in a car parked on a rural Lizton road, Rodgers said.
After being held in a Kansas jail for 10 days on a credit card theft charge, the suspect was released when a relative, who owned the credit cards, declined to prosecute, Rodgers said. Hendricks County detectives learned of the man’s arrest the day the suspect was freed by a Kansas judge, police said. When Indianapolis authorities recently learned through a tip that the 23-year-old suspect may be at Knoxville, they asked Knoxville police to be on the lookout for him, officials said. Despite extensive investigations and laboratory tests, authorities have not determined what caused the death of Kidwell, 42, Indianapolis, an analyst for Merchants National Bank and Trust Co. The suspect, who is known as a “hustler,” or homosexual prostitute in Indianapolis’ gay community, has not been charged in Kidwell’s death, but there is a misdemeanor prostitution warrant filed against him here, Rodgers said.
The suspects name surfaced while a special team of Indianapolis homicide investigators was trying to establish links between Adolph M. Asch, 34, Indianapolis, and Kidwell’s death and four unsolved homosexual related murders in Indianapolis and Hancock County during the past several years. However, the suspect’s name did not surface in a separate investigation by three Hendricks County detectives assigned to the Kidwell case. They logged more than 100 interviews and 1,300 hours of work, said Sgt. John H. Hancock, an investigator for the Hendricks County sheriff’s department. “We don’t know if he (Asch) is connected with the Kidwell death,” Hancock said, adding that police cannot link Asch and the 23-year-old suspect as acquaintances. Shortly after Asch was arrested and charged with the Sept. 15 murder of Mary E. Davis, 87, 200 block of East Ninth Street, a task force was created to determine if he could be implicated in several homosexual murders. Investigators were looking for links between Asch and the murders of Richard E. Zimmer, 45, 7432 Fitch Street, killed in 1976; Floyd L. Lancaster, 54, Morgantown, slain in 1978; and John J. Smith Jr., 50, 4923 Washington Boulevard, killed in 1978.
Hamilton County investigators also questioned Asch about the June 16 murder of Michael S. Petree, 15, Indianapolis. There is no firm connection between the new suspect and Asch, Rodgers said. The suspect and Asch may have met in one of the public areas frequented by homosexuals, Rodgers said. Since Asch, who pleaded innocent and is being held without bond in Marion County Jail pending trial, was arrested on October 3 investigators have built up their only murder case against him. Homicide detectives have found three witnesses who claim Asch told them about the murder of Miss Davis, Indianapolis Deputy Chief Jack L. Cottey said. They also believe Asch is linked to an armed robbery in an apartment below Miss Davis’s the day before she was killed, Cottey said.
