Jacob Ind was fifteen years old when he and another teenager, Gabriel Adams, would murder his mother and stepfather. Jacob Ind who would testify that the murders were the result of years of abuse would attack his stepfather and mother who were shot, stabbed and sprayed with bear spray. Both Jacob Ind and Gabriel Adams would be sentenced to life in prison without parole. However after juvenile life sentences Jacob Ind would be resentenced to sixty years in prison. Gabriel Adams would take his own life while serving a life sentence. This teen killer would be paroled in 2020.
Jacob Ind 2021 Information
| Name:IND, JACOB P Age:43 Ethnicity:WHITE Gender:MALE Hair Color:BROWN Eye Color:BROWN Height:6′ 02″Weight:235 | DOC Number:84247 Est. Parole Eligibility Date:01/27/2017 Next Parole Hearing Date:This offender is scheduled on the Parole Board agenda for the month and year above. Please contact the facility case manager for the exact date. Est. Mandatory Release Date: Est. Sentence Discharge Date:12/07/2046 Current Facility Assignment: P2 PAROLE-DENVER WEST METRO REGION |
Jacob Ind More News
Weeks after receiving a new sentence in a 1992 double-murder that gripped the Pikes Peak region, Jacob Ind has a new shot at freedom — this time before a parole board.
Ind, who was 15 when he participated in a deadly attack on his mother and stepfather in the bedroom of their Woodland Park home, is due for a parole hearing in March, Colorado state prison records show.
Adrienne Jacobson, a spokeswoman, confirmed Ind’s parole-eligibility and upcoming hearing. The date and location will be announced after Ind is reassigned to a prison following his stay at the Teller County jail, where he was held during recent post-conviction proceedings.
The upcoming hearing marks a new chance for Ind to argue for leniency for his role in the Dec. 17, 1992 deaths of Pamela and Kermode Jordan, who were shot, stabbed and hit with bear spray. Ind, who claimed he lashed out after a lifetime of abuse, was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder at a closely watched trial in 1994. He was sentenced to two life terms without the chance of parole, all but assuring he would die in prison.
That changed in October 2017, when a judge determined that one of Ind’s attorneys, Shaun Kaufman, blocked him from taking the stand, violating his constitutional right to testify in his defense.
The judge set aside his sentence and ordered that he receive a new trial.
Instead of going before a new jury claiming self-defense, Ind pleaded guilty last November to two counts of second-degree murder. He was re-sentenced Jan. 1 to 60 years in prison.
At the time the new penalty was imposed, it wasn’t clear how long Ind would remain behind bars, given that he has already served 25 years and is eligible to receive credit for good behavior.
Now, an updated inmate record on the Colorado Department of Corrections website shows a mandatory release date of Aug. 17, 2047, and that Ind became parole-eligible effective August 2017.
If he receives the nod for parole on his first attempt, he’d be an exception, observers say.
“Statistically, the DOC is not letting people out on their first meeting with the board,” said Phil Dubois, a Colorado Springs defense attorney who isn’t directly affiliated with the case.
During fiscal year 2017, roughly 70 percent of petitioners for parole were denied and made to apply again later, according to a Colorado Division of Criminal Justice report that looked at more than 5,000 state parole board decisions during that period.
How the board looks at Ind could turn on the strength of his support, and whether there is a public backlash.
If prosecutors recommend against parole, Ind could face an uphill battle, Dubois said.
“The board is a political animal,” he said. “It will not do anything that it thinks will draw a bunch of public approbation.”
It could also be telling that the judge who re-sentenced Ind, Lin Billings Vela, could have picked a sentence that would lead to his immediate release. Instead, she chose a penalty near the top of the 32 to 72 years he faced under his guilty plea — a decision that could have influence on the thinking of Ind’s parole board.
Ind’s co-defendant, Gabriel Adams, then 18, was likewise convicted at trial and sentenced to life in prison. He committed suicide at a state psychiatric hospital in 2014.
Jacob Ind More News
Jacob Ind was sentenced to 60 years in prison after a murder case was refiled against him for the deaths of his mother and stepfather in 1992.
Ind was found guilty of slaying two family members 25 years ago and was granted a new a trial earlier this year, but he abandoned the trial and pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder in November.
Ind was 16 when he was arrested for the murders of his mother and stepfather in 1992. It was considered by many to be one of the most brutal murders in Southern Colorado’s history. Detailed accounts say that he and another teenage friend shot, stabbed, and sprayed bear mace on his parents.
Now 40, he was granted a new trial after evidence arose that his attorney violated his rights by keeping him from testifying.
Reports say Ind claims the motivation behind the killings stemmed from years of verbal, physical, and sexual abuse. Ind also says he never got to speak about that abuse on his own in court, which is why his new attorney’s requested the new trial.
He was originally found guilty and sentenced to life in prison without parole, despite the murders happening when he was a minor.
His current time served will apply to his new sentence.
Jacob Ind Other News
A man found guilty of slaying two family members as a teen 25 years ago, faced a Teller County judge Friday.
Judge Linda Billings-Vela sent the case of Jacob Ind, 40, back to juvenile court, because he was a juvenile when arrested for the murders of his mother and stepfather in 1992.
Billings-Vela also scheduled a three-day hearing to begin Aug. 27, during which she’ll decide whether the case should remain in juvenile court or district court.
Earlier this year, a judge granted Ind a new trial when it became known that his attorney at his murder trial violated his rights by keeping him from testifying. Ind was tried as an adult in the case.
Because Jacob Ind will now get a new trial, possibly this fall, his previous convictions no longer exist and the final verdict is in limbo.
However, Billings-Vela emphasized that Ind will remain in the Teller County Jail with no bond, saying there is enough probable cause to keep him behind bars.
She said the combination of time passed, circumstances, facts and changes in law since 1992 have created a unique situation for which there is no precedent.
“There is no previous case law to go by,” she said. “It’s my responsibility to follow the law and that’s what I’m trying to do.”
Billings-Vela said if she rules at the next hearing that Ind should have been tried as a juvenile, she will decide what his bond should be.
Ind, wearing restraints, was escorted in to and out of the courtroom by a deputy.
Jacob Ind admits: he killed his mother and stepfather when he was 15 years old, in 1992.
However, Ind, now 40, is getting another opportunity to tell his side of the story in court.
Jacob Ind appeared in a Teller County courtroom on Monday afternoon, where another hearing and arraignment were scheduled for him on July 6th.
The court proceedings finished up after just a few minutes, and nearly the entire time, Ind stared out the window behind him as he sat next to his attorneys. That behavior, likely, because Ind has not been a free person since he was 15 years old.
In December of 1992, Ind killed his mother, Pamela Jordan, and his stepfather, Kermode Jordan.
This is a crime he has admitted to, and to this day, Ind has never denied that he was responsible for the death of his parents in Woodland Park.
Detailed accounts say that he and another teenage friend shot, stabbed, and sprayed bear mace on his parents in the early morning hours of the day the two were murdered.
Both victims were killed in the brutal attack.
Many people throughout the last 25 years have referred to the crime as one of the most brutal murder cases in southern Colorado’s history. The case, now, in the spotlight again.
Ind is making his way through the court system again after he was granted a new trial last October.
A judge found that during Ind’s trial in 1994, Ind’s attorney kept him from the stand, depriving him of his constitutional rights. His attorney, Shaun Kaufman, spoke about the case a few years later.
“His demeanor at trial, due to the fact that he was an abuse victim, was flat,” defense attorney Shaun Kaufman told journalist Alan Prendergast in 1998. “He wouldn’t have been a fabulous advocate. He wouldn’t have cried for his parents. He wouldn’t have shown any remorse.”
In his first trial, Ind was convicted of first-degree murder, and though he was just 16 at the time, he was tried as an adult and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
However, reports say Ind claims the motivation behind the killings stemmed from years of verbal, physical, and sexual abuse. Ind also says he never got to speak about that abuse on his own in court, which is why his new attorney’s requested the new trial.
During the first trial, it was revealed that Ind felt he had no other option than to kill his parents or continue suffering.
As Ind left the courtroom on Monday, KRDO NewsChannel 13’s Kasey Kershner asked if he had any comment on the case.
“No ma’am, not right now,” he replied as he walked through the hallway of the Teller County courthouse.
Ind will be in court again on July 6th at 9:30. The official start date of his retrial is yet to be set.
Jacob Ind Videos
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Frequently Asked Questions
Jacob Ind Release
Jacob Ind is a free man — not that it always feels that way.
Six months after his release on parole in the 1992 killings of his parents in Woodland Park, Ind says the notoriety he gained as a “broken” 15-year-old has made it difficult to grasp the second chance he has longed for.
“Door after door slammed in (my) face,” he said, recounting faltering attempts to explain his criminal history to potential landlords and employers.
Now 43 and living alone in an apartment near Denver, Ind was released from Sterling Correctional Facility in northeast Colorado late last September — four years after a judge ruled that his former attorney had improperly kept him from testifying at his nationally watched 1994 trial in the deaths of Pamela and Kermode Jordan, his mother and stepfather.
Under her ruling, Denver District Judge Jane Tidball overturned his first-degree murder convictions and ordered that he receive a new trial. Instead, Ind pleaded guilty in November 2017 to reduced charges of second-degree murder. He was later resentenced to a 60-year term, leaving him eligible for parole after factoring in time served and credit for good behavior.
Ind’s release on parole was approved on his second attempt under his new sentence, setting up his Sept. 24 release.
After entering the prison system at 17 and growing up within its walls, Ind recalled the day of his release as “surreal,” partly because he was dressed in blue polo shirt and khaki pants — “real-world clothes” after decades in a jumpsuit.
A van shuttled him to the prison’s public parking lot, and he got out to greet his father, Charles Ind of Washington, and Jacob Ind’s wife of three years, Denise. The Northern Ireland native had started writing to Ind in prison after seeing a television news documentary about his trial, and romance took hold as she aided his efforts at getting released. Before Ind’s parole, their only in-person contact with one another came at his first parole hearing more than a year earlier.
“It was awesome. I got a big ol’ hug,” Ind said. “I got my stuff in the van and we took off and I was sitting in the back seat and got to hold her hand and I was not letting go.”
Ind’s two murder trials — one a mistrial — made national news, but there was no media attention as the trio left prison grounds.
Ind said a parole document cited “COVID considerations” among reasons for his parole approval, but that it didn’t elaborate.
“They were trying to reduce population and I think that helped,” Ind said. The Colorado Department of Corrections did not respond to a request for parole documents the newspaper lodged on March 1, and a department spokeswoman referred further questions to the parole board, whose members couldn’t be reached.
After his release, Ind’s wife, who lives in the United Kingdom, remained in Colorado under a 90-day visa to help him get his life started again. Ind said she ultimately rented the apartment where he now lives after the couple were rejected by multiple landlords who said they don’t rent to felons.
Ind works in retail, though he won’t say more for fear that attention could cost him his job.
Ind had to walk away from a well-paying job handling packages because late-night hours conflicted with his parole requirements. A grocery store that hired him despite his murder convictions later changed course and terminated him, after the store’s parent company learned of his past. His current employer didn’t do a background check, leaving him fearful of their reaction, should they find out.
For felons, getting by after prison is “extraordinarily difficult,” Ind said. “They generally lack credit history, they have no renter’s history, there’s hurdle after hurdle to go through, and a lot of places will not accept felons.
Ind argued at trial that he killed his mother and stepfather in self defense after a lifetime of sexual and physical abuse — an account that hasn’t changed, and that prosecutors still reject.
During his 2018 resentencing hearing, prosecutor Beth Reed said Ind made no such allegations to Woodland Park police after the murders, nor to the treatment professionals who evaluated him. She said the District Attorney’s Office agreed to plea talks partly at the urging of some of Ind’s relatives, whom she said wanted to move on, and partly in recognition of changing attitudes regarding sentences for youthful killers.
Reed emphasized that the two were attacked in bed and shot, stabbed and sprayed with bear mace by Ind and an accomplice — calling it “a premeditated, violent, disgusting choice.”
Ind plotted for three months how to commit the crimes, Reed told the judge, and followed through only after enlisting a troubled classmate, Gabriel “Major” Adams, 18, whom she said was likely mentally ill. Adams was convicted of first-degree murder at a separate trial and sentenced to life in prison. He committed suicide in prison in 2014.
Ind’s brother, Charles Ind, has corroborated his reports of physical and sexual abuse in the Ind household, and one of Pamela Jordan’s sisters described a cold, unloving atmosphere in the home and said she believed the abuse occurred.
Ind, who says he wanted only “to escape an impossible situation,” says he tried to confide in a teacher, but that his comments about his troubled home life didn’t trigger the attention he had hoped.
He scoffs at the suggestion he should have gone further in trying to report the abuse — saying he’d been “brainwashed” into believing his parents had “godlike powers of control.”
“It’s hard for a grown adult in a therapy session to talk about that stuff. Or to talk about that stuff to a loved one — let alone to a complete and total stranger as a child, while you’re still going through it,” he said. “It’s completely unreasonable to expect it.”
Ind said he should have been tried as a juvenile and received the treatment he needed.
During his years of incarceration, Ind received a paralegal certificate and earned a Ph.D in theology, his lawyer said, always believing he would one day be released. His story was profiled in a 2007 PBS Frontline documentary about people serving life sentences for crimes committed as children.
A 2012 Supreme Court Case, Miller vs. Alabama, found that life sentences for children without the possibility of parole violated the constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. The ruling guaranteed Ind a shot at parole, though it was Tidball’s 2017 finding of ineffective assistance of counsel that overturned his 1994 convictions and hastened his release.
Ind was among 48 so-called “juvenile lifers” in Colorado who suddenly had a path to release. He said he doesn’t like being associated with the others.
“I always had a problem having my case lumped in with the rest of the juvenile lifers,” he said. “I didn’t go kill somebody because I wanted the light to go out in their eyes. I wasn’t a criminal scum bag going around committing criminal acts and ended up killing someone along the way. I literally was defending myself.”
If Ind lost a loved one to violence, it wouldn’t matter if the person who did it “was 15 or 26,” he said.
“The effect on my life is the same and I would still want the other person not to get out,” Ind said, describing as “monsters” some of the other inmates serving life terms in Colorado for crimes they committed as juveniles.
Before his resentencing, Ind tried to fire his court-appointed attorney, Nicole Mooney of Denver, arguing, in part, that she was more committed to what Ind called the “cause” of sentencing reform, and that she failed to represent his case on its merits.
Ind said he pleaded guilty in part because he had no confidence that Mooney and her co-counsel, Michael Juba of Denver, would “present my case correctly.”
“I’m not their poster child,” Ind said. “I’m not their example.”
A judge rejected Ind’s request, and found he was partly to blame for some of the miscommunication he had complained about.
Juba and Mooney declined to respond to Ind’s comments, citing attorney-client privilege.
“We were both happy to hear that Mr. Ind was released on parole and we wish him the best in the future,” Juba said in a joint statement.
With his wife again living abroad, Ind says he’s consumed with short-term goals — finding a better paying job, or buying a house instead of renting.
His “super long-term goal,” he says, is to move to the United Kingdom.
“That’s where my wife’s family is and where her kid’s family is,” he said. “I would love to get a fresh start there where people don’t know me as my crime and just know me as Denise’s husband. It’s a beautiful country. I just need a good place to get a fresh start.”
Ind’s sentence discharge date is in November 2046, prison records show, and immigration law experts say that his effort to gain lawful entry into the UK is likely to face headwinds.
“It’s going to be an uphill battle,” said Stephanie Izaguirre, an immigration lawyer in Colorado Springs. “There’s no guarantee that you’re going to succeed.”
No stranger to long odds, Ind said he will petition to have his convictions treated as juvenile offenses, recognizing that his fight isn’t over.
“By no means is it a guarantee for me.”
Jacob Ind FAQ
Jacob Ind 2021
Jacob Ind was paroled from prison in 2020