Three churches tagged with Graffiti on city's southside

Vandals painted graffiti on the front doors and sign of Greencastle First Southern Baptist Church on Crown Street overnight Wednesday. Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church and St. Andrew's Episcopal Church were also tagged.

Greencastle Police are investigating vandalism at three south side churches that occurred sometime Wednesday night or Thursday morning.

Graffiti was spray painted on First Southern Baptist Church on Crown Street, Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church on Seminary Street and St. Andrew's Episcopal Church on Seminary Street.

Officers have limited information to investigate at this time, only that the three houses of worship were tagged sometime overnight Wednesday.

The vandals damaged between one and four locations at each of the churches.

Messages painted at First Baptist included "Die with your false God" and "die" on the front doors, and "God hates you" on the church sign. Symbols allegedly representing a Swedish heavy metal band were painted on the south side of the building.

The word "filth" was painted in two spots at Gobin, as well as an upside down cross and the message "Die with God."

In the case of St. Andrew's, the graffiti was simply an upside-down cross painted on its sign.

GPD Chief Tom Sutherlin reported that police are not pursing any actual suspects at this point. They have, however, reached out for possible security videos in the area of two of the churches.

With First Southern Baptist directly south of Ridpath Primary School, GPD is seeking possible surveillance video from the area of the back of the school.

Likewise, the police have inquired if DePauw University has any security video from the area of Gobin.

Vandals wrote the word "filth" on the sign of the Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church sometime late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning. First Southern Baptist Church and St. Andrew's Episcopal Church were also affected.

Brian Langdoc, pastor of Gobin Memorial, said he was at home when he first learned of the graffiti.

"Early this morning, my colleague (Fr.) John Rumple had texted me," Langdoc said, referring to the St. Andrew's minister. "St. Andrew's had received some vandalism and he actually texted me some pictures that he had taken of our own sign. He gave me the heads up on my way in."

Though the damage was caused overnight, the church had repaired the doors and sign by the afternoon, thanks to what he called a "community outpouring."

"There was extra foot-traffic as the news spread; there were lots of the folks from the community coming to apologize on behalf of the area," Langdoc said. "The text on the sign came off pretty easily, then we just repainted the doors. The DePauw facilities' folks were the ones who actually took over the manual labor of the painting."

Bill Boyette, pastor at First Southern Baptist Church, inspected the vandalism Thursday afternoon.

"I'm from down south, I'm 84 years-old and I've been pastoring all down there and up here," Boyette said. "I've never had anything like this happen, but the Lord saw what they did, He knows who they are."

St. Andrew's Episcopal Church was unavailable for comment Thursday afternoon, but played a key role in cleaning their sign and informing nearby churches.

St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, along with Gobin Memorial United Methodist and First Southern Baptist Church, was vandalized sometime between late Wednesday night and early Thursday morning.

Anyone with possible information related to these crimes is asked to call the GPD office at 653-2925.