By RICK CALLAHAN
Associated Press Writer
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – A brother and sister were charged Wednesday with murder for allegedly killing their mother and grandparents, burying their bodies in a basement and heading off to Las Vegas with the victims’ cash.
The siblings were charged with three counts each of murder and conspiracy to commit murder and two counts of robbery. Authorities removed the dismembered bodies of their mother and grandmother and the intact body of their grandfather from under concrete in the basement of the grandparents’ home.
All three had been killed about five weeks ago, authorities said.
“It’s the most horrific thing I’ve ever seen,” Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi said.
Kenneth Allen, 29, and Kari Allen, 18, were pulled over for speeding Tuesday in Missouri. In the car, officers discovered bloody clothes and bedding, as well as jewelry, cash, credit cards and the driver’s licenses of two older people in Indiana, police said.
Brizzi said Kenneth Allen plotted the killings to steal his grandparents’ money, including about $200,000 in bank accounts, after his November release from a federal prison in Kentucky, where he had served time for counterfeiting.
Allen and his sister told officers they were on their way to Las Vegas. The siblings appeared nervous and gave conflicting stories about their trip, police said.
Kari Allen eventually told police that her brother killed their mother and grandparents while she served as a “lookout.” Kenneth Allen later acknowledged his involvement, police said.
The charges allege that Allen fatally stabbed his mother, Sharon Allen, 53, in her suburban Indianapolis apartment Dec. 30 after she refused to help in the plot to murder her parents.
On Jan. 3, Allen allegedly lured his 75-year-old grandmother, Betty Bradley, to his mother’s apartment and smothered her with a plastic bag. Later that day, Allen entered his grandparents’ Indianapolis home and lay in wait for his grandfather, Leander Bradley, 91, whom he allegedly bludgeoned to death with a hammer, the affidavit states.
Brizzi said Kenneth Allen used a saw to cut up the bodies of his mother and grandmother. He wrapped the remains in plastic and took them to the Bradleys’ Indianapolis home, the prosecutor said.
There, he and his sister allegedly used a rented jackhammer and concrete mixer to dig a 6-foot-square hole in the floor of the basement where all three victims were entombed in concrete.
The two siblings, who Brizzi said could face the death penalty, were being held without bond Wednesday by Missouri authorities. A prosecutor’s spokesman said Kenneth Allen waived extradition to Indiana, but his sister requested a public defender in Missouri.
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