A farmer’s murder haunted a rural Indiana town for years. The key to the case may be a stolen safe that was never found
Investigators in a rural Indian town long believed a missing safe would unlock the truth about what happened to a retired farmer found shot to death in his own home.
When 85-year-old Lowell Badger was found dead on the bedroom floor of his Sullivan County home in December 2012, police said it was a burglary that had turned deadly.
A television was stolen. Other electronics were later found discarded along back roads. But one item, a heavy metal safe taken from the basement, never resurfaced.
Investigators believed the safe held the motive for the murder – and for more than a decade, they asked the same question: what was inside the safe that was worth killing an elderly man for?
Despite extensive searches of ponds, lakes, and nearby rivers, the safe was never found. And for years, neither were the people responsible for Badger’s murder.
The case went cold for 13 years until new arrests, more than a decade later, finally began to reveal what happened inside Badger’s home that cold December night.
But one question lingers: what happened to the safe?
The retired farmer was found dead on December 8, 2012, inside his home on West County Road 350 North in Sullivan County, Indiana.
He had been shot during what investigators quickly determined was a burglary.
It’s believed the killing happened between 9 p.m. on Friday, December 7, and 5 a.m. the following morning. Badger’s son, Alan, discovered his father’s body early that day.
Police said a black 46-inch Sony Bravia television had been stolen. So had a light-to-medium dark gray John D. Brush and Company model safe, measuring 23½ inches tall, 17 inches deep, and 17 inches wide.
Despite hundreds of tips and a $30,000 reward offered for information leading to an arrest, the case stalled.
Years later, a locked safe matching the description was discovered inside an abandoned farm silo several miles from Badger’s home.
Its serial numbers had been partially damaged, raising immediate hope. But when the property owners forced it open, documents inside tied it to previous landowners – not to Lowell Badger.
