2 more charged, one arrested for murder of Crothersville girl

BROWNSTOWN, Ind. -- Police on Friday charged two people with providing false information to officers investigating the abduction and murder of a 10-year-old girl, the same day another man from the small southern Indiana town was in court to face a murder charge.\nTimothy C. O'Sullivan II, 22, and a 17-year-old boy, whose name was not released by authorities, were being held in the Jackson County Jail on charges of false informing, police said.\nThe three arrests were related to the disappearance of Katlyn "Katie" Collman, whose body was found Sunday in a southern Indiana creek.\nCharles James Hickman, 20, of Crothersville, was arrested Wednesday and was in court Friday to face charges of murder and criminal confinement. Police said Hickman told investigators the girl fell into a creek and drowned after she was abducted Jan. 25 to scare her from talking about a methamphetamine operation.\nHickman made no comments to reporters as he was led into the Jackson County Courthouse Friday. Hickman also did not speak about the allegations during the hearing.\nCourt documents filed by prosecutors said Collman drowned in the stream about 15 miles from her hometown of Crothersville where a state trooper found her body on Sunday. She had last been seen five days earlier as she walked three blocks home from an errand to buy toilet paper.\nHickman told investigators that residents of an apartment near the store where the girl had shopped brought Collman to his home.\nThose people were worried Collman had seen them producing or using methamphetamine and that she might tell others what she had seen, the documents said.\n"They decided to scare her with the hope that she would be intimidated enough to keep her observations to herself," FBI agent James Kouns wrote in an affidavit.\nAuthorities did not release information on the connection between Hickman and those he said first abducted the girl.\nHickman told police that Collman was brought to his home in a white pickup truck, which had been borrowed from another person.\nProsecutors allege that Hickman tied the girl's hands behind her back and took her to the small lake after dark. Hickman first told investigators the girl tried to run away and fell into the creek, but also said he might have "bumped" her into the water.\nHe then left an unmoving Collman in the water, the court document said.\nThe girl's father said in an interview that he wanted the community to remember her as a bright child who was always helping people around the town of nearly 1,600 people, about 40 miles north of Louisville, Ky.\n"She's changed this community and other communities," John Neace told The Tribune of Seymour. "You can tell a big difference in this community. My wife and I are very proud that my little girl could touch so many people and bring them together."\nCollman's funeral was set for Sunday at Crothersville Elementary School, where she was a fourth-grader.\nJackson County Prosecutor Steve Pierson said he was considering whether to seek the death penalty against Hickman and that he planned to discuss the decision with his pastor.\n"I'm not a big fan of the death penalty, but there are times where it fits," Pierson said. For what it's worth, the death penalty is not something that God shies away from, so neither will I."\nThe possible connection to the methamphetamine trade comes as authorities say manufacturing of the illegal drug in backyard and woodlands labs continues to explode, with more than 1,500 labs dismantled in Indiana last year.\nAt least two other people have died because of meth-related activities in Jackson County in recent years. Two were convicted of a man's 1997 stabbing death as they tried to rob him of meth and cash. Police officers shot and killed another man in 2002 as he tried to steal anhydrous ammonia, a key meth ingredient, from a farmer's tank.