WHITE CO.—With White County officials on the cusp of getting one murder case out of the way in August, just a few days before the trial scheduled for Danny Coston was to begin (see story page 2), another murder case arose in the county.
Thomas Matthew Davidson, 25, was apprehended after an intensive search, one that spanned 18 hours, crossed four counties in Indiana and one in Illinois and involved air support from two states, ended not far from a high school in Pike County, Indiana.
He was sought in connection with the disappearance of a Gibson County, Ind., woman that occurred late Friday, August 16.
The body of that missing person, Sandra Burkhardt, 58, was found in a cornfield a mile west of Crossville in White County at about 7 p.m. August 17. Upon his apprehension in Indiana and transfer from Pike to Gibson to Posey counties, Davidson was transported to the Carmi-White County jail and booked for the murder of Mrs. Burkhardt.
Brought before a judge in White County two days later, Davidson, belligerent and hostile, displayed the kind of mindset that’s kept him in the court system for years, but doesn’t fully explain the extent of his alleged criminality…nor what happened on that weekend when Burkhardt lost her life, allegedly at his hand.
Alert to misdoings
The public was alerted to some kind of misdoing in the early morning hours of Saturday, Aug. 17, when it was reported that Emily Burkhardt found her one-year-old son in her mother Sandra Burkhardt’s home alone.
Emily’s mother Sandra Burkhardt was nowhere to be found. She had last been seen at Princeton Walmart with the little boy at a point in time estimated to be between 10 and 10:30 p.m.
The little boy was okay; Sandra’s car, a silver 2012 Ford Focus, was gone.
Emily, an employee at Walmart, was to have picked up her little boy at 11 p.m. at her mom’s place, located in rural Gibson County not far from the Posey County line in a community known as Johnson, north of Griffin and southwest of Owensville, this according to Gibson County Sheriff George Ballard.
Emily Burkhardt notified Gibson County authorities that Burkhardt was missing under strange circumstances, and, Ballard said, there was immediate suspicion that Davidson was involved.
Ballard didn’t go into much detail, but did say that Davidson had been staying at a residence not far from Burkhardt’s.
The suspicion that Davidson was involved in Burkhardt’s disappearance was so strong that Indiana law enforcement authorities released an alert early that Saturday morning that contained a photo of both Davidson and of Mrs. Burkhardt, the latter taken from her driver’s license.
Shooting incident in Posey County
Law enforcement then reported that an incident in the city of Mt. Vernon, Indiana, involved Davidson.
At about 8 a.m. Saturday the 17th, a woman, Kiersten Young, was shot at through the windshield of a car fitting the description of Burkhardt’s, with a man behind the wheel.
Posey County authorities wasted no time issuing a warrant for Davidson’s arrest on a battery charge after talking with Young, who sustained only slight injuries from the incident. While it’s unclear how they pinpointed Davidson from Young’s description of events, one thing was clear: She had not seen Burkhardt in her own car.
At about 10 a.m., police in Pike County received a report that a young person in the little village of Winslow had found a cell phone that was determined to be Burkhardt’s.
Within a half hour, a resident of Spurgeon, Ind., also in Pike County, had reported to authorities a home invasion by a person fitting Davidson’s description.
Shortly after noon, a resident of neighboring Warrick County reported a residential burglary, then a little later, back in Pike County, there was another home break-in, then car theft, reported. The stolen vehicle was a white SUV.
Following a literal trail through a grassy area outside the last break-in in Pike County, deputies found the SUV in question, about four miles east of Pike Central High School
Davidson was sitting in the vehicle.
When he saw the deputies approaching, he got out; tucked into the waistband of his pants and visible, authorities told Disclosure, was a 9 mm handgun. This caused the deputies to draw their weapons, but Davidson, by this point, was done, and surrendered peacefully without a shot fired, Ballard advised.
Taken into custody
At about the same time as Davidson was discovered, so was Mrs. Burkhardt’s car: crashed into a tree in rural Pike County, and with two bullet holes in the windshield, appearing, said Ballard, to have been fired from the interior of the vehicle out.
At about 4 p.m., Pike County authorities took Davidson into custody and quickly transferred him to Gibson, where he was questioned and checked out at the local hospital.
While under questioning, Davidson admitted to shooting Burkhardt and dumping her body in a location in White County.
Since Posey County authorities had a warrant for his arrest, Gibson County transferred him there, and he was booked on the battery count.
He sat in Posey for awhile as White County, Illinois, authorities, began to search the area where Davidson, during his questioning at Gibson, stated he’d dumped Burkhardt’s body, this search getting underway at about 5:30 p.m.
Illinois State Police and Indiana State Police coordinated efforts to get aircraft over the location outside of Crossville where Davidson had said he had left the body, this according to Indiana State Police spokesperson Sgt. Todd Ringle on the evening of Saturday, August 17.
Bulldog Hill; charges filed
The body of Mrs. Burkhardt was located at about 7 p.m. at the edge of a cornfield on a rural White County road west of Crossville known as Bulldog Hill.
White County Coroner Chris Marsh determined that it appeared Mrs. Burkhardt had suffered four gunshot wounds, causing her death.
At 11:52 p.m. that Saturday night, White County authorities were able to arrange to have Davidson brought in from Posey County, just across the Wabash River from White, after he signed a waiver of extradition out of that county.
He was booked on a preliminary count of First Degree Murder, with bail set at $2 million ($200,000 cash bond.)
Davidson in court
When Monday the 19th came, Davidson, in handcuffs and shackles, was brought to the White County, Illinois, courtroom to hear the charges that state’s attorney Denton Aud had filed against him based on the information he had.
Judge Mark Shaner read the charges against Davidson: Four counts of First Degree Murder in the death of Burkhardt; Aggravated Battery with a Firearm; Aggravated Vehicular Hijacking and Aggavated Discharge of a Firearm.
Davidson answered routine questions posed by Shaner at the outset of the brief hearing, such as his name, date of birth and address (which he claimed as the White County Jail, after stating “I don’t have an address”); ultimately, he gave a last mailing address of Steven Street in Carmi, being so sluggish in his speech that Shaner mistook the word “Carmi” for
“Carlyle.”
Shaner began listing the charges against Davidson, who shifted impatiently in front of the judge, listening. But when Shaner got to the second count of murder, and was explaining the potential sentencing range as well as the enhanced sentencing for using a firearm “if it were established” that he had, Davidson couldn’t contain himself.
“All that was established, I mean…” he muttered, interrupting Shaner, who tried to continue.
Wouldn’t have it
But Davidson would have none of it.
“Shoot a real number out there for me!” he burst out. “I don’t care about 20 to 60, 60 to 50, I don’t care about none of that! You’re saying additional for firearm; everything’s been established, in what you just said! Why don’t you shoot a real number out there?”
“I’m going to give you a chance to ask questions when I get done,” Shaner told him calmly.
“None of what you said is making any sense to me,” Davidson insisted. “I’m pretty illiterate, bud. I finished eighth grade, high school. Break this shit down a little bit, please.”
“Okay,” Shaner cautioned. “You’ll need to watch your language, first of all. Secondly–”
“I’m in jail for murder, bud,” Davidson actually whined. “I don’t care about my voice! I don’t care what I’m saying. You need ta break it down for me a little bit!”
Order restored
Shaner called for a halt in the proceedings, turning Davidson back over to the sheriff to be taken back to the jail.
Shaner directed deputies to bring Davidson back later and “try this again.”
Davidson protested all the way out of the courtroom, spewing “You need to find another judge to break this shit down. I’m not coming back in front of this man again!”
Yet, he did.
Within about an hour, the proceeding was taken up again, and Davidson was a lot more subdued upon the second try.
Interesting history
While Davidson is no stranger to the inside of the White County courtroom at his young age, there exists something a little more insidious in his background that’s either very coincidental…or may be a ‘driving force’ in the background of his life in White County that spilled over into whatever prompted him to allegedly tip over the edge on the night of Friday, August 16, 2013.
Davidson’s uncle was Lester Niehaus, who, when Neihaus was 23 in 1973, murdered an elderly woman in her rural home in Mt. Vernon, Ind.
Detailed newspaper accounts from library archives in Posey County show that on December 24, 1973, Lilly Scudmore, 78, was beaten to death with a blunt instrument, as well as sexually assaulted.
Neihaus bit Scudmore’s breast so hard at one point that a perfect indentation of his teeth was left behind, which was attested to by an odontist during his trial much later.
Neihaus was able to avoid arrest for an entire year, largely in part, according to available court documents, because his family gave him an alibi for Christmas Eve, stating that he’d spent the entire evening with them, when in reality, from between 5 and 9 p.m. he’d been at Scudmore’s house, killing her.
Why Neihaus did this remains a mystery. He spent a large portion of his life in prison, and was paroled not long before he died, earlier this year, in Louisiana.
Why Davidson allegedly did what he did to Mrs. Burkhardt also remains a mystery; despite his violent criminal record, several family members have stated to Disclosure that they don’t understand what might have possessed Davidson to act as he’s alleged to have, and admitted to, in a police interview, act.
Davidson was scheduled for a preliminary hearing in White County on press deadline for this issue, Sept. 9. Check online and in the October issue for updates.