The Tippecanoe County Prosecutor is honoring one former and two current Lafayette police officers. Pat Harrington presented the first Justice Award to Dan Shumaker, B.T. Brown and Paul Huff.
The trio was the main detectives working the murder case of Kory Rogers.
Harrington says the investigation spanned 34-months, involved thousands of text messages and cell phone records, and took them to California to bring back a suspect.
“Forensically, this was the leading case in the state of Indiana,” he says. “They put in, not only hours, but hundreds of hours to assist my office in obtaining a grand jury indictment and then successful prosecution in a serious and violent case.”
He says this is the first time such an award has been given out in Indiana, but other prosecutors throughout the state have endorsed the idea.
Shumaker retired during the investigation, but continued to work on the case. He says while the three of them are getting the recognition, the entire department worked on the case.
“When the Lafayette Police Department has a homicide investigation, every detective is involved. There were over 129, I think, interviews we did in this case. I only did a small portion of those. The greater portion was the rest of the Detective Division.”
Shumaker says the case was one of the most involved in his career and he realized from the start it would be a harder than most.
A jury convicted Edward C. Zaragoza of murder in the shooting death of Kory Rogers. Jeremiah Thompson pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit robbery and burglary in the shooting death of Kory Rogers.