just to clear up,what might be a misunderstanding, KS’s role was definitely not to clear tips. However her keen eye discovered RA’s misfiled tip while she was packing up the office to move to CC’s new premises and she reported it accordingly. Below is the most detailed recap of her testimony that I was able to find.
Furthermore we have speculated whoever the anonymous officer responsible for locating the 3 girls RA said he saw, after successfully completing that task he/she is who possibly mistakingly wrote ‘cleared’ on the tip, when it was certainly not. JMO
After years of a seemingly cold investigation, despite Indiana State Police assurances the case was still active, on September 21, 2022, Kathy Shank, a volunteer who was tasked with scanning bankers boxes full of files in a central investigative data base, pulled open the drawer of a desk in a soon-to-be abandoned office and discovered a file that contained an initial tip sheet from February of 2017, just a couple days after the murders, in which a man listed as Rick Allen Whiteman called in to self-report that he was on the bridge that day if his name should come up or if investigators wanted to ask him questions.
On the tip sheet, someone had written the word, “Cleared.”
Shank testified that she read the report and immediately identified a clerical error that misinterpreted Allen’s home address of Whiteman Drive as his last name.
The retired government employee took the file to Chief Deputy Tony Liggett of the Carroll County Sheriff’s Department, who was running for sheriff in the upcoming election less than two months away, and he immediately began an investigation into Allen, first confirming that he drove a black 2016 Ford Focus.
