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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowIndiana State Police are investigating the death of a 32-year-old inmate at the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility near Carlisle as a possible homicide. The man had been convicted in a notorious 2014 slaying of an Indianapolis pizza delivery driver.
Prison staff found Jeremiah Roberts, formerly of Nacogdoches, Texas, unresponsive about 6 a.m. Sunday in his cell at the facility in Sullivan County, southwest of Indianapolis.
Roberts later died. His death was being treated as a homicide, according to Indiana State Police.
An autopsy was scheduled for Tuesday.
A Marion County jury in January 2017 convicted Roberts of murder and robbery for a fatal attack on pizza delivery driver John Sullivan. The Marion County Prosecutor’s Office said Sullivan’s body was found the next morning in the basement of a building where Roberts had been living with Derek Romano.
“… Roberts and Romano murdered Sullivan and fled in his vehicle,” the prosecutor’s office said in a news release after Roberts’ sentencing. “The two suspects were located in Wyoming two days later and extradited back to Marion County to face charges.”
Roberts had been incarcerated within the Indiana Department of Correction since January 2017, according to police. He had been serving a 68-year sentence for conviction of murder and robbery. The Indiana Court of Appeals affirmed the murder conviction in October 2017.
Romano separately pleaded guilty to murder in the case and was sentenced to 55 years in prison. According to the DOC, he is likewise housed at Wabash Valley.
Nacogdoches is southeast of Dallas.
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