Cold Blooded, Not Blue Blooded

Peru, Indiana, sits in Miami County in the north central part of the state, a small town of about 11,000 people that once called itself the Circus Capital of the World. James Grund Jr., known as Jimmy, was born there on 23 December 1944 into a legal family. His father was the county attorney, his grandfather had been an attorney, and his uncles were attorneys and judges. He graduated from Peru High School in 1962, went on to college and then law school at the University of Indiana in Bloomington, and in 1965, during his sophomore year, met a woman named Jane. They married within a year because she was pregnant. Their daughter Jamma was born in July 1965 and their son David in 1970, the same year Jimmy finished law school and brought the family back to Peru. His father was then the county prosecutor, and Jimmy stepped straight into the job of assistant county prosecutor, working for him from 1971 until his father retired in 1978, when Jimmy took over as county prosecutor.

The marriage did not last. Jimmy drank a good deal, bought the bar he drank in because it was easier than paying a tab, kept a pilot's licence and a plane, and flew his friends off on fishing trips. He and Jane divorced in 1980 but, for the sake of the children and for economic reasons, went on living together until the summer of 1984. That was when his police and prosecutor friends set him up on a blind date as a joke.

the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it She was born in 1958, one of seven children, on what the episode calls the wrong side of the tracks. Her mother, Nelly, had left school before high school to work on the family farm, and her father was an abusive alcoholic steel worker. this part of the story is covered for now She left high school at seventeen and moved twenty miles to Kokomo, where she met Ronnie Lovell, a construction worker and local rock musician, and married him after three weeks. They moved to Oklahoma City, where she became manager of their apartment complex and began an affair with Gary Campbell, a twenty-four-year-old long-haul truck driver who lived three doors down. She divorced Ronnie, married Gary, and had a son, Jacob, a few months later. When Gary confronted her, she stabbed him in the chest with a pair of scissors; on another occasion she put a knife into his leg. He stayed with her.

details of the account remain covered until revealed He was married to Cheryl, the daughter of the factory owner, and Cheryl had leukemia. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it In the autumn of 1982 she collected Jacob and drove to Austin, Texas, where she and Tom married. this part of the story is covered for now

Three months after she moved in, Tom's three-year-old son Tommy was taken to an Oklahoma City hospital with a fractured skull. details of the account remain covered until revealed Tommy told a nurse, "my mommy hit me," and the hospital did nothing. In May 1983 he was back, unconscious, with a brain haemorrhage. The doctors found bruises on his head, torso and limbs and multiple cigarette burns, and reported that the injuries indicated sadistic beatings over a sustained period. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it Tommy was left brain damaged and bedridden for life. this part of the story is covered for now Custody of Tommy went to his grandfather; Jacob went back to Gary Campbell. Tom stayed with her for almost a year before the pressure from his family and the town became too much and he ended it. details of the account remain covered until revealed

the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it Jimmy, then thirty-nine to her twenty-five, did not mind. A few months later he stood in as father at the birth of her daughter Tanel, and days after that they flew to Florida and married. this part of the story is covered for now She told him the rich factory owner had pursued her, and he believed her. He paid off Gary Campbell's debts and found him a job in Oklahoma City in exchange for signing away his son.

details of the account remain covered until revealed She entered the Mrs Indiana America pageant in Indianapolis in 1989 and did not win. She also had a large nude oil painting of herself commissioned for the new house. All the while she was having affairs, with an accountant from the next town, a local policeman who knew Jimmy, the Baptist pastor, friends' husbands and men she met in Indianapolis. In 1990 Jimmy's mother confronted him with the gossip. He did nothing.

By the summer of 1992 the marriage was collapsing. Jimmy complained openly about her affairs and her spending, they argued in public and in private, and they began seeing a marriage counsellor. In mid-July he had a lawyer friend draw up divorce papers and planned to tell her when she returned from Alaska on 1 August. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it That night David's house was burgled. Jewellery and cash were untouched; only the gun was taken.

this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed She said she had found her husband with blood coming out of his eyes and mouth. He had a single gunshot wound to the head from a nine-millimetre weapon. There were no signs of a struggle and no forced entry, but clothes were strewn about and drawers were open, while money and jewellery in plain sight had not been touched. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it

this part of the story is covered for now David and Jamma sued to block her. Jimmy's best friend, Sergeant Gary Nichols, made it his mission to see that she never got a penny. Investigators recovered a spent shell casing and a bullet, and the bullets matched the gun stolen from David. Nichols went to the telephone pole where David had test-fired the pistol and dug out the slugs for comparison. details of the account remain covered until revealed

A couple of weeks after the murder she moved out of town with her two children. In September a neighbour warned her that the police were asking questions. She met her mother and her sister Darlene at a McDonald's near Indianapolis and told them, "I killed Jimmy." Her story was that it was meant to be a double suicide, that she could not kill herself, and that Jim had told her to shoot him so that his will and life insurance would still pay out. She said the gun was still inside a giant Christmas teddy bear. They bought a second teddy bear so they could carry two out of the house, took the gun to Darlene's, set it in the bottom of a large pot and filled the pot with concrete, then left the pot at their nephew's house.

the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it The pot was missing; Nelly, her mother, had hauled the seventy-five-pound concrete pot up three flights of stairs and hidden it in her attic. this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed She had to be carried from the court.

In 1995 she fought an attempt to take Jimmy's estate from her and was allowed to keep half of it, on the basis that half had belonged to her before the murder. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it In 2010 she gave a television interview to Investigation Discovery and the former FBI agent Candice DeLong, insisting that David had killed his father and that she was "just a little woman". this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed

David Grund became an attorney in Peru and later a judge there, and is remembered as a kind judge. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it