Dispositions re-settled from the appellate record, and the cold cases carried

Second pass, November 2026 · what could not be settled is named, with its settler

Patel, re-settled from the opinion itself: The ground's one precedent was re-read first-hand in Patel v. State, 60 N.E.3d 1041 (Ind. Ct. App. 22 July 2016), appeal from the St. Joseph Superior Court, cause 71D08-1307-FA-17. The opinion's own summary settles the disposition the main pass carried: the jury had convicted Purvi Patel of class A felony neglect of a dependent and class B felony feticide, and the trial court had sentenced her to thirty years for the neglect (twenty executed, ten suspended) with a concurrent six years executed for feticide. The Court of Appeals held the evidence sufficient that she knowingly endangered the baby but insufficient that the baby would have lived but for her failure to provide care: it vacated the class A conviction and remanded with instructions to enter judgment for class D felony neglect of a dependent and resentence accordingly, and it vacated the feticide conviction outright, holding the legislature did not intend the feticide statute to apply to a woman's own abortion. That is the settled disposition — two vacaturs, one reduction on remand — and it is the form in which the case stands as precedent. The resentencing that followed on remand is a trial-court act whose record sits in the cause file and in Indiana MyCase; it was not reached from open sources and is re-logged below rather than guessed.

The cold-case playing-cards file, with its viewing route corrected: Indiana's cold-case cards are a Department of Correction program, run with the Indiana State Police and, for the later editions, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police: decks profiling 52 unsolved homicides and missing persons, distributed through the state's prisons — the only decks available for purchase in them — on the theory that inmates know things. The editions run: first edition 2008 (a South Bend Tribune account of that year counts 45 cards labeled "murder," four missing persons and one "body found," from 26 Indiana counties, cases spanning 1971–2004, sold to inmates at $1.10, not marketed to the public); second edition released 13 July 2010; third edition released 22 April 2013. The viewing route, corrected against the releases themselves: the decks are published as PDFs on the Department of Correction's own site (in.gov/idoc — the second- and third-edition deck files), with tips to the Indiana State Police hotline, 1 (800) 453-4756, or coldcasetips@idoc.in.gov; the releases' own in-text links to numbered IDOC pages are stale, and the live route is the department's file directory and the State Police cold-case pages by district. Against that file, this ground's contribution is a documented negative at the record's strength: neither of this section's two homicide investigations can appear in any edition — the 2013 Patel case was prosecuted, not cold, and the 2021 Heritage Square killing postdates the last state edition reached (2013) — and no Clay or Harris township victim was identified in the editions' published decks as swept. The county's older unsolved cases are the state file's business, boundary-printed here at that size.

The residue, re-logged — what could not be settled, item by item, with the source that would settle it: (1) The coroner's index, read whole — not settled. The St. Joseph County coroner's index is not published as an open, readable whole in any source reached; no township-level extraction from it can therefore be printed or its absence certified from it. Settler: the coroner's index itself, read in the coroner's office or through the county's public-records route, extracted for Clay and Harris townships. (2) The Willis disposition (banked GAP-CRIME-2) — not settled from open sources. Phillip Willis, charged on the probable-cause affidavit of 8 June 2022 with criminal recklessness with a deadly weapon for the Fir Road / Walgreens-lot shooting, has his outcome — plea, trial or dismissal — in the trial court's record. Settler: Indiana MyCase, the St. Joseph Superior Court cause record (a gated docket, not an open source reachable by this section). (3) The Fir Road case of July 2026 — the unnamed man's charge and disposition likewise sit in the court record; the Tribune's July 2026 reports reached carry the arrest and referral, not an outcome. Settler: the same MyCase cause record, once the defendant is named in it. (4) The Heritage Square case (banked GAP-CRIME-1) — still open on the record reached: no arrest or charge in the 20 June 2021 killing of Victor Kyle Jr. appears in the press or official record as of November 2026. Settler: the St. Joseph County Prosecutor's office (and the Mishawaka police / county detective bureau), with the Tribune archive. (5) Patel on remand — the resentencing under the reduced class D judgment. Settler: the cause file, 71D08-1307-FA-17, St. Joseph Superior Court, via MyCase.

Sources:

1. Patel v. State, 60 N.E.3d 1041 (Ind. Ct. App. 2016), opinion of 22 July 2016 (Crone, J.; Vaidik, C.J., and Bailey, J., concurring), read first-hand via Justia — the charges, the thirty-year and six-year sentences, the two vacaturs and the class D remand.
2. Indiana Department of Correction releases — "IDOC Issues 2nd Edition of Indiana Cold Case Playing Cards," 13 July 2010, and "Prison Playing Cards Aim to Help Solve Indiana Cold Cases" (third edition), 22 April 2013 (in.gov) — 52 cases per deck, prison distribution, the ISP hotline and tips address, the deck PDFs in the IDOC file directory.
3. South Bend Tribune, 2008, "Will inmates put cards on the table?" (via the MBRL/ProQuest asset record) — the first edition's composition (45 murder, four missing, one body found; 26 counties; 1971–2004; $1.10 inmate price; not sold to the public).
4. Crime leg (banked) — GAP-CRIME-1 (Heritage Square) and GAP-CRIME-2 (Willis), carried into this re-log; the Willis affidavit of 8 June 2022 and the July 2026 Fir Road reports as banked there.
5. Settlers named for the residue: the St. Joseph County coroner's index; Indiana MyCase cause records (St. Joseph Superior Court, incl. 71D08-1307-FA-17 on remand); the St. Joseph County Prosecutor's office for the Heritage Square case.