A man who admitted in court documents he fatally shot a Gary Library Board member he had allegedly raped days earlier was sentenced to 85 years in prison Thursday.
Earl Shearer, 67, of Gary and Chicago, did not speak before sentencing. He agreed to plead guilty to murder and a firearms enhancement, sentenced to 65 and 20 years, respectively.
Mary Felton, 74, was at the Gary police facility, 555 Polk, on Dec. 8 to report that Shearer raped her. As she was leaving, two sex crimes detectives walked her to her car. One detective looked under her car for a tracking device, but admitted he didn’t look inside, according to an affidavit.
Shearer was waiting in her back seat, documents show. She was found fatally shot in her car near 8th Avenue and Lincoln Street less than two hours later.
Shearer was later arrested Dec. 9 in a traffic stop in Whiting. Friends were left questioning how Felton was in danger so close to the police.
Gary Police spokeswoman Lt. Dawn Westerfield said Thursday afternoon that she had been in meetings and didn’t have enough time to comment before press deadline.
“I forgive you, I mean it,” Felton’s friend, Robert Buggs told Shearer in court. “You have destroyed so many lives by your cowardly act.”
Her two sons also gave victim impact statements.
Shearer’s defense lawyer Adam Tavitas said at Thursday’s hearing the plea was a “fair resolution”. He was “remorseful for his actions,” the lawyer said.
“I did not know Mary Felton,” Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Bernard Johnsen said. But, he soon learned she was a “wonderful, loving person.”
What happened to her was “unbelievable, shocking,” he said, adding he was in law enforcement for over 50 years.
Lake Superior Judge Gina Jones offered condolences to Felton’s family, adding it was not a “light switch” to deal with their grief.
Felton, the family matriarch, was “somebody who loved very deeply her family and her community,” her son Melvin Felton said via phone Thursday.
She loved Corvettes — a Northwest Indiana Corvette Club member, made ceramics, and was a member of the East Glen Park Church of Christ.
She encouraged education, which he said was a driving force for his graduation from Columbia Law School, said Felton, now an attorney. She was devoted to public service since before he could remember, he said.
“I don’t think any of us become who we are by ourselves,” he said. “Whether people admit it or not, we all get helped out.”
She worked under three Gary mayors as an accountant and director of grants, according to her obituary. She had also worked as a Calumet Township Trustee Finance Administrator. Felton previously served on the Gary School Board before her library board appointment.
“I blame the Gary Police,” Robert Bullock said after the court hearing, Felton’s friend of over two decades.
Shearer was a “handyman” who lived in Felton’s neighborhood, which is how they met, he said.
One day she had knee pain and he left something to help her with his card, which is how they started talking. Shearer later would come over and wash her cars, Bullock said.
Felton told police started dating in May. By October, court records show two protection orders were filed against each other.
She alleged Shearer broke into her house Dec. 5 and raped her at gunpoint when she returned from the Ameristar Casino. Bullock called her in the morning, but couldn’t get through to her, he said. Later that day, she called back, telling him what happened. Felton was terrified Shearer would kill her and a relative, she told Bullock.
Shearer said “he wasn’t afraid of Gary Police, they don’t do anything anyway,” Bullock recounted Felton telling her.
Bullock managed to convince Felton to stay with her for the next few days, thinking Shearer would be promptly arrested, which didn’t happen, he said.
By Dec. 8, she had an appointment to talk with Gary Police sex crimes detectives.
Earlier that day, she was attending to a rental property nearby. Both Bullock and Buggs told her to forget it and go to the police station. It’s now something that agonizes him, Bullock said.
Melvin Felton, out of the area, said he had called Bullock saying they heard something might have happened near the police station, asking him to check it out, fearful if a coroner’s van was there.
“I broke down and couldn’t tell him,” Bullock said.
Shearer had multiple felonies in Illinois and Georgia listed in court records dating back decades: aggravated battery in 1977, a 1980 murder conviction, both in Cook County. Other convictions included possession of a firearm in 1994, aggravated stalking and aggravated battery, 1999, all in Georgia.
“If the police department did their job, she would still be here,” Bullock added. If someone of her stature couldn’t get help from the police, “what would an ordinary citizen get?”
