What led to guilty verdict for Elizabeth Fox-Doerr? Likely, a gun and a phone call.

EVANSVILLE — The jurors who found Elizabeth Fox-Doerr guilty of murder and conspiracy to commit murder this week for the 2019 killing of her husband did so after a lengthy and complex criminal trial that saw prosecutors successfully weave together disparate pieces of evidence and witness testimony to paint a picture of a deadly murder plot.

Now, Fox-Doerr, 52, will be sentenced by Vanderburgh County Superior Court Judge Robert Pigman on June 17. According to Indiana’s sentencing guidelines, Pigman could sentence Fox-Doerr to serve between 45 and 65 years in a state prison.

Five years after Fox-Doerr dialed 911 to report that she had found her husband, longtime city firefighter Robert F. Doerr II, 51, bleeding from gunshot wounds in their driveway, she is now convicted for his murder. It’s been a long time coming for Doerr’s family, who cried and hugged as Pigman read the jury’s verdict Tuesday evening.

Doerr served as an Evansville firefighter for 28 years, and his murder devastated the tight-knit department.

"He wore his badge with pride and dignity," former Fire Chief Mike Connelly said at Doerr's funeral. "His legacy of integrity is what the foundation of this department is built upon."

One day after Doerr's funeral, Evansville police arrested Fox-Doerr after she was found to have deleted an incoming phone call on the night of the killing — a fact she hid from the police. Prosecutors later dismissed the charges Fox-Doerr faced for this deleted phone call at the request of the Evansville Police Department, but the investigation into Fox-Doerr did not cease.

By mid-2022, the EPD had arrested Fox-Doerr a second time for alleged perjury, and in August of that year, prosecutors charged her with murder and conspiracy to commit murder for Doerr's killing.

Detectives never accused Fox-Doerr of pulling the trigger herself. The Evansville Police Department, and later prosecutors, maintained that Fox-Doerr tasked her lover, Larry Richmond Sr., 46, with carrying out the fatal shooting on her behalf.

Richmond Sr., who is scheduled to stand trial in August, was already a convicted murderer at the time he is alleged to have shot and killed Doerr. He was sentenced to a 45-year stint in prison after he shot and killed a 70-year-old man in 1996. Richmond Sr. was released from prison less than one year before Doerr was killed.

Larry Richmond Sr. crossed paths with Fox-Doerr after his release because he was in a relationship with Fox-Doerr's sister, according to the police.

Vanderburgh County Prosecutor Diana Moers, who led the state’s case alongside Special Deputy Prosecutor Stan Levco, told jurors that Fox-Doerr had a financial motive to want her husband dead: namely, that she could receive 75% of Doerr’s pension for life, plus a $12,000 death benefit.

Fox-Doerr never got that money or the pension, Moers said, but Fox-Doerr had inquired about it after her husband’s murder.

That last detail − that Fox-Doerr never actually got the money − symbolizes the circumstantial case she fought against with help from experienced trial attorney Mark Phillips and Phillips' son, Robert Phillips. The court appointed the pair to represent Fox-Doerr as special public defenders after Fox-Doerr’s previous attorney, William Gooden, died last year.

Fox-Doerr’s conviction wasn't a sure bet when a jury was seated in the case on May 6. The police never recovered the murder weapon; Richmond Sr. has not yet stood trial or been found guilty of killing Doerr, and, despite a years-long investigation, detectives never uncovered an explicit agreement − be it verbal or written − between Fox-Doerr and Richmond Sr. regarding a murder.

Due to pretrial disputes over the admissibility of certain evidence, including a reported jailhouse confession by Richmond Sr., jurors did not get to review all of the information gleaned by investigators during Fox-Doerr's week-long trial.

“You will hear no evidence of ‘Becky’ (Fox-Doerr) talking about getting a gun,” Phillips told jurors during his opening argument. “You’ll hear no evidence about a conversation with anyone that’s plotting her husband’s death. That evidence does not exist.”

But prosecutors maintained that such an explicit agreement was not necessary to prove Fox-Doerr’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and after a week-long trial, jurors agreed. Phillips told reporters that Fox-Doerr may appeal her conviction after sentencing.

The shooting death of Robert Doerr II

At 7:06 p.m. on Feb. 26, 2019, Evansville police were dispatched to the home Fox-Doerr shared with her husband at 2728 Oakley Street after multiple 911 callers, including Fox-Doerr, reported hearing gunfire.

“My husband just got shot!” an exasperated Fox-Doerr is heard telling a dispatcher during that 911 call. “All I saw was my husband’s headlights pull into the driveway, and then I heard a bunch of popping… All I see is blood on the ground.”

Fox-Doerr’s arrest affidavit states that none of the 911 callers “reported hearing anything before or after the shots” were fired, nor did they see any vehicles fleeing the scene.

At trial, prosecutors played police body-camera footage depicting the initial response to the shooting. Officers can be seen rendering aid to Doerr, who was lying in a pool of blood. Several of the responding firefighters could be heard shouting in despair as they realized the victim was Doerr, their longtime colleague.

CPR and other measures were not enough to save Doerr’s life. The Vanderburgh County Coroner’s Office pronounced him dead at the scene.

There were clues from the start, but piecing them together into a case the state could prosecute took time.

Notably, crime scene detectives did not recover spent shell casings at the scene, indicating the murder weapon could have been a revolver. Revolvers retain spent shell casings in a rotating cylinder that holds ammunition.

Photographs of the crime scene, along with a ballistic analysis, indicated the killer had shot Doerr twice in the back just as Doerr exited his truck after he returned home from an extra shift at an Evansville firehouse. He was then struck in the “shoulder/neck area,” the police said, as he tried desperately to take cover behind his truck.

An autopsy would also show that Doerr had been hit with a “mixture of ammunition,” detectives wrote in an affidavit, including a .45 caliber pistol round and “four buckshot rounds.” This would prove important later and lead police down a path that would crack the case wide open.

Prosecutors said Fox-Doerr’s behavior in the immediate aftermath of the shooting was suspicious. Moers told jurors that Fox-Doerr “didn’t ask questions” because Fox-Doerr already knew who had killed her husband. But if Fox-Doerr did know, she didn’t tell detectives.

Blake Keen, an investigator with the EPD, promptly seized Fox-Doerr’s cell phone and obtained search warrants to extract the contents of its hard drive and to gather Fox-Doerr’s official cell phone toll records from her carrier, Sprint.

Evansville police have access to advanced mobile device forensic tools that can compile detailed reports showing a cell phone’s call history, sensor data, and other information. These reports would play a critical role in the state’s successful attempt to prove a conspiracy during Fox-Doerr’s trial.

A search of the 2728 Oakely Street home after the shooting turned up a letter Doerr had written to his wife and stowed in a dresser drawer of the master bedroom, according to the police. That letter “describes infidelity,” Fox-Doerr’s arrest affidavit states.

Prosecutors later argued that the alleged infidelity outlined in that letter was in reference to Richmond Sr., who at the time had been in a romantic relationship with Fox-Doerr’s sister, Amanda Filmore.

Filmore testified as a state witness at trial and has not been charged in connection with Doerr’s killing.

The gun and the deleted phone call

The mixture of ammunition recovered from Doerr’s body was unusual. The buckshot was of a small gauge, while the pistol ammunition was .45 caliber. Firearms manufacturer Taurus sells a revolver it calls the “Judge,” which can fire both ammo types.

After Doerr’s autopsy, now-retired FBI Task Force Officer Jeff Hands searched the EPD’s record management system for any documents detailing reports of stolen Taurus Judge revolvers, and he got a hit.

“A Taurus Judge (.45 caliber) was stolen between July 2, 2018, and September 19, 2018, from River City Pawn Shop,” the police wrote in an affidavit. “This River City Pawn Shop is in close vicinity (to) 2728 Oakley Street.”

In March 2019, investigators received the data from Fox-Doerr’s smartphone and the cell phone toll records from Sprint. By comparing the call history from both sources, detectives hoped to ascertain the accuracy of Fox-Doerr's account of who she spoke to on the day of the killing.

If a call appeared in Sprint's records, but not on Fox-Doerr's phone, that would indicate that Fox-Doerr had deleted a call from her phone. When detectives scoured through the Sprint records, they noticed that an Evansville area-code phone number had called Fox-Doerr not long before the murder. That number did not appear on Fox-Doerr's smartphone hard drive.

“Investigators searched (the incoming phone number) in EPD’s record management system,” Fox-Doerr’s arrest affidavit states. “The phone returned to Larry Ali Richmond Sr.”

Knowing that Fox-Doerr had likely deleted an incoming phone call from Richmond Sr., a convicted murderer, on the night of the killing the investigation picked up speed. The EPD conducted surveillance on Fox-Doerr, Filmore, Richmond Sr., and Richmond Sr.'s son, Larry Richmond Jr. All were picked up by officers and taken downtown for questioning.

During a police interview, Richmond Jr. admitted that he had stolen the Taurus Judge that was previously reported missing from River City Pawn Shop, where he had worked at the time of the theft. An analysis of Richmond Jr.'s cell phone turned up a photograph of the silver Taurus revolver and text messages between himself and Richmond Sr. about making a "trade."

Those text messages were dated Feb. 24, 2019, just two days before Doerr was killed.

During a search of a Sheffield Drive home linked to Richmond Sr., detectives located a "buried tote" in the backyard that "contained multiple guns with obliterated serial numbers." The Taurus Judge was not found in the buried weapon stash, but both Richmond Sr. and Richmond Jr. were convicted in federal court for firearms offenses after this discovery.

At Fox-Doerr's trial, Richmond Jr. testified on behalf of the state, telling jurors that he gave his father the Taurus Judge revolver and that he had personally witnessed his father kissing Fox-Doerr several months before Doerr's murder.

While Richmond Jr.'s testimony did speak to the alleged relationship between Fox-Doerr and Richmond Sr., it did little to bolster the state's claims that the pair had carried out an explicit plan to kill Doerr. That's where the deleted phone call − and Fox-Doerr's own statements to the police − came in.

While being interviewed in March 2019, detectives asked Fox-Doerr to go back over who she had spoken to on the day of Doerr's murder, knowing full well that she had likely deleted an incoming phone call from Richmond Sr.

Prosecutors played footage of the hours-long interview for jurors during Fox-Doerr's trial. In it, Fox-Doerr is heard repeatedly telling detectives that she could not think of any phone calls that she had failed to mention to police. Then, investigators confronted her about the deleted call, and Fox-Doerr ultimately admitted that Richmond Sr. had called her just before the murder, and that they spoke for about five minutes.

"(You said) nothing about any calling until we pulled it out of you," a detective told Fox-Doerr.

"I didn't tell anybody to hurt my husband!" Fox-Doerr shouted in reply, according to the redacted footage played at trial. She went on to claim that Richmond Sr. had called to ask what she and Doerr planned to do that weekend and to inquire about setting up a flood light in the backyard.

Fox-Doerr also said she had told Richmond Sr. that Doerr would soon return home from his extra shift. Prosecutors argued that without that information, Richmond Sr. could not have known when Doerr would pull into the driveway since this extra shift meant Doerr would return home at an abnormal time.

During the police interview, Fox-Doerr repeatedly denied ever having discussed a murder plot with Richmond Sr., but she also made statements that appeared to express regret - or guilt - about what happened just minutes after she spoke to him. She also admitted that she had lied to investigators about the call when she was first confronted because she didn't want them to think she was "having an affair."

"It makes it look like I did it when I didn't," Fox-Doerr later told detectives.

While Fox-Doerr's trial featured lengthy presentations of crime scene photographs, ballistics evidence, and cell phone data, the deleted call played an important role for both sides. Prosecutors argued the call, and Fox-Doerr's statements to the police about that call, constituted an overt act in furtherance of a murder conspiracy.

“If that’s all we had, that would be more than enough," Levco said during the state's closing argument. "And that's not all we have."

Fox-Doerr's lawyers argued that prosecutors had misrepresented Fox-Doerr's statements to investigators and told jurors that a deleted phone call did little to prove Fox-Doerr had tasked an alleged lover with killing her husband.

“The State of Indiana, through its prosecutor, wants you to speculate," Phillips told jurors during his closing argument.

In the end, the 12 jurors deliberated for about four hours before they found Fox-Doerr guilty of aiding, inducing or causing murder and conspiracy to commit murder, both of which are Level 1 felonies.

A potential appeal for Elizabeth Fox-Doerr

Speaking to reporters outside of Vanderburgh County Superior Court, where Fox-Doerr stood trial, Phillips told reporters that Fox-Doerr had options to fight the jury's decision.

"I'm sort of stunned," Phillips said of the verdict. "There's just no possible way that you could take what you heard in this trial and find that there was a deliberate agreement such that a conspiracy transpired."

Phillips went on to say that after Fox-Doerr's sentencing, he intended to ask the court to appoint his law firm to represent Fox-Doerr in an appeal.

But for Doerr's family, Fox-Doerr's conviction is a taste of justice that had eluded them for more than five years.

"Finally, justice has been served,” said Nathanial Guthrie, Fox-Doerr’s oldest son and Doerr's stepson. “Dad can finally, finally rest … He can finally sleep; he can finally be put to rest.”

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Elizabeth Fox-Doerr found guilty in murder of husband Robert Doerr II