He Never Returned From Hunting Trip. Strange Texts Led Cops To His Son

Not long after Roger "Fred" Farmer left for a hunting trip in November 2019, his family started receiving texts from his phone, reassuring them that he would be home soon.

When he never returned, though, his relatives began to doubt that he'd actually sent the texts, which were full of punctuation and emoji that the 58-year-old Indianapolis man had never used before.

Now, more than a year later, Indianapolis police have arrested his 36-year-old son, Jeremy Farmer, in connection with his disappearance and probable death. Prosecutors charged him with murder on Wednesday. Although police have never found his father's body, they say Jeremy Farmer went on a spending spree with his credit cards after his disappearance and that witnesses claimed he'd boasted about shooting him in the head.

"I'm thankful that we have Jeremy behind bars, but my heart hurts for my mother, my heart hurts for my grandma, because it really ripped our family apart," Tricia Farmer, Fred Farmer's daughter, told WXIN on Wednesday.

Fred Farmer was a retired autoworker, and a creature of habit who took regular hunting trips with his dog and often enjoyed dollar beers at the American Legion Hall, according to his friends. But when he left for a hunting trip in November 2019, he oddly said he was going with people none of his friends or family recognized and left his dog at home, police said.

The family grew worried when he didn't return as quickly as usual. His daughter, Christina Farmer, recalled getting a message one morning that convinced her, for a short while, that her father was extending his trip in the Indiana countryside. The short message said, "Hey, I'm stuck in the woods, I'll be home in a week," she told WXIN last February. "It made us feel like he was OK."

But as more time passed, and her father failed to return home, the family noticed that the messages sounded odd. They used proper punctuation and even emoji, but Fred Farmer had been known for using his phone's talk-to-text feature and frequently sending long, run-on sentences.

"All of a sudden, it sunk in," Christina Farmer told WXIN last year. "We said, 'Those text messages don't really sound like dad.'"

Family members reported the father missing on Dec. 27, 2019, police said in a news release, about a month after he left for the trip.

In February 2020, dozens of Fred Farmer's friends and family members gathered at the local American Legion Hall, holding flickering candles and pleading for information to help find him. A news camera from WXIN panned across the room, stopping on his son, who sat at a table in the middle of the room, wide-eyed and silent.

Christina Farmer told the news station that she suspected someone close to Fred Farmer had played a role in his disappearance.

"Somebody knows my dad, and knows what happened," she said at the vigil. "I'm just waiting to find out who did something."

Over the next year, police focused their investigation on Jeremy Farmer and soon discovered some troubling details.

According to a police affidavit obtained by The Washington Post, Fred Farmer's cellphone was never in the woods. Instead, it remained in Wayne Township, on the west side of Indianapolis, until it shut off in January 2020.

Security footage also showed Jeremy Farmer visiting a local Lowes hardware store after his father went missing, police said, where he bought a 96-gallon trash can with wheels, germicidal bleach, latex gloves and extra-heavy plastic drop cloths. The items were allegedly paid for using Fred Farmer's debit card.

The bank also provided recordings to detectives that allegedly showed past instances where Jeremy Farmer had tried to steal money from his father. On one occasion, the father reported a credit card stolen and said he suspected his son had taken it, police said. In another instance, the son allegedly posed as his father to open a new account and seek a $200 cash advance.

After Fred Farmer disappeared, his credit cards continued to rack up charges at liquor stores, restaurants, and department stores in Carmel, Zionsville, Plainfield, and Indianapolis, police said. Someone spent more than $5,000 by mid-January, well after the father had gone missing. One card had been charged at Billy O'Neal's, an Indianapolis bar that Jeremy Farmer had visited. Police said the contact information on Fred Farmer's bank accounts had been changed to his son's cellphone and email address.

Then, police said two people told them Jeremy Farmer had boasted about shooting his father twice in the head and hiding his body inside a freezer.

When police interviewed Jeremy Farmer, he told them he'd last seen his father in early November 2019, just before he supposedly left on the hunting trip with his gear, including a crossbow and rifles, packed as if he was ready to leave. Police later found evidence that Jeremy Farmer had pawned a crossbow that belonged to his father in January 2020.

Police have not found Fred Farmer's body, but detectives believe he is dead, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department said in a news release Thursday. According to the affidavit, the father and son had repeatedly quarreled about money shortly before the disappearance.

"Roger and Jeremy did not have a stable relationship and Jeremy still blamed his dad for the way he was treated as a child growing up," a witness told police.

A year after she first appealed for information about her father, Christina Farmer said she still believes someone knows more than they have said about what happened. And she alleged that others were involved in his disappearance.

"There is somebody else out there who knows what happened to my dad," she told WXIN. "I know that he will be watching this, and I'm going to tell you and him: He will personally be held accountable as well for being involved."

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)