An Indiana mother was reportedly sentenced to 115 years in prison earlier this month for poisoning her ex-boyfriend's oatmeal and strangling him during a custody battle.
Following a seven-day trial, Heidi Marie Littlefield was found guilty of murder and two counts of conspiracy to commit murder in August by a jury in Hamilton County.
The Hamilton County prosecutor said Francis Kelley had been killed by asphyxiation last year due to manual strangulation or neck compression, with acute fentanyl intoxication listed as a contributing factor in his death. Kelley was found dead in his home.
The prosecutor noted that Littlefield's daughter Logan Marie Runyon, 23, had testified in "chilling detail" to the plans and actions taken to kill Kelley in January 2021.
Runyon is currently serving a 26-year prison sentence following a plea agreement through which she was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder.
FOX 59 reported that the 42-year-old Sheridan woman and Kelley shared a two-year-old child together and had been fighting over custody when Littlefield's murder plot began.
Carmel Police also identified and arrested Runyon's 30-year-old ex-boyfriend Robert James Walker in connection with the incident.
Walker, of Englewood, Ohio, reportedly told investigators that Littlefield put fentanyl in Kelley's miso soup in Oct. 2020 and that it was Littlefield's idea to put the drug in Kelley's oatmeal which he ate on the afternoon of Jan 15.
Kelley was found dead on his couch three days later, and FOX 59 said authorities also found a bag of cocaine under the couch – although there was no cocaine in his system and there was blunt force trauma to his head.
Walker also apparently said he wanted to tell police about Littlefield and Runyon's involvement in Kelley's death – with them strangling him with a necktie and smashing his head against the ground – and that the mother paid him $2,500 to hire someone to kill Kelley.
That's money he said he spent on drugs instead and Runyon corroborated the events, according to the IndyStar.
The paper reports that Littlefield maintains her innocence and said she intends to appeal, although her boyfriend at the time of the murder and father of a child she was pregnant with at the time of her arrest gave recorded conversations to police.
Walker was sentenced to 10 years in prison and signed a plea deal for one count of conspiracy to commit murder.
