Accused killer’s kids must keep name
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Accused killer’s kids must keep name
Court squashes attempt by children to alter surname
By Valerie Kalfrin
APBNEWS.COM
FRANKLIN, Ind., Jan. 7 — Should the children of an accused killer have
to go through life sharing his last name? Yes, authorities said, at
least for now.
‘He is entitled to express an objection to whether the children’s names
should be changed.’
— JUDGE MARK LLOYD
Johnson County Circuit Court MICHAEL DEAN OVERSTREET, 33, is
set to stand trial April 24 for the abduction, rape and strangulation of
18-year-old Franklin College student Kelly Eckart — a crime that,
according to his ex-wife’s attorney, has wrought numerous taunts and
abuse upon his four young children since his November 1997 arrest.
“People have said things that have made them uncomfortable,” said
Dan Vandivier, Melissa Overstreet’s attorney, who would like the three
girls and a boy, ages 3 to 9, to share her maiden name, which is
Holland, so they can start over with a clean slate.
“This has been very traumatic for the entire family,” Vandivier
told APBnews.com. “Their father is going on trial for probably the most
heinous crime in this area in recent memory. For over two years now
they’ve been enduring this, and particularly the older children have
come to realize what he’s been accused of.”
But Wednesday, Johnson County Circuit Court Judge Mark Lloyd
denied the request to change the children’s names, largely because
Overstreet was opposed to the idea.
In handcuffs and orange prison clothes, Overstreet told the court
that he could be found innocent of the charges. And under Indiana law,
the judge said, he had to honor the man’s parental rights, even though
he has been incarcerated for two years — an abandonment the court
considered “involuntary.”
“He is entitled to express an objection to whether the children’s
names should be changed,” Lloyd told APBnews.com today. “Under any
Constitution, you are presumed innocent of any wrongdoing until proven
guilty of each and every element of the charges against you. Certainly
as he stood in the court, he was an innocent individual and entitled to
his parental rights.”
Lloyd, who has sat on the bench for more than nine years, said he
has handled name changes before between divorced parents that have
become contentious. But this was the first he could recall between “a
parent accused of a notorious crime and the opposing parent seeking to
protect the children from the ridicule of the public.”
COULD FACE DEATH PENALTY
Overstreet is presently being held in the state’s
maximum-security Pendleton Correctional Facility and faces the death
penalty for allegedly killing Eckart, whom prosecutors believe he
kidnapped after she got off work at the Franklin Wal-Mart Sept. 27,
1997.
According to the probable-cause affidavit, Eckart’s mother called
Franklin police when her daughter did not come straight home that night
as usual. Officers found Eckart’s car abandoned at a city intersection
with the headlights on and the driver’s side window open.
Three days later searchers found the teenager’s body on the
Atterbury Fish and Wildlife Area in Edinburgh; she apparently had been
strangled by ligature and received a blow to the head that appeared to
be from a stun device or blank pistol, officials said.
BROTHER TIPPED OFF COPS
Police began looking at Overstreet about a month later when the
man’s brother, Scott Overstreet, told investigators that Michael had
phoned him that night, saying he’d had too much to drink and asked that
he and a girl be driven to Edinburgh, the affidavit said.
While driving Overstreet’s 1984 Chevrolet van, Scott Overstreet
told police, his brother said, “I grabbed this girl,” then grabbed Scott
by the neck and said, “Don’t let me down,” before getting out with what
the brother assumed was a body.
According to the affidavit, Melissa Overstreet picked up her
husband afterward at the Atterbury firing range. She told police she
questioned her husband about Eckart after investigators found the
woman’s socks and shoes in the Johnson County Park in October. She filed
for divorce in April 1998.
Court officials said Overstreet has not formally entered a plea,
but the affidavit said he said his wife and brother were lying when they
implicated him in the killing.
PLAN TO TRY AGAIN IF CONVICTED
Although Overstreet has sent his family “whatever pittance he’s
earning” in prison work — about 25 cents a week, Vandivier said — the
attorney said he did not believe the man had taken the children’s best
interests into consideration.
“He hasn’t been in the position for over two years to know how
they’ve reacted and where they need to go to get their lives back
together,” he said. “I don’t think any of us could imagine how this
family’s been ripped apart, and the worst is yet to come. We’re looking
at possibly a month-long trial, and he could be sentenced to the death
penalty. It’s their mother’s opinion that this [name change] will help
them to better get through this experience.”
Vandivier said he will re-file the motion if Overstreet is
convicted.
He added that Melissa Overstreet wanted to revert to using her
maiden name months ago but held off until the trial because “she doesn’t
want the kids to go through this alone with the name Overstreet,”
Vandivier said. Then the trial kept getting postponed, and the issue of
the name change was heard first.
“It’d be nice to get this all over with,” he said.
Valerie Kalfrin is an APBnews.com staff writer.