Danville, IN: Prosecutor defends plea deal for man who killed wife

Joseph Warnock faces 55 years, but sentence could be cut in half

By Bruce C. Smith
bruce.smith@indystar.com

DANVILLE, Ind. -- Intoxicated by drugs and alcohol on a Sunday night in June, Joseph Warnock used a 12-inch knife to stab and slash his wife more than 50 times in front of their two daughters, killing her.

Under a plea agreement announced Thursday in Hendricks Superior Court, he faces a prison sentence of 55 years. He could be released in less than half that time.

Prosecutors defended the agreement, which Hendricks Superior Court Judge Robert Freese accepted before scheduling formal sentencing for Oct. 9.

County Prosecutor Patricia Baldwin said that by avoiding a trial, Warnock's daughters, who are 12 and 8, will be spared having to testify about the killing of their mother, Angela Warnock.

Saying the plea agreement had been discussed at length with the victim's family, Baldwin added that it falls in the middle of the range -- 45 to 65 years -- that state law sets as the prison sentence for a murder conviction.

The sentence, she added, "sends a message about the damage that drugs and alcohol and domestic violence can do to destroy a family."

Defense attorney Robert Hammerle agreed, saying the actions of the 41-year-old Warnock -- a former tanning-bed salesman who had no criminal record -- stemmed from his abuse of "alcohol and drugs during the days leading up to these events."

"This is one of those instances when he (Warnock) became a person he really isn't, because of (drug abuse) and lack of sleep.

"It was a momentary collision of emotions, which later are horrifying. But that is not a defense," Hammerle said. "The hope is that by admitting what happened, everyone in this family can move to some healing, some sense of balance, in the future."

He acknowledged that under Indiana's good-behavior provisions, Warnock could be released from prison in 20 years.

Warnock did not speak during the hearing except to offer short answers to the judge's questions.

Members of both his and Angela Warnock's families were in the courtroom, sometimes sobbing as details of the killing were discussed. They declined to talk to reporters after the hearing.

Angela Warnock, 38, a former beauty-pageant winner in Hawaii, was well known in the Brownsburg community as a stylist at a local beauty salon.

Investigators think that in the days before the killing, Warnock was afraid his wife was about to leave Indiana and move back with family members in Hawaii, taking their daughters.

Four days before her death, Angela Warnock received a protective court order to try to keep her husband away from their daughters and the family home. In a court hearing, she described him as addicted to drugs and alcohol.

He swore in the same court hearing that he would never hurt her.

By then, police now say, he already had bought the murder weapon, using a credit card June 17 in a Southport department store to buy a 12-inch cooking knife.

The night of June 21, he was at an Eagle Creek Reservoir restaurant until 11:30 p.m., police said. He drove the few miles to a church parking lot about a quarter-mile from the family home, where he parked and crossed a farm field in the dark and broke in the patio door.

Police said he found Angela and the girls asleep. Reports from the coroner and evidence experts said Angela was stabbed 28 times and cut 23 times.

The girls ran, as their mother had taught them. They hid in a closet and called 911.

Stephen J. Johnson, executive director of the Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys Council, said 55 years is probably close to the standard prison term in similar cases, given Warnock's expressions of remorse and lack of criminal history. Indiana law identifies specific circumstances that would allow for a longer sentence after a murder conviction, but none of them was established in this case.

Bills have been introduced in the Indiana General Assembly to add domestic violence as an aggravating factor in a murder sentence, but none has been passed.

"Judges can have some discretion . . . depending on the circumstances," Johnson said. "But committing a murder in front of children is not one of approximately 16 aggravating circumstances that we have now."