Indiana Man Held in Woman’s 1968 Slaying Dies of Cancer

INDIANAPOLIS —  A man arrested last spring after his daughter told police she saw him fatally stab an encyclopedia saleswoman with a screwdriver 34 years ago died Saturday.

Kenneth C. Richmond, 70, died of bladder cancer at Larue D. Carter Memorial Hospital, defense attorney Steve Litz said.

Richmond was charged in May with what prosecutors said was the racially motivated murder in Martinsville of Carol Marie Jenkins, 21.

The 1968 crime has long haunted the nearly all-white rural Indiana city of about 12,000, which gained a reputation for racism after the slaying of Jenkins, who was black.

Shirley Richmond McQueen told investigators that at age 7 she watched from a car as her father stabbed Jenkins in the chest in a drunken rage while yelling racial slurs.

McQueen said another man she did not know held Jenkins during the attack. She testified her father had “a pronounced dislike for black people.”