For 36 years, Jan Willoughby and Donna McIntyre have been trying to track down a killer or killers that took the lives of their loved ones: Mary Ann Higginbotham and Timothy Willoughby, a young couple who could not be more different - or more in love.
Now, thanks to these two women and their tenacity in keeping the case alive for more than four decades, new hope has arrived in the form of DNA.
"It only takes one database hit," Donna tells HNGN exclusively.
THE CASE
The murder of Mary Ann Higginbotham, a sweet 22-year-old girl-next-door type, was one that rocked rural Indiana during the summer of 1979. The horror began in earnest on June 4 - when the body of the well-liked missing girl was found crammed inside a 55-gallon industrial drum that had been welded shut. This makeshift tomb had been found along white lick creek, at the end of sycamore lane in rural Mooresville, Ind.
Investigators called to the scene found Mary Ann's lifeless body inside, wrapped in a sleeping bag, a layer of plastic and three layers of carpeting. She was fully clothed and it was immediately clear she had been shot in the back of the head - execution style.
Police believed she was murdered a year before at her home in Clayton, Ind., and then placed in the barrel. A teenager found the barrel on a sand barge just a dozen miles from Mary Anne's home. The creek waters appear to have carried the barrel until it came to rest after heavier waters receded. Curious, the teen used a carpenter's hammer to pound a hole into the barrel's side. Peering in, he spotted a skull and promptly notified police about his gruesome find.
Mary Ann's boyfriend, 24-year-old Timothy Willoughby, had gone missing at the same time she did in 1978. The two had been dating for about two years, so it was a matter of course for suspicion to fall on Timothy.
It didn't help at first that he "had a reputation," says Donna McIntyre, who was Mary Ann's best friend. "Her sisters tried to get her away from him, but she loved him and he loved her."
Timothy had a criminal record for his involvement in a stolen car ring, and he had also spent some time in jail. But from the time Mary Ann - a good girl from a good family - came into Tim's life, most people who knew him said he'd turned over a new leaf for her.
"He had a good heart and took care of her and was protective of her," Donna remembers.
For four years, police tried to build a case against Timothy, but with no sign of him, their efforts simply fell flat. Cops had believed Tim's role in the case ran along one of three scenarios: 1.) Tim killed Mary Ann and then disappeared, 2.) he had ties to the killers and then disappeared after the murder - or 3.) Tim was killed as well, and the killers did a better job of hiding his body than they had done with Mary Ann's. That last scenario turned out to be true.
In 1982, just four years after Mary Ann's murder, an informant came forward. The woman told police she knew who killed Mary Ann and Tim - and why they were killed. She added that she had been scared to come forward sooner, but her conscience had been weighing too heavily on her.
The woman told police that two men who had believed Tim was going to rat them out for criminal involvement in a car-theft ring had killed the couple - Mary Ann first followed by Tim. She described the crime in great detail: how the two went to Mary Ann and Tim's home. How Mary Ann let them in because they were associates of Tim's. How they had committed to some small talk but then one of the men hit her and shot her in the back of the head with a .22-caliber gun as she was pleading for her life.
A short time later, the informant told cops, Tim came home and the killers talked him out of going into his house and into going for a ride in their truck. She claims the killers told her they shot Tim in the head just a mile from his home and then put his body in a barrel. That barrel has never been found.
Based on this very specific information, the two men were arrested and indicted by a grand jury. But without Tim's body, and with very little physical evidence on which to build a case, prosecutors felt they couldn't move forward, and so the case stalled. The men were eventually released on a technicality related to their constitutional right to a speedy trial - and they have never been brought to justice.
"There really are no words about how that makes a family feel. All you do is think about what could have happened to them, with so many things going through your head. It changes your life in so many different ways," Tim's sister Jan says. "The saddest thing was that our parents died without being able to bury their only son. It is very troubling that the two men responsible are still walking free."
Mary Ann's mother, Norma, is now 78. She is praying and waiting for justice, as the members of the Willoughby family do the same while hoping to locate Tim's remains.
"I need to know where they put my brother's remains," Tim's sister, Jill Hobbs, says. "We need to give him a proper burial."
A NEW PUSH
For decades, the case sat dormant until Donna McIntyre got in touch with the local police department last month and urged them again to take a sample of Jan's DNA. After much prodding, the police finally obliged.
It's a sad fact of life that police departments struggling with limited resources often can't or don't employ them fully enough in investigating cold cases - so Jan's win was a big one. Her DNA is presently being processed and the results will eventually be entered into a nationwide database. The goal is to match her DNA with DNA from her brother's remains when he or a part of him is found, or if some part of him has been sitting unidentified in a morgue somewhere. Tim's body may already be badly decomposed, but the procedure and matching effort is worth the shot - in fact, it's the only shot.
"Maybe part of Tim's body has been found and we just don't know," Donna says. "But if it is, then maybe now they can re-open the investigation in full and find out who killed Tim and Mary Ann."
For Donna and Jan, their lives now mostly come down to a waiting game filled with constant prayer.
"I want Mary Ann to know we never stopped pushing," Donna says. "The people who killed her belong in prison. Someone out there knows something. We need to hear from them now."
Postscript
If you know something about the murders of Tim and Mary Ann, the family implores you to call the Indiana State Police at 1-317-899-8577 or 1-800-582-8440.
