The mother of two children murdered by Jeffrey Weisheit urged Indiana’s parole board Monday to reject his plea for mercy, saying her children deserved the futures he took from them.
Her appeal came hours after Weisheit’s family and attorneys asked the five-member board to recommend sparing his life, citing his history of mental illness and head injuries, his religious conversion and a written request from the murdered children’s father for forgiveness and a sentence of life without parole.
The Indiana Department of Correction also released a $275,000 invoice Monday in response to the Indiana Capital Chronicle’s requests for execution drug purchasing records.
Dated Sept. 25, the invoice does not specify the drug or number of doses, nor does it show if or when the pentobarbital arrived. DOC did not provide an updated drug inventory on Monday.
Weisheit was sentenced to death in 2013 for murdering 8-year-old Alyssa Lynch and her 5-year-old brother, Caleb, in a fire at his home near Evansville. Their mother, Lisa Lynch, was working an overnight shift and had left the children in his care.
Monday’s testimony in Indianapolis concluded the public hearings on his clemency request following an interview Friday with Weisheit at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City.
His execution is scheduled there before sunrise Nov. 5.
The board did not issue a recommendation Monday afternoon. Chair Gwen Horth said one would not come for several days. Gov. Mike Braun will make the final decision.
Mother asks board to remember her children
Speaking remotely from out of state, Lisa Lynch began her testimony through tears, asking the board to remember the children and not just the case against their killer. At Lynch’s request, only board members could see her video because of privacy concerns.
“I am here today to ensure that my children’s voices are heard, their names are spoken, and their lives are remembered,” she said. “Alyssa and Caleb are not just names on a case file, dates in a record, or photos in an evidence box.”
Alyssa was creative and loved drawing pictures of her family, Lynch recalled. She adored her younger brother. Caleb loved hugs, helping his mother in the kitchen and playing with trucks and trains.
Their deaths robbed her of watching them finish school, build careers and have families of their own, she said.
“Every single day without them is a struggle,” Lynch said. “Every birthday, every holiday, every landmark moment is marked by their agonizing absence. Time passes, but the weight of losing them never fades.”
She described surviving domestic violence and emotional abuse and said efforts to blame her for Weisheit’s actions had continued into the clemency proceedings.
During Friday’s interview, Weisheit repeatedly discussed his anger and suspicions about Lynch while struggling to explain why he directed that anger at her children.
Lynch said that after the murders, she returned to school and built a career that allowed her to support her family and be home every night.
“They will always be my children,” she said. “They will always matter, and I will never stop speaking for them.”
The children’s father, Steven Lynch, took the opposite position in a sworn statement seeking life without parole. He did not attend Monday’s hearing.
“What good does it do the memory of my children to put this man to death?” he wrote. “I seek to save his family the great pain and loss from the taking of his life. I want to prevent another parent from experiencing the loss I have experienced.”
First responders describe lasting trauma
First responders and investigators described the killings and the memories they still carry.
David Bretz, the German Township Fire Department’s assistant chief at the time of the fire, said he arrived first to find flames pushing through every opening.
Firefighters found Caleb’s body on a mattress, with his hands and feet bound behind him. The search for Alyssa continued for hours. Bretz said he ultimately spotted a small hand amid the debris in her bedroom closet.
“Everything from the fire to the investigation, my deposition, testimony at the trial, and now this will be with me forever,” Bretz said. “It weakens me and terrifies me on a regular basis.”
At least three firefighters sought counseling, he said. Bretz also read statements from colleagues describing lasting trauma and said Friday’s interview had not persuaded him Weisheit was remorseful.
“Please, I beg of you, carry out the sentence that was placed upon him for the appalling crimes that he committed upon all of us,” Bretz said.
Chad Ferguson, the on-duty patrol supervisor, recalled sheriff’s deputies frantically searching places the children might have been taken. After Caleb was found, he initially could not get the words out to tell their mother.
Forensic dentist Dr. Crunchy Wells described identifying the children using dental records and recent Easter photographs.
“It was the hardest report I ever had to make,” she said. “It was the saddest thing I had ever seen.”
Retired investigators Randy Chapman and Kerri Blessinger challenged the defense’s account of Weisheit’s mental condition and remorse. Blessinger characterized the killings as domestic violence intended to devastate the children’s mother. She said forgiveness did not erase the punishment.
“Let me make one thing very, very clear: forgiveness and punishment are not the same,” Blessinger said. “They do not go hand in hand. One does not equal another.”
Vanderburgh County Prosecutor Diana Moers closed by recalling the children’s personalities and urging officials to uphold the sentence.
“The death penalty was the sentence recommended by the jury, reviewed by our courts, and so is justice,” Moers said. “Each person should be afforded the full protections of the United States Constitution and the due process that it brings.”
State challenges Weisheit’s account
Tyler Banks, chief of capital and habeas litigation for the Indiana attorney general’s office, argued that Weisheit’s sentence had survived extensive review by the courts and that his clemency presentation offered no reason to overturn it.
“A jury of his peers unanimously recommended a death sentence, and that sentence has withstood more than a decade of challenge,” Banks said. “Gov. Braun should not overturn all of those judgments.”
Banks recounted evidence that Weisheit bound and gagged Caleb, placed railroad flares near his body and in his clothing, and left both children in the burning house before fleeing the state.
He disputed Weisheit’s account Friday that he started the fire by placing a phone book on a stove burner. Banks said evidence of an accelerant and the flares contradicted that explanation.
Banks also rejected Weisheit’s unsupported suggestion that police or emergency responders might have placed the flares at the scene.
Horth and board member Jim Shaffer questioned how Weisheit could recall other details while denying responsibility for the flares.
Defense attorney Joseph Perkovich attributed the discrepancy to memory gaps, saying Weisheit sometimes constructs explanations for events he cannot recall. He emphasized that the legal team did not endorse Weisheit’s suggestion that someone else planted the flares.
“I’ve talked with him about it. He has zero recollection of the flares,” Perkovich said. “I don’t think this is guile or artifice on his part.”
Banks said mental health evidence had already been extensively litigated. He argued that Weisheit “used suicide attempts as a mechanism to obtain better housing,” rather than acting because of a psychiatric crisis.
Defense attorneys, however, described those episodes as psychiatric deterioration involving fears that others intended to harm him. Perkovich said Weisheit went on a hunger strike to secure hospitalization because he believed he was unsafe.
Family seeks mercy, treatment and more testing
Several dozen people, including relatives, attorneys and death penalty opponents, crowded into the Indiana Government Center conference room for the morning presentation.
Weisheit’s attorneys opened with a family video. His aunts, sister and parents described childhood behavioral difficulties, suicide attempts and head injuries, followed by years of steady work.
Relatives said they had embraced Alyssa and Caleb as family and struggled to reconcile the killings with the man they knew.
His sister, Carrie Jones, feared his execution would devastate their parents, who have significant health problems.
“I’m going to lose everybody if this goes through,” Jones said, telling the board she fears her parents won’t be able to live through the pain of losing their son.
Jeffrey’s father, Bert Weisheit, a former law enforcement officer, recalled treating the children as grandchildren.
“Alyssa and Caleb were grandchildren,” Bert Weisheit said. “They were a lot of fun to be with. Very smart children.”
Deacon Brian Nosbusch, who has ministered to Weisheit for about 13 years, described his conversion to Catholicism and his efforts to serve other prisoners through his work as a porter and small purchases for those around him.
“I have seen a deep remorse that goes far beyond regret for the consequences that he faced, and I believe it was a true commitment to moral repair and reconciliation,” Nosbusch said. “We pray both for those that he has hurt, and we also pray for his family.”
At a news conference afterward, Perkovich said the defense was asking state officials to consider Weisheit’s moral culpability rather than excuse the killings.
“We don’t contest that he is responsible in the way we understand that,” Perkovich said. “What we’re getting at is a question of blameworthiness.”
Board member Mia Kelsaw questioned whether Weisheit would accept treatment and adjust to another prison setting if his sentence were commuted.
“What we would urge, and we would do everything in our power as his counsel, is to work with DOC with regard to its classification and treatment,” Perkovich said.
Even so, he acknowledged the difficulty of treating someone who does not recognize his own illness but said the legal team would help corrections officials pursue care.
“If that were not to succeed, there are other means (allowed) to provide for his care and for the safety of everybody else,” Perkovich said.
Brain scan litigation continues
Weisheit’s attorneys have asked the Indiana Supreme Court to authorize transportation for MRI and PET scans and move his execution date from Nov. 5 to Nov. 19, allowing time for analysis they say could inform Braun’s clemency decision.
U.S. District Judge Sarah Evans Barker approved funding for potential testing but ruled Oct. 7 that she lacked authority to compel state officials to transport Weisheit to gather evidence for a state clemency proceeding.
The attorney general’s office opposed transportation and a delay in a Friday filing, arguing there was no legal basis for the order and further testing might produce no relevant new information. The court received a defense reply Monday, but the clerk noted it exceeded length limits and lacked a request to file an oversized document.
Perkovich said a separate reprieve application would seek a pause in executions to examine Indiana’s procedures and drug procurement following Tennessee’s failed execution attempt of Christa Pike on Sept. 30.
He suggested the states might share a supplier.
“There’s a whole litany of considerations that are shrouded in secrecy under state law, and secrecy laws are typical in capital (punishment) states,” Perkovich said. “But what is atypical and what is extraordinary in Indiana’s is the blanket that they put over any ability to make sense of what the state actually does to carry out the punishment.”
Indiana Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com.
