Kimberly HeflingThe Associated Press
An man was convicted Tuesday for a 28-year-old Indiana killing in which he was never suspected until his ex-wife confessed to her participation.Wayne Gulley's defense attorney plans to appeal the verdict and continued attacking the reliability of Ella Mae Dicks' confession and testimony.A jury convicted Gulley, 62, of the 1975 murder of Sherry Lee Gibson, for which a teenager confessed and was sent to prison in the 1970s.When the jury's verdict was read after about 11 hours of deliberations Monday and early Tuesday at the courthouse in Vincennes, Gulley dropped his head to his chest and shook it slowly back and forth.Dicks, who is Gulley's ex-wife, told police in 2001 that she and Gulley, of Peoria, Ill., were involved in the woman's murder. The two had never been suspects, but police have said Dicks knew details only someone at the murder scene would know.Gibson, 23, was abducted while parked with her boyfriend on a rural country road in southwestern Indiana. She was raped and stabbed, and her body was found the next day in an abandoned farmhouse.Defense attorney Jessie Cook said she was surprised by the verdict and planned to file an appeal. She said Dicks had some bad feelings about Gulley and that Dicks' story was full of inconsistencies and based on newspaper accounts."I felt very strongly there was reasonable doubt and we established it," Cook said.Indiana State Police Sgt. Larry Eck, who interviewed both Dicks and Gulley, said Tuesday he had no doubt Dicks was telling the truth.Eck said Dicks knew details about how the porch looked like at the farmhouse where Gibson's body was found and what side of the car the two victims were sitting on when they were attacked."None of the information she gave was in those articles," he said.Rick Gibson, Sherry Gibson's brother, told the Vincennes Sun-Commercial, "I'm glad it's over, and I think we've got closure now."In the late 1970s, a teenager named John Jeffers confessed to the killing. He died in prison of a drug overdose in 1983 while serving a 30-year term. Investigators now say Jeffers lied about the crime to gain attention.Dicks, 47, who now goes by the last name of Morgan after a recent divorce, pleaded guilty Aug. 7 to murder and testified during Gulley's three-week trial in Knox Circuit Court. She will be sentenced Sept. 5; her ex-husband will be sentenced Sept. 17.Prosecutor Hal Johnston said in his closing statement Monday that Dicks confessed to the crime out of guilt and acknowledged during testimony she has struggled with mental illness and substance abuse over the years. She said she has attempted suicide several times.Dicks testified that she and Gulley robbed a fruit stand that night, and they were driving around drinking and doing drugs when they came upon Gibson and her boyfriend.
