Rhonda Hammersley

Rhonda L. Hammersley, a 25-year-old White woman from Lowell, Indiana, was looking forward to the future. She was married to Lawrence Hammersley Jr., and her brother, Jay Beckett, later recalled how excited she was about his wife's pregnancy. "She was looking forward to the baby as much as we were," he would share, lamenting that his daughter would never get to know her aunt. But Rhonda's life was stolen in a sudden, brutal act that became the first in a string of killings that terrorized Northwest Indiana.

On the night of October 30, 1990, just after 10:15 p.m., Rhonda was finishing her shift as a clerk at the Petro Mart gas station in Cedar Lake. After locking the doors, she walked over to her co-worker Carrie Jillson's car to chat while she waited for her husband to pick her up. The area was brightly lit by the station's large canopy lights. As the two women talked, a man appeared from behind Jillson's car, raised a shotgun, and fired a single, catastrophic shot to Rhonda’s head. She died instantly. The gunman then turned the weapon on Jillson, firing a second blast that tore through the passenger side of her car as she frantically dropped down onto the seat. She felt the cold barrel of the gun press against the back of her head before a second man’s voice said, "All right, that's enough. Let's go."

Once the men fled, a terrified Jillson drove to a nearby liquor store and called the police. The murder of Rhonda Hammersley marked the beginning of a two-month wave of random, senseless shotgun attacks across the region, attributed to a spree killer the public would call the "Shotgun Killer." The investigation, led by the Lake County Sheriff's Department, soon became part of a multi-jurisdictional task force effort. The community was gripped by fear as the killings continued, seemingly without motive.

In January 1991, a break came with the arrest of Christopher Dwayne Peterson and Antwion McGee for an unrelated robbery and attempted murder. McGee implicated Peterson in the shotgun slayings and led investigators to a third man, Ronald Jeffrey Harris. Peterson, a 21-year-old Marine on unauthorized absence, confessed to all seven murders in the spree, including Rhonda's. Harris also gave a statement to the FBI, admitting he was with Peterson the night Rhonda was killed.

The path to justice, however, was complex and fraught with legal challenges. In his first trial in the fall of 1991, Peterson was tried for the murders of Rhonda Hammersley and another man killed the same day. The prosecution's case was undermined when crucial evidence was suppressed. Further complicating matters was the eyewitness testimony of Carrie Jillson. Initially, she had described the shooter as a white man with long, stringy hair, a description that led to a widely circulated but inaccurate police sketch. Although both Peterson and Harris are Black, Jillson later identified Ronald Harris in a police lineup two weeks after the murder. At Peterson's trial, she testified that it was not Peterson who shot her friend. The jury acquitted Peterson of Rhonda's murder.

Despite Peterson’s confession and subsequent convictions for four other murders in the spree, the eyewitness testimony of Carrie Jillson was the pivotal evidence in securing a conviction for Rhonda’s death. At a separate trial, Jillson remained steadfast in her identification of Ronald Harris as the man who killed her co-worker. She testified in court that she was "positive" Harris was the gunman. Harris had told police he was merely a bystander and that Peterson was the shooter.

In April 1992, a Lake County jury found Ronald Jeffrey Harris, then 23, guilty of the felony murder of Rhonda Hammersley and the attempted murder of Carrie Jillson. The following month, a judge sentenced him to a 90-year prison term: 60 years for the murder and a consecutive 30 years for the attempt on Jillson's life. As of May 1992, the case was officially closed, though the pain for Rhonda's family endures. Her brother’s words years later captured the lasting grief of a family robbed of a future with a beloved sister and aunt.