Indiana Murder Trial Begins With Horrible Photo Warning

A US murder trial of a southern Indiana man accused of killing his ex-girlfriend and eating parts of her body began when a prosecutor warned the jury that they would see photos of the 2014 crime scene “worse than anything you would see in a horror movie. “

Clark County Prosecutor Jeremy Mull said during his opening remarks at Joseph Oberhansley’s trial Friday that Tammy Jo Blanton, 46, “encountered a fate that is very difficult to describe” at the hands of the Jeffersonville man. , accused of murder, rape and abuse of a corpse and a robbery.

Mull warned jurors, who were hailing from Allen County, in northeastern Indiana, due to the intense media coverage the case has received in southern Indiana, that the evidence they would see would include gruesome photos.

Defense attorney Bart Betteau asked jurors to be wary of “emotional evidence” that was not relevant to the facts of the September 11, 2014 murder.

Witnesses who testified on Friday, the sixth anniversary of Blanton’s death, included two officers who responded to his home that day and a 911 dispatcher who took Blanton’s call, in which he told the dispatcher that Oberhansley, now 39, was trying to get into his Jeffersonville. home.

Sabrina Hall, a co-worker and friend of Blanton’s, testified that she called the police after a man who believes he was Oberhansley answered Blanton’s phone the day her friend died. She said time was moving “super fast and super slow at the same time” as she waited for officers to confirm what she believed had happened.

The trial will resume Monday and a doctor who performed an autopsy on Blanton is expected to testify.

If the jury finds him guilty, Oberhansley will face a life sentence.

Oberhansley was to be tried in August 2019 by a Hamilton County jury in central Indiana, but the trial was declared vacated on the first day of testimony after a state witness spoke about things the attorneys had agreed to. they would not be mentioned to the jury. .

– AP