After Fred R. Pewitt, on a video call from the Porter County Jail to Porter Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Clymer’s courtroom, raised his right hand and swore to tell the truth for his initial hearing, Clymer got to the point.
“I understand this case is old, but I also understand you’ve been away for a while,” Clymer said Wednesday.
Pewitt, 51, formerly of Hammond, has spent more than 30 years in prison for a murder and kidnapping case out of Jasper County. He’s now at the Porter County Jail on felony charges of attempted murder and resisting arrest for a related case, also from October 1994.
According to online records from the Indiana Department of Correction, he was officially released from state custody in the murder case on Monday. It’s not immediately clear where he served his sentence, but he was sentenced to 50 years on the murder charge and 25 years for kidnapping, also a Class A felony, served concurrently.
Pewitt was booked into the Porter County Jail around 1:34 p.m. Friday, according to a jail booking roster.
He’s likely to remain there for the duration of his case. The late Thomas Webber, the Porter Superior Court judge who oversaw Pewitt’s case in 1994, set Pewitt’s bond at $100,000.
After submitting preliminary pleas of not guilty for the Porter County charges, Clymer said Webber set the bond on Dec. 6, 1994.
“We’re now going to address whether that bond should remain in force,” Clymer said.
After attorney Mark Chargualaf was appointed as Pewitt’s public defender, Clymer asked whether Pewitt’s bond amount should remain. Porter County Deputy Prosecutor Taylor Poulos said yes.
Chargualaf disagreed and asked for bail to be reduced to $10,000, which he admitted Pewitt was unlikely to be able to pay anyway.
“Quite frankly, I don’t believe he’s going to be a flight risk,” he said, adding Pewitt has to report regularly to the Gary Parole District since his discharge from the Department of Correction.
Clymer denied the request to lower the bond and said it remains at $100,000 cash. He also reminded Pewitt that if he posts bond, a no-contact order in the case remains in force.
On Oct. 20, 1994, the day before the murder and kidnapping charges were filed in Jasper County, police from various departments, including the Porter County Sheriff’s Department, were in pursuit of Pewitt, who hijacked a pickup truck and forced the driver to drive him at gunpoint, according to charging documents.
A sheriff’s deputy was following the truck when the passenger, later identified as Pewitt, “stuck a small caliber handgun out of the rear window of the hijacked pickup truck and fired at a sheriff’s deputy, charges state.
As the deputy was trying to stop the pickup truck, he observed a flash on the muzzle of the handgun two or three times. The deputy was able to shoot out the left rear tire of the pickup truck and stop it.
After Pewitt was apprehended, according to the charges, scrapings were taken from the top edge of the driver’s side door, where it appeared to have been struck by a bullet. After examination by an Indiana State Police lab, investigators “determined the presence of lead in the paint scrapings, consistent with a bullet striking the vehicle,” charges state.
The Jasper County charges were filed Oct. 21, 1994, and he was sentenced on May 15, 1995, after pleading guilty to murder and kidnapping April 17, 1995, according to online court records. A third felony charge, for criminal confinement, was dismissed as part of the plea agreement.
According to a Post-Tribune archive article headlined “Stunning confession caps hostage drama,” Pewitt, then 19, confessed to a homicide in Wheatfield after a two-county pursuit that started in Wheatfield and ended on U.S. 231 near the Lake/ Porter county line when police shot out and spiked the tires of a 1985 Ford pickup hijacked by Pewitt.
Pewitt surrendered without a struggle, according to the archive story, and confessed to the shooting death of Edward L. Murray, 58. Pewitt directed police to Murray’s shack behind a mobile home off Ind. 10, about 200 yards from a convenience store where the hijacking began.
Murray was dead when police arrived, shot three times in the chest and head, officials said at the time. His body was lying on the floor of the shack’s combination bedroom and dining room.
Pewitt was visiting his ex-stepfather, who owned the mobile home on the property at 215 E. Indiana 10 where Murray was staying at the time of his death, officials said then.
A man who stopped at the convenience store with his teen daughter to rent a movie was accosted as he left. Pewitt approached the man and his daughter outside the store and ordered them at
gunpoint into the stick-shift Ford truck, which Pewitt could not drive.
The victim convinced Pewitt to let his daughter leave, officials said at the time. A store employee said the daughter came into the store, and a clerk called police.
A sergeant with the Jasper County Sheriff’s Department responded to the 911 call and spotted the truck heading north on Indiana 49 and gave chase, officials said then.
The Porter County charges against Pewitt were filed back in 1994, said Armando Salinas, chief deputy prosecutor in the Porter County Prosecutor’s Office. Now that Pewitt’s Jasper County sentence is complete, he’s been released to Porter County on an old warrant from 1994.
If Pewitt is found guilty, he faces a sentence of 20 to 50 years on the attempted murder charge and 2 to 5 years on the felony count of resisting law enforcement. Both charges carry fines up to $10,000.
Pewitt’s next court date before Clymer is on June 10, and he has a pretrial hearing scheduled for July 22. His trial has been scheduled to begin with jury selection on Aug. 24.
alavalley@chicagotribune.com
