There were various levels of disappointment for me in the case of the murder of Kathy Vroman.

First of all, I was upset that someone was murdered in Milford. I suppose there is a certain level of naivet that goes with living in a small town like Milford.

You know, the "it can't happen here syndrome." But that is precisely why most people choose to live in a small town.

I could have worked in a bigger town at a bigger newspaper. Actually, I had that opportunity. But I wanted to live in a small town because I think it's safer and more neighborly and a better place to raise kids.

So it was pretty upsetting to hear that a woman in Milford was shot a couple times in the head, transported to Michigan and dumped in the snow.

Bad enough as the murder was, even more disappointing to me was the adjudication of the case.

It's no joke. It's no clich. In Kosciusko County, somebody got away with murder.

I would have written this a while ago, but I just kept holding out hope that it would come out OK.

It didn't.

As the story unfolded, we found out about a father, son and some other people who were allegedly involved in stealing cars.

The son ran a used car lot where the murder victim worked. The father put up money to help the son start the car lot. Apparently, the victim was getting a little fed up with the car-stealing business and paid for it with her life.

Initially, Kosciusko County Prosecutor Chuck Waggoner charged the son with the woman's murder. The county sheriff's department conducted a year-long investigation that concluded the son did it.

Evidence and testimony indicated that the son told others he did it and enlisted their help to dump the victim's body.

The son sits in jail for more than 10 months and suddenly decides to say that his dad was the killer.

He tells a story about seeing his dad standing over the victim's body with a gun, which happened to be the son's gun.

The son takes a polygraph test in his attorney's office. He passes. Based on this new story from the son, the prosecutor changes gear and charges the father. Later, we find out that the prosecutor offered to dismiss the charges against the son in exchange for testimony against the father.

Now this is the part I didn't get when I first heard it and I still don't get today.

I am not an attorney, but I have a pretty good handle on that whole "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" thing. And I also understand the concept of polygraph tests.

Beyond a reasonable doubt is an extremely difficult standard to achieve. And rightly so.

And polygraphs are inadmissable in court unless both parties stipulate in advance. There's a reason for that. The reason is that they're unreliable.

So when I heard the prosecutor switched gears and charged the dad with murder based on the son's polygraph test, I just didn't get it.

I mean, if you are the attorney for the dad, wouldn't you just stroll into court with the son's case file from the county sheriff's department?

You casually toss it on the evidence table and say something like, "the Kosciusko County Sheriff's Department conducted a year-long investigation that concluded the son did it. That's all the reasonable doubt you need to acquit my client, the dad."

And the prosecutor can't even mention the polygraph test in court.

Of course, as it turns out, there wasn't really a need for any of that because the dad had an alibi - backed up with phone records and receipts - that showed he was in Elkhart County at the time of the murder.

The attorney for the defendant has to file an alibi defense in advance so the prosecutor has time to check it out and - hopefully - punch holes in it.

But the lead investigator in the case, Milford Town Marshal Dave Hobbs, didn't bother to check out the alibi because, as his testimony indicated, he "didn't believe it."

I really hate to play the hindsight game, but this is just too serious to ignore.

I can honestly say I was gravely concerned from the moment the prosecutor charged the dad.

I talked to law enforcement officials who also were gravely concerned. Some of these law enforcement officials expressed concerns to the prosecutor, who was undeterred - convinced that the dad was the guilty party.

The concerns were realized when the jury acquitted the dad in a matter of minutes. One juror said it took longer to eat lunch than it did to reach a decision in the case.

I was disappointed when the prosecutor charged the dad based solely on the son's jailhouse testimony and a polygraph test done in an attorney's office by some "expert."

I was disappointed when I heard that the prosecutor offered to dismiss murder charges against the son for testimony against the dad.

I was disappointed when I heard the lead investigator didn't bother to check out the suspect's alibi.

I was disappointed when I heard the jury acquitted the dad.

The final disappointment came earlier this week when it was announced that the charges against the son were dismissed.

Up until that point, I guess, I was holding out for some kind of technicality or something. I kept thinking that somebody in the judicial system had something up their sleeve. That there was a bombshell.

I thought maybe the prosecutor would re-charge the son because his testimony wasn't consistent with his earlier statements or something - anything.

But no.

Somebody got away with murder in Kosciusko County. And I think most reasonable people have a pretty good idea who that is.

It's not unprecedented. Can you say O.J.?

But there were grave errors in judgment in this case and there must be a certain level of accountability.

Somebody needs to explain how this could happen here.

And somebody - maybe the voters of the county - needs to take steps to assure it doesn't happen again. [[In-content Ad]]