Suspects picked the wrong county to throw rocks

When communication about the unspeakable stupidity of the recent U.S. 231 rock-throwing incidents first popped into my email inbox a couple months back, the subject line made me gasp.

"Rock throwing arrests," read the line heralding arrival of an email from Owen County Prosecutor Don VanDerMoere, a likable former deputy prosecutor for Putnam County who still keeps in contact.

Before I could even click to open it, my heart was pounding and my mind went to thoughts like, "Oh, my god they finally caught those guys."

However, it was a leap of faith to a wrong conclusion.

Instead we have two Owen County men facing charges (48 thus far cumulatively) in Putnam and Owen counties for throwing rocks at vehicles and damaging more than 25 in the process.

Obviously more menace than Mensa, the two have admitted hurling 50-100 rocks at northbound vehicles on U.S. 231 between Greencastle and tiny Carp, north of Spencer.

Boy, did they pick the wrong county to start throwing rocks at cars.

Anyone who was living in the Greencastle area and was old enough to pay attention to the world in 1991 would have only one thought upon seeing or hearing the words "rock throwing arrests."

Poor Marsa Gipson.

It will be 25 years on Saturday, Aug. 27 that we all felt the horror and shame that accompanies such a senseless and godless act as someone raining rocks down upon a car traveling along Interstate 70 just for the sport of it.

That despicable act claimed the life of Gipson, a 28-year-old Arcadia woman whose only mistake was choosing to drive through Putnam County in the wee hours of the morning.

Such an irrational act and its dire outcome have helped make anyone who drives the interstate a little uneasy when they go under an overpass.

While no major injuries were reported in the recent rock-throwing incidents on U.S. 231, one female driver did go to the hospital with concerns that glass fragments may have lodged in her throat.

But that doesn't mean something much more dire may not have been possible.

After all, any reasonable person would understand that such a thing could easily result in injury or death. It's difficult to explain why somebody would want to throw a heavy rock or anything else down on a car traveling at 65 or 70 mph.

Cheap thrills, intoxication, boredom perhaps ... those have been the prevailing notions related to any theory in the case. But everyone concerned is long finished with theories. They want to solve Marsa Gipson's death.

Gipson was en route to Terre Haute with a male companion, heading to pick up her young children (ages 9 and 10 in 1991), approaching the 33-mile marker (eight miles west of Cloverdale) westbound.

As they went under the Manhattan Road overpass at about 1:15 a.m., two large chunks of riprap -- later estimated to weigh 21 or 22 pounds -- were hurled down upon Gipson's Chevrolet Camaro.

One chunk bounced off the hood, missing the windshield on the passenger's side, while the other jagged piece slammed through the driver's side of the windshield, striking the unsuspecting Gipson.

The impact fatally injured Gipson, who died at the scene moments later from massive head trauma.

In the intervening 25 years, multiple unanswered questions have lingered in the case. A quarter-century has now passed without any resolution or closure, even after investigators and the victim's family returned to the scene eight years ago for a thorough reconstruction of the incident.

More than 100 people have been interviewed in the case, ranging from the proverbial "persons of interest" to interstate travelers to those who might have secondhand knowledge of what the usual suspects may have said or done on the bridge or in the aftermath of the incident.

But time and distance have conspired to cloud memories and stunt the process. Some of those presumed involved have long ago moved away. At least one is in prison elsewhere.

Of course, the only charge still viable in the case is murder. The statute of limitations expired on everything else in 1998 (seven years after the incident). There is no statute of limitations for a murder charge.

"It's murder or it's nothing," Prosecutor Tim Bookwalter has stressed before.

Regardless, the image and the randomness of what happened to Marsa Gipson in 1991 is like every driver's worst nightmare.

"Every time I hear of a case where something is thrown off an overpass, I can't help but think of Marsa," a longtime investigator once told me.

And believe me, I've seen the damage something like a chunk of rock can do to a windshield at 70 mph.

Daughter Kara was heading home from St. Louis a few years back when a hefty five-inch industrial bolt either bounced off a truck or flew off a piece of machinery in the I-70 construction zone, crashing right through her windshield and landing in the back seat of her second-hand BMW.

A couple inches to the left and that bolt likely would have hit her in the head. Then her little "Kara Bernsee bolt of death," as she likes to call it, wouldn't be much of a joke.

Those drivers on 231 have to feel like they were a bit lucky, too.

Yet if their incidents can do more than just remind us of the Marsa Gipson case and bring to light those involved, it would be worth all the broken windshields in the world.