Bio

William A. Minnick was born on August 21, 1963. He was 18 years old when Martha Payne was murdered in October 1981. Minnick knew Martha Payne or was familiar with her home. After the murder, he admitted that he had gone to her house earlier that day, but claimed he only went there to ask if she needed any work done.

Minnick was first convicted and sentenced to death in 1982, but that conviction was overturned because of a legal issue involving his confession. He was later retried, convicted again on September 18, 1985, and sentenced to death a second time.

Murder Story

On October 26, 1981, James D. Payne returned to his home in Greencastle, Indiana, and found his wife, Martha Payne, dead on the bedroom floor. Martha was 24 years old. Police determined that she had been raped, anally sodomized, stabbed in the right rear shoulder or upper back, and struck on the head with a table lamp. Investigators also found ligature marks on her neck and burn marks on her ankles, showing that the attacker had attempted to electrocute her. The fatal injury was a knife wound that entered her upper back, penetrated her lung, and severed her pulmonary artery.

Police began investigating Minnick after learning that he had been near the Payne home that day. Late that night, a DePauw University student reported seeing an orange “Dukes of Hazzard”-style car parked near the Payne residence, about one block away. A man was seen leaving the car and walking toward the area of the Payne home.

Early the next morning, on October 27, 1981, police went to Minnick’s home and asked him to come to the station for questioning. He went voluntarily. He admitted that he had been at Martha Payne’s home earlier on the day of the murder, but initially denied involvement in her death.

Minnick was later charged with murder, rape, and robbery. At his first trial, he was convicted, and the court sentenced him to death on June 10, 1982. However, the Indiana Supreme Court reversed that conviction on September 7, 1984, after ruling that a confession had been improperly admitted.

The case was retried in Lawrence County. On September 18, 1985, a jury again found Minnick guilty of murder, rape, and robbery. During the penalty phase, the jury recommended against the death penalty. Despite that recommendation, the judge sentenced Minnick to death on October 16, 1985.

The Indiana Supreme Court affirmed the second conviction and death sentence on October 2, 1989. The court accepted that Minnick had murdered Martha Payne while committing rape and robbery. The sentencing judge also relied on the violence of the crime, including the attempted electrocution, strangling, stabbing, rape, and post-death violation of the victim’s body.

Minnick continued to challenge the case through post-conviction and federal habeas proceedings. In 2000, a federal court granted habeas relief as to the death sentence only. The court noted that after the second trial, the jury had unanimously recommended life imprisonment, but the judge still imposed death.

Further proceedings continued for years. In 2004, the case returned to state court for resentencing-related issues, and Minnick was found legally incompetent at that time. Later, the Indiana Department of Health notified the court in 2011 that Minnick was competent. He was resentenced to 160 years, but in 2012 the Indiana Court of Appeals reduced the robbery conviction because of double-jeopardy concerns, bringing the final sentence down to 130 years executed.

William A. Minnick was not executed. His death sentence was removed, and the last verified court reporting shows him serving a 130-year prison sentence for the murder, rape, and robbery of Martha Payne.