Town note
Williamsburg is a small town inside Green Township, which is one of 15 townships in Wayne County.
about 0:06:02The story
Williamsburg, Indiana, is a town of 473 people in Green Township, Wayne County, in the eastern part of the state. Brian Ellis Hartman, born on 24 June 1956 in Covington, Kentucky, was a contractor and farmer who lived at 9703 South 425 West with his wife Sherry Ann, born on 14 May 1957. He joined the army, met a woman named Angel in the summer of 1996, married her, left the army and moved back to Indiana when she was pregnant. Their daughter Carolyn was born on 26 March 1998, followed by a son, Brian.
The marriage broke down as Scott began abusing prescription pills, particularly oxycodone. Angel asked for a divorce and Scott moved in with his parents. He cleaned himself up for a time and in 2007 was awarded full custody of the two children. His father built him a converted pole barn to live in on the family property. Scott then returned to drugs. His children described him crushing pills and snorting them through rolled-up dollar bills, and his daughter said he stole his mother's painkillers and replaced them with aspirin, Tylenol or Advil. In 2008 Sherry was diagnosed with a brain tumour and also suffered from COPD, emphysema and lumbar stenosis; she was prescribed large amounts of hydrocodone and oxycodone. A warrant was issued on 1 April after he missed appointments and failed to attend rehabilitation or do community service.
On 12 February 2010 Scott began, by his own later account, medicating his mother from about 4.15 a.m., crushing prescription drugs she was allergic to and giving her large doses. At about 10.30 a.m. he walked into his father's bedroom with a shotgun and shot him in the back of the head while he slept. He dragged the body through the house to the garage, wrapped it in a tarp and folded it into a large black storage box. He spent the rest of the day giving his mother medication, and late on 13 February he called 911 to say she was unresponsive and foaming at the mouth. She was taken to hospital and died.
Scott did not go with her. He told relatives that his father had been so upset that he left on a trip, giving changing accounts of a red pickup, a friend in a white car and then a taxi, and saying his father had taken ten thousand dollars in cash and left his checkbook so Scott could arrange the funeral. Sherry was cremated the following week without an autopsy; the funeral director needed her husband's signature and Scott supplied it. On 17 February he refilled his dead mother's oxycodone prescription and cashed a two thousand dollar check on his father's account. Neither he nor his father attended Sherry's funeral on 20 February.
At 2.16 p.m. that day neighbours Matt Pearson and Sarah Gollier saw Scott breaking into their home and called police. On 21 February the family reported Brian missing, and a sheriff's welfare check found nothing. The next day the family searched the house themselves and found Brian's boots, hat, watch and jacket, his wallet and driving licence in Scott's coat, and red streaks in the garage. A search warrant followed: blood spatter consistent with a close-range shotgun wound was found in the master bedroom, drag marks led to the garage, and Brian's body was found in the black storage box. He had been shot in the back of the head at close range, causing massive destruction of the brain.
On 22 February Detective Douglas Fritz interviewed Scott, who asked for a lawyer. He claimed a family suicide pact: that his mother wanted to die, that his father did not want to live without her and had asked to be killed in his sleep first. Investigators rejected the story because Sherry's brain cancer was in remission and she was not dying. Angel filed an emergency petition for custody of the children.