Doyle
A Bartholomew Circuit Court jury deliberated for 68 minutes Friday before finding a local man guilty of murder.
Patrick E. Doyle, 40, was convicted for the August 2021 killing of his live-in girlfriend, Heather Ann Steuver. The body of the 37-year-old victim was found in a shallow grave on the property of Nugent Sand and Gravel Co. two-and-a-half weeks after she disappeared, according to court records. Due to pre-trial publicity, jurors from Shelby County were brought in daily to hear the case.
In Indiana, a murder conviction carries a sentence of 45 to 65 years in prison. After the verdict was read, a court assessment was made declaring Doyle as a habitual criminal. The declaration has the potential to add an additional six to 20 years in prison to his sentence.
For Doyle, the habitual offender assessment is based on a 2009 Florida conviction for armed robbery, as well as a 2020 local conviction for burglary. He was given a six-year sentence after being caught in the act of burglarizing a house on Washington Street in Columbus, according to court records.
Sentencing was scheduled by Judge Kelly Benjamin for 10:15 a.m. Thursday, March 23.
Doyle still faces more charges still pending. In plea bargains offered last year, prosecutors offered to drop 18 felony counts of possession of child pornography filed against Doyle in exchange for a guilty plea regarding the murder. But since the defendant refused the offer, Bartholomew County Prosecutor Lindsey Holden-Kay said she will now pursue those charges.
During the three-day trial, public defender Don Edwards didn’t make an opening statement to the jury, nor call witnesses. In his closing summary, Edwards argued his client should be found guilty of reckless homicide, rather than murder. Doyle has told investigators he was extremely intoxicated and passed out while both he and Steuver were in bed. Edwards maintained said that when Doyle woke up at about 4:30 in the morning and saw his live-in girlfriend was dead, he went into a state of shock and did not know what happened.
The reason why Doyle tried to deceive others for several days concerning the victim’s whereabouts was that he was afraid the victim’s father, gun owner Jerry Lowe, would kill him if he discovered what happened, Edwards said.
But Chief Deputy Prosecutor Kimberly Sexton-Yeager argued that when Doyle told investigators statements like “if I hadn’t been drinking, I wouldn’t have killed her,” he was revealing his true self.
“Every step he took showed the defendant was not acting out of distress or as a boyfriend in shock,” Sexton-Yeager said. “This was calculated.”
The deputy prosecutor said she was referring to wrapping the victim’s body in a sheet, dragging it down the stairs by the ankles, placing it in the back seat of her car, covering the body with trash, and placing metal on top of the garbage.
Originally, Doyle planned to use the metal to weigh the body down in a lake within the sand and gravel pit off Old Indianapolis Road, the deputy prosecutor said. But when that plan proved to be impossible, Doyle eventually buried his girlfriend in a shallow grave, put many of her belongings in a pillow case and threw it in the lake, Sexton-Yeager said.
Over the following week, Doyle would go back to the grave twice to shovel more soil on the body, she said.
When the defendant returned home, he used a fragrance frequently used by Heather to make it appear she had just showered, the deputy prosecutor said. He also utilized the victim’s phone to send out text messages to friends and family, as well as himself, to create the illusion that she was still alive, Sexton-Yeager said.
Testimony from a forensic pathologist indicates the victim was punched in the face multiple times, and may have also been kicked.
Steuver’s face sustained fractures to her nose, cheekbone and eye socket, Holden-Kay said in a rebuttal statement. In a investigator’s interview, Doyle had said her face was so disfigured he had to cover her head because he couldn’t bear to look at her, court records state..
The autopsy suggests the victim died when her head was forced down and held there while the killer either choked or smothered her until she stopped breathing, Holden-Kay said.
Neither investigators nor prosecutors can give a motive for the killing, Sexton-Yeager told the jurors.
“But one thing is for sure,” she said. “It wasn’t accidental.”
