Two cases he spent years investigating but was never able to solve are still on his mind, even after his retirement as an investigator.
For Stoney Vann, the 1978 abduction and murders of four teens from a restaurant in Speedway, whose bodies were found in a field off Stones Crossing Road, stands out to him still.
“One of my biggest regrets as an officer and investigator was not being able to bring justice to the victims of that case,” Vann said.
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The other is the missing person case of Lola Katherine Fry from Greenwood, who was last seen driving her car to Fort Wayne in 1993 and was never seen again.
“Those are two of the big cases I worked in my career, and I regret I wasn’t able to have a conclusion for the victims and their families,” Vann said.
Vann worked both cases as an Indiana State Police investigator until his retirement earlier this year. Vann’s retirement came after a 35-year career in law enforcement.
But he isn’t ready to be done. He is now running for the Republican nomination for Johnson County Sheriff, saying he wants to give voters another option and a fresh perspective to the issues the county has been facing for years.
Vann views his role in law enforcement as being a protector, someone who stands up to represent law and order.
“I have a responsibility to society that I will be that person, I will be that guy, that stands up and says there is right and wrong, and I will be that person to be there when someone is breaking the law, being victimized,” Vann said.
Vann started his career in law enforcement early, getting involved in the police explorer program while he was still in high school. He learned from the officers who mentored him, and did well, earning the Rookie of the Year award. When he graduated, he knew that was the career for him.
But coming from a family with divorced parents and being raised by a single mother, going to college wasn’t an option financially.
“A lot was not going to be provided to me, I was going to have to go out and get it,” Vann said.
So Vann decided to join the U.S. Army as a military police officer, where he could get work experience and also get money for college. He spent six years in the Army, including two years in Augsberg, Germany in the 1980s, when the wall still divided East and West Germany. He patrolled a military base in Virginia, writing traffic tickets, responding to accidents and investigating any criminal acts on base.
His time spent in Germany is still memorable to him because being homesick made him value his home country that much more, Vann said.
“You miss America, you miss your language, where you have the ease of understanding everything someone says because it’s English, and you can read every sign,” Vann said.
His military service is an experience he highly values, and that helped prepare him for a career in law enforcement, he said. He also was able to earn a bachelor’s degree in emergency and disaster management from the University of Indianapolis, he said
After his discharge from the Army, Vann got a job with Indiana State Police as a patrolman, spending much of his time patrolling the Indianapolis area. He was promoted to sergeant and then supervised other officers.
After 10 years on the road, Vann was assigned to criminal investigations, which was where he spent the last 19 years of his career, he said. In 2002, he was named the commander of investigations for the Indiana State Police Indianapolis post, which includes Johnson County and six other counties.
During those nearly two decades in investigations, Vann worked every kind of case, from murder to robbery to petty theft, he said.
So many of those cases stick out in his mind, often because of the biggest struggle an investigator faces: thinking you know who is responsible, but not having the evidence to ask for charges to be filed, he said.
“What you know and what you can prove are two different things,” Vann said.
All of those experiences make Vann right for the job as sheriff, he said.
Vann has lived in Johnson County since 2010, and has spent months campaigning and visiting multiple areas of the community. Many of the issues the county faces are the same as they were eight years ago, including crime moving south from Indianapolis, drugs and jail overcrowding, he said.
He sees himself as another option for voters and a candidate who can offer a different perspective, he said.
“I think we can do better than the status quo,” Vann said.
“I think the time is now for new ideas and a fresh perspective to address the challenges we face.”
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Name: William Stoney Vann
Party: Republican
Residence: Greenwood
Family: Wife Veneda and five children
Occupation: Retired in February after 29 years as a trooper with the Indiana State Police
Educational background: Graduate of Emmerich Manuel High School and University of Indianapolis
Political experience: None
Memberships: Indiana State Police Alliance Pioneers, Indiana Sheriff’s Association, American Legion Post 252, FBI National Academy
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