More than three decades after she scaled an Indiana prison fence to escape a murder conviction and create a new life, Linda Darby could only hang her head when confronted with her past, police said Wednesday.
The woman who cleaned homes, helped at her grandchildren’s elementary school and blended into the fabric of a small Tennessee town remained in a Giles County Jail cell Wednesday awaiting extradition to Indiana.
Now 64, Darby will spend the rest of her life in prison for the 1970 shooting death of her second husband in Hammond, Indiana Department of Correction spokeswoman Karen Cantou Grubbs said. She could face additional charges for her prison escape.
Darby — who lived as Linda Joe McElroy for the last 35 years — is one of four escaped inmates snared by the Indiana Fugitive Apprehension Unit that launched two weeks ago. Darby had been on the lam longer than any of the 300 fugitives targeted by the group, Cantou Grubbs said.
Similarities between Linda Darby and Linda Joe McElroy’s Social Security numbers and birth dates alerted members of the Indiana unit that the two might be the same person. Fingerprints confirmed the match, Cantou Grubbs said, and authorities knew they had the woman convicted of fatally shooting Charles Darby, wrapping his body in garment bags and setting fire to the home where the couple lived with her four children from an earlier marriage and a child they had together.
News of her apprehension Friday rocked the town of Pulaski, where Darby hid her criminal past for more than three decades. Located 70 miles south of Nashville, Pulaski is home to nearly 8,000 residents.
“I didn’t really put all this together until I saw her picture,” said Pulaski Elementary School Principal Bill Holt, who coached Darby’s son on his middle school football team. “She was supportive of fundraisers. She would pick the children up. She was just a model type person.”
A Lake County, Ind., jury took a different view in 1970.
Then 27, Darby was convicted of first-degree murder for killing Charles Darby, a self-employed aluminum siding installer. A service station attendant in Highland, Ind., confirmed Darby bought two containers of gasoline the day before the murder, and police officials found her shotgun in a motel room she rented in Valparaiso, the Chicago Tribune reported at the time.
She was sentenced to life in prison. In 1972, Darby climbed a barbed-wire fence to escape the Indiana Women’s Prison in Indianapolis.
She changed her name, had two more children with William McElroy Jr., a man local officials described as her common-law husband. There was no marriage certificate.
Nor was there a driver’s license or a birth certificate for Darby, and she took jobs where she was paid in cash, said Pulaski Police Detective Sgt. Joel Robison, who investigated the case after Indiana officials contacted him. “The more and more I checked, the less and less she appeared to be real.”
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tmalone@tribune.com
