CONNERSVILLE, Ind. — Two years of forensic legwork and two unsolved cemetery shootings collapsed into a single midday confession Wednesday inside the Fayette County Courthouse.
Joshua Lee Farmer, 31, sat before Special Judge Paul L. Freed and admitted on the record that he knowingly shot and killed Thomas Combs and Joshua Durham in the late summer of 2022. The admission came through negotiated pleas of guilty but mentally ill to two counts of Murder, abruptly shutting down a jury trial that had seated its panel just 24 hours prior.
Under the agreed terms, Farmer accepted an executed 60-year prison sentence in the Indiana Department of Correction. Both murder counts will run concurrently, and the State dropped an unrelated arson charge filed against him. Because the plea carries the special finding of guilty but mentally ill, state prison officials are legally mandated to evaluate and treat Farmer’s psychiatric disorders behind bars.
Judge Freed set sentencing for Nov. 20 at 10 a.m. once a presentence report is finished.
A Month Apart
The killings happened three weeks from each other in 2022.
In the overnight darkness of Aug. 16 into Aug. 17, 53-year-old Thomas Combs was shot down near the roadway entrance to Dale Cemetery. Deputies found him lying near a broken walking stick, spent casings, and a crushed beer can.
Then on Sept. 10, gunfire was heard again on North Grand Avenue right across from the Connersville City Cemetery. Responders found 47-year-old Josh Durham dead between two houses, struck multiple times.
At first, detectives had no evidence tying the two bodies together, but the link took months of lab work to emerge.
Camera Logs and Scene Evidence
The State called Brock Pilgrim first thing Wednesday morning. Pilgrim, an Indiana Gaming Commission superintendent living about a quarter-mile from Dale Cemetery, testified simply as a neighbor with a Nest camera on his driveway.
Pilgrim testified that his system logs audio without any way to alter the files. He handed the drive over to detectives, and prosecutors played the audio for jurors: three clear gunshots ringing out at 11:27 p.m. the night Combs was killed.
Detectives paired that timestamp with audio pulled from a Ring camera near the second scene on North Grand Avenue, which logged roughly ten shots ripping off in quick three-round bursts when Durham was ambushed.
State Police Detective Kelly McPheeters walked jurors through the physical scenes, laying out photos of the blood, roadway markers, and the cemetery gate. Technicians at Durham’s scene dug a bullet jacket out of an exterior house wall and recovered another projectile lodged in the victim’s shoulder
Rare Ammo and a Crushed Can
The physical turning point boiled down to ballistics and a discarded drink.
State crime lab technicians examining the projectiles pulled from both crime scenes realized they came from the exact same gun, firing heavy .44-caliber rounds.
Meanwhile, analysts pulled a biological swab from the crushed beer can found sitting right by Combs’ body at Dale Cemetery. That sample went into the state DNA database, popped a preliminary hit, and led detectives straight to Farmer after a confirmatory swab matched both men’s DNA to the can.
Suspicion had already mounted against Farmer that fall. On Oct. 3, 2022, police crossed paths with him during a hospital run and spotted matching ammunition on him. A search warrant on an outbuilding at his grandfather’s property turned up more matching rounds.
Detectives eventually recovered the weapon itself: a loaded Ruger Blackhawk revolver stashed under heavy brush barely a block away from where Durham was killed. Forensic examiners matched the revolver’s firing pin strikes directly to the spent casings gathered from both crime scenes.
Fire, Statements, and the Insanity Claim
Police finally took Farmer in after he started a fire inside a shed on family land, standing directly in the flames until his feet blistered. Once in custody, Farmer admitted to investigators that he shot two people, though he claimed he lost the guns afterward.
When trial opened Wednesday, defense attorney Mark Jones made it clear to the jury that Farmer’s mind, not his actions, would be the core battlefield.
Jones told jurors Farmer deals with an IQ hovering around 70 and suffers from diagnosed, incurable schizoaffective disorder. He pointed to Farmer’s rambling police interviews where he talked about women living under his skin and losing his wisdom along with his pulled wisdom teeth. Jones also pushed the jury on early eyewitnesses who looked at photo arrays and pointed to someone else entirely.
The Midday Turn
None of those psychiatric arguments ever reached the witness stand.
Court broke for lunch around 1 p.m. Down the hall, Jones met with Chief Deputy Prosecutor Jason Ray and Special Prosecutor A.J. Bryson to hammer out terms.
When the doors opened back up, Judge Freed announced that the victims’ families backed the agreement. He turned to the bench and ran Farmer through his constitutional rights, making sure the defendant understood he was giving up his trial, his appeals, and his chance to fight the state’s evidence.
Then Freed put it to him plainly:
Did you knowingly or intentionally kill Thomas Combs on Aug. 17, 2022?
“Yes,” Farmer said.
Did you knowingly or intentionally kill Joshua Durham on Sept. 10, 2022?
“Yes,” Farmer said.
Did you know what you were doing on both occasions?
“Yes,” he answered again.
When Freed asked for his formal plea to each murder count, Farmer said “Guilty” twice.
Judge Freed accepted the pleas, ruled the factual basis sound, and dismissed the jury for good. Farmer was led back to the Fayette County Jail.
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