wfn.org | Indianapolis Church Struggles with Fear, Seeks Hope as Murders

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

8-January-1997 
 
 
97015  Indianapolis Church Struggles with Fear, Seeks Hope 
              as Murders of Pastor, Wife Go Unsolved 
 
 
                          by Alexa Smith 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky.--Despite an intense police investigation into the grisly 
murders of its pastor and his spouse, Indianapolis' Northminster 
Presbyterian Church kept its full Christmas worship schedule and is 
organizing its care of the congregation for what the next few months may 
bring. 
 
     Much of that care has to do with the fear that follows the Dec. 16 
bludgeoning of the 1,700-member congregation's pastor, C. Frederick 
Mathias, and his wife, Cleta, in their home.  The Mathiases' bodies were 
found beside their Christmas tree, bound with ropes and beaten.  An ax was 
buried in Fred Mathias' head.  Police believe the couple was attacked 
shortly after arriving home from a community Advent service.  Their 
attacker or attackers then set the house on fire. Police investigators have 
not yet been able to reassure church members that the killings were random. 
 
     "We're working through this ... but we know it's going to take a long 
time," said the Rev.  Donald R. Durrett, Northminster's associate pastor, 
who acknowledges that the church's staff is still frightened by the 
savageness of the attack and by newspaper speculation that the Mathiases' 
assailant or assailants may not have been strangers. 
 
     To address the fears of both staff and congregants, some of whom live 
in the upper-middle-class neighborhood where the murders occurred, the 
church is setting up both information and counseling services and urging 
people to be more cautious as they go about their lives and ministries. 
 
     According to Whitewater Valley Presbytery executive the Rev. Jill 
Hudson, weekly status reports on the police investigation will be held 
after each Sunday worship.  And a congregational care team has been 
organized to plan adult education and support groups during the next few 
months. 
 
     Hudson was called to the murder scene at 1:45 a.m. Dec. 17, a few 
hours after the Mathiases' bodies were discovered.  Northminster's elders 
met at 5 o'clock the same day to begin planning care of the congregation 
and how to deal with media.  "I've seen here the amazing power of God to 
bring people together for care, love and support in ways that I've rarely 
seen in 20 years of ministry," Hudson told the Presbyterian News Service.  
 
     Northminster held a prayer service the night after the murders and a 
memorial service days later. Ministers throughout the presbytery took turns 
meeting with distressed parishioners at the church after news of the 
murders broke. 
 
     "The church is still a very open place," said Mark Moore, an attorney 
who is also a trustee at Northminster, though he acknowledged that 
additional police patrols and extra caution were utilized around the 
building in the days after the murders.  
 
     "The question is, what can we do practically ... and still maintain 
the church as we want it to be -- open and inviting?" Moore added. "There's 
still caution, especially on the part of staff, as there ought to be.  But 
until we really have a better handle on what's happened, that's natural and 
reasonable." 
 
     Investigator Emil Daggy of the Marion County Sheriff's Department told 
the Presbyterian News Service that investigators have no suspects yet but 
are conducting numerous interviews -- of former employees as well as 
individuals with records of harassing clergy.  "It's a slow process," he 
said, "but we're doing it as quickly as we can." 
 
     Daggy said the Sheriff's Department is waiting for laboratory results 
from bloodwork and from the accelerant used to start the fire in the 
upstairs hall of the Mathiases' home that brought firefighters there on the 
night of Dec. 16. 
 
     "We have hope in many different directions," said Durrett about the 
church's life and its decision to go on with Northminster's traditional 
three Christmas Eve services.  "We hope that God in his mystery will reveal 
his grace to us -- that there will be healing and that there will be some 
good come out of this somehow.  We hope people will rally around the church 
and the church will be strong. 
 
     "And we hope there will be closure ... that those who did this violent 
act will be found and brought to justice." 
 
     The Rev. Robert Hunter, director of the Family Life Center at Second 
Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, preached all three of Northminster's 
Christmas Eve services, using as texts Isaiah 60:1-5 and John 1:1-14.  "The 
good news for us in this wonderful story is that God entered the darkness 
on purpose ... not because God loved darkness, but to shine the light of 
love where it was most desperately needed," Hunter said, proclaiming that 
Jesus came "because of the darkness ... into the darkness ... 
transform[ing] the darkness." 
 
     "The message of Christmas is this," Hunter said in his serman, raising 
the question "Where is God?" in the midst of overwhelming tragedy like the 
deaths of the Mathiases.  "Right there ... in the darkness holding you, 
weeping with you and working already to bring healing and hope and joy," he 
said, just as God was "right there with" the Mathiases that Sunday night 
 ... "holding them, embracing them and ushering them into the nearer 
presence of God." 
 
     Hunter told the Presbyterian News Service that the lack of closure 
around the case is what is so hard to accept psychologically.  "There's no 
suspect.  No motive.  No arrest made to this point ... and the longer that 
goes on, it increases the dismay and fearfulness.  Any violent death close 
to us raises issues:  How safe are we?' ...  If good people like Fred and 
Cleta can be subjected to this kind of horrifying, violent murder, what can 
we count on?'" 
 
     But Northminster is coping, he added.  "The congregation is really 
turning to one another in a caring way. ... It is an amazing and beautiful 
thing to see how in the midst of anguish, grief and outrage ... [they] care 
for one another." 
 
     Moore said the outpouring of support from across the denomination and 
from other denominations has helped.  He said the cards, letters and 
telegrams overflow a basket on the Communion table in the church's chapel.  

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