Indiana investigators identified a suspect years before charging a man with the 2006 murders of 10-year-old Blake Dickus and his 26-year-old stepmother, Chynna Dickus, but prosecutors say an unusual gap in state law prevented them from bringing the case.
Johnson County Prosecutor Lance Hamner told Fox News Digital that authorities had identified Michael Jerome James as a suspect in the double murders, but spent years working to establish a legal path to prosecute him for crimes he allegedly committed at age 14.
“That’s what took us so long,” Hamner said. “We had a suspect identified. We weren’t able to bring charges for several years because we were trying to get the jurisdictional statute in place.”
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James, now 35, appeared in Johnson Circuit Court in Franklin on Thursday, Oct. 8, following a grand jury indictment in the July 24, 2006, deaths of Blake and Chynna.
James faces four counts of murder. Prosecutors accuse him of killing Blake and Chynna while burglarizing or attempting to burglarize their Franklin home.
During his court appearance, James told Johnson Circuit Court Judge Andrew Roesener that he did not have an attorney yet but planned to get one. Roesener gave James until Nov. 2 to hire an attorney and set his next status hearing for the same day.
James’ age at the time of the killings is what created an unusual problem for the state, Hamner said.
Indiana law historically gave juvenile courts jurisdiction over crimes committed by minors, creating a dilemma when authorities identified an alleged juvenile offender only after that person had aged out of the system.
Since authorities did not identify or charge James while he was a juvenile, prosecutors faced the question of whether an adult court could legally hear the case.
“That leaves a gap because this person is alleged to have committed a crime when he was 14, was not charged in juvenile court, and now that he’s over the age of 18 could not be charged in adult court because of the way that law was written,” Hamner said.
In 2023, state law changed. A new legal path was created for adult courts to handle certain cases involving those accused of committing serious crimes as juveniles. The law did not cover every violent crime and depended partly on whether prosecutors could have sought adult prosecution when the offender was a juvenile.
Hamner said another case involving child molestation allegations tested the 2023 statute. The Indiana Court of Appeals rejected its application in that case, and the Indiana Supreme Court later reached the same conclusion.
“That means that we couldn’t use it either,” Hamner said.
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“We started back over. We went back to the legislature and, with the guidance of the decision in that 2023 statute, drafted a new law that would satisfy the concerns that the Indiana Supreme Court had.”
Hamner said lawmakers passed a new statute in 2025 after considering the concerns raised by the Indiana Supreme Court. The 2025 change gave prosecutors the legal mechanism needed to charge James.
“Then we were back in business to be able to charge this individual,” he said.
Hamner said he is more confident the latest statute will withstand a legal challenge.
“Nothing’s ever certain, but I’m a lot more confident about this statute than we were with the other one,” Hamner said.
Criminal defense lawyer Mike Cunningham, however, told Fox 59 News that he believes Indiana law does not allow prosecutors to charge James as an adult for crimes he allegedly committed before the state changed its juvenile jurisdiction law in 2023.
“For acts that are committed after 2023, if you’re a juvenile and we don’t learn about it until after you’re 21, then you may be held accountable in adult court,” he said. “But what the court has said is for anything that happened before 2023, the law does not permit that because they did not have adequate notice.”
If James’ eventual defense attorney challenges the court’s jurisdiction, the dispute could determine whether prosecutors can pursue the murder case at all.
Blake and Chynna suffered multiple stab wounds inside the family’s home on Aberdeen Drive in the otherwise peaceful Branigin Woods subdivision.
Investigators determined that Blake also had blunt-force injuries and signs of smothering.
Blake’s father, Sean Dickus, returned home and discovered the bodies. Blake’s mother, Christina Smith, had planned to pick up her son that day but instead arrived to find the neighborhood surrounded by police.
She later learned that Blake appeared to have fought desperately against his attacker, and had severe injuries to his hands.
“His poor little hands were so bad, like, he tried to grab the knife and like, his thumb was almost sliced off,” Christina Smith told WTHR. “The knife went through his hands… I don’t know how that guy could live with himself.”
For years, investigators explored possible connections between the murders and a string of break-ins occurring within a half-mile of the Dickus residence. They also questioned multiple construction workers who were working in the neighborhood around the time of the murders.
“They did a very extensive and thorough investigation, but they weren’t able to identify any suspects,” Hamner said. “They were getting a lot of tips, but nothing was coming from it.”
Hamner declined to say whether authorities uncovered evidence suggesting a juvenile committed the burglaries or whether James had any connection to them.
The Dickus murders have followed Hamner through years of his career.
Voters first elected Hamner as Johnson County prosecutor in 1991, and held the position when the 2006 murders happened.
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Hamner left the prosecutor’s office and became a judge in 2009 with the murders still unsolved. In 2021, he learned that investigators believed they had caught a break in the case, although he declined to reveal what initially led authorities to James.
Hamner had already considered leaving the bench and running for prosecutor again. He said the development in the Dickus investigation played a major role in his decision.
“When I found out about this, this was a huge part of my making that decision to come back and work on this case that had sadly just been languishing all those years,” Hamner said.
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The arrest came after nearly two decades of unanswered questions for the family.
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As the years passed without an arrest, the family continued appealing for information while investigators revisited evidence and pursued leads.
Sean Dickus also faced years of public suspicion after discovering the bodies, despite investigators clearing him in the killings.
“My family went through torture, so I can’t go through anything worse than that,” he told WTHR.
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Despite the indictment, authorities have revealed little about the evidence that ultimately connected James to the killings.
Franklin Police Capt. Jeff Dawe told WTHR that James represents the first lead in the nearly 20-year investigation supported by forensic evidence. Authorities have not publicly disclosed the nature of that evidence.
James remains held without bond at the Johnson County Jail in Franklin. The court has scheduled a pretrial conference for Dec. 10.