A History of Murders in the Small Community of Warsaw, Indiana

In my hometown of Warsaw, Indiana, there is an estimated population of 12,415. Warsaw is not a very large city, but is the orthopedic capital of the world. The crime rate is Warsaw is much lower than that of Fort Wayne or South Bend. Growing up in Warsaw, I never thought I would see headlines about murder in the local paper. Yet, as the years pass, murder is becoming more common in this small city.

My first recollection of any murder in Warsaw was in 1994, when I was 15. A man named David Swearingen shot to death an unarmed police officer and his two young children. The police officer was a 32-year-old Kosciusko County Sheriff's Deputy named Phil Hochestetler; he was investigating recent thefts in the area. After shooting Hochestetler, Swearingen turned the gun on his children, who were 4 and 18 months old. He also attempted to kill his wife. After two days on the run, Swearingen was shot to death by police at the Shell gas station in the middle of town. Before being rebuilt two years ago, the canopy at the Shell station still had bullet holes in it from this horrific incident.

The next murder I recall was in 1999 and involved a girl I had gone to school with and an old friend of my ex-husband. Christopher Thompson, 19, shot Jamie Sloan, 21, in the head with a shotgun and dumped her body in a cornfield. The apparent motive was drug related. Thompson had been good friends with my ex-husband up until two years before the crime. We had excluded him from our circle of friends due to his increasingly erratic behaviors. It is rumored that Thompson also had a "hit list" of others he intended to kill.

Three years later came the disappearance of Heather Endicott, a former friend of mine. Endicott disappeared from Big Daddy's Sport Bar on December and was found rolled up in carpet behind Center Center, right off of U.S. 30, three months later. No one has yet been convicted of this murder. Heather left behind two small children.