Franklin

A conversation is too strong of a word, but it's kind of, uh, the people in this case are maybe reacting to things that happened in Delphi, and they say, "Oh, people in Delphi are getting criticized for this or this.

Let's really try to avoid this, that." And so the, the sheriff of, uh, Johnson County, this is the county that includes Franklin, Indiana, which is where this crime, uh, occurred.

That is Duane Burgess.

He wrote, uh, a letter to the sheriff of Brown County in which he said, "Hey, I wonder if you could take Michael Jerome James and maybe not isolate him, maybe let him be exposed to other prisoners, because maybe it's not such a big story there." The sheriff of Brown County said, "Hey, that sounds good to us." And so Sheriff Burgess, uh, wrote the judge saying basically, "I, I wanna move him.

Uh, a lot of wooded areas.

It's, it's an area where sometimes it can be difficult to get, like, phone reception.

It's not terribly far from, uh, Franklin.

I'm guessing probably less than an hour away.

Lastly, it includes graphic descriptions of pornography and sexual matters involving adults.

Thirty-five-year-old Michael Jerome James, the defendant accused of slaughtering Blake and China Dickas in their Franklin, Indiana home back when he was 14, went through an extremely troubled childhood, dabbled in pornography, and was ultimately connected to the crime in part through fingerprint evidence.

For 20 years, investigators and members of the public in Franklin, Indiana have searched for answers in the brutal July 24th, 2006 murders of Blake and China Dickas.

On October 2nd, 2026, Michael Jerome James was arrested for those killings.

Of course, that brings up a new question.

So what they do is, on April 26th, after there's been this revoking of the plea agreement, he ends up getting indigent counsel appointed from the firm Haas, Vandever, and Norris.

So it's like they go back to them.

At this point, interestingly enough, we know that Michael Jerome James was raised in Franklin, Indiana.

He is the defendant in the Dickes murders trial.

He is, of course, accused of murdering Blake and China Dickes in their Franklin, Indiana home on July 24th, 2006.

This is a case that has gone unsolved for many years, and only just recently have we learned, okay, someone is being charged with this, someone has been arrested, and now the prosecution is looking to convict this man over this horrific case.

Kevin and I traveled down to Franklin, Indiana today to go to the Johnson County Courthouse, Franklin being the seat of Johnson County, and to attend the initial hearing in the case.

So we're gonna talk all about that today, right?

Yes, let's get to it.

You kinda got the sense that they're showing up to show their support for this case, to show their support for the families.

Kind of a, you know, a showing of support is what I read that as.

The man arrested is named Michael Jerome James, and he was taken into custody.

Today, I thought instead of focusing on him and instead of focusing on the news around that, why don't we do a deep dive into the murders themselves? Why don't we take an opportunity in this first episode to get to know these two victims, their lives, the timeline of what happened? And the overall timeline of the investigation and how the community in Franklin, Indiana, where this happened, has coped all these years.

Because this has just been a shattering sort of crime that I think has really haunted a lot of people.

This is going to be our first episode delving deep into this case.

But we plan to do more.

And I would just say this.

If any of you out there are from Franklin, Indiana, or live in Franklin, Indiana now, or live in Johnson County, we would love to hear from you.

We're striving to make connections in that community in order to make sure our reporting is as good and as accurate as possible.