In light of Nelson Chipman’s press conference, I wanted to take a moment to outline the facts as I understand them in the dismissed bribery charges against my father, Sheriff Aaron Rovenstine.
In December 2014, Kevin Bronson was arrested by the Warsaw Police Department and incarcerated in the Kosciusko County Jail. WPD continued to investigate Bronson after his incarceration, believing that he and his spiritual mentor, Professor Mark Soto, were intimidating individuals outside of the jail to raise money to achieve the far-fetched goal of a movie about Bronson’s life and purported conversion to Christianity. As part of their investigation, they asked my dad for cooperation in two areas:
First, they wanted him to refuse to allow Bronson to contact his civil attorney, David Baker, over any unrecorded telephone line. Baker had been working with Bronson to prepare various contracts and legal documents for his improbable “movie deal.” WPD considered Baker one of the victims of Bronson’s intimidation, and Baker was cooperating with them in the investigation into his client. They wanted Dad to force Bronson to make any calls to Baker on jail’s pay phones, which were monitored by Securis, so that they could capture audio recordings the conversations.
Secondly, they wanted Dad to shut down all visits between Bronson and Soto, as well as between Bronson and his then pastor, John Lowe. The State has been saying that the request was to shut down “unrecorded” visits, but that’s disingenuous on their part. The Kosciusko County Jail did not have the capability of recording any visits at the time in question. They wanted him to shut down visits entirely.
Initially, my dad agreed to these requests, but only briefly. He was uncomfortable with the ethics of the situation and consulted with Howard Williams, the Indiana Sheriff’s Association attorney whom he had hired as KCSD’s legal deputy. Williams, who was the primary drafter of the Indiana Jail Standards, advised that a sheriff should under no circumstances force an inmate to speak with his attorney – criminal or civil – on a recorded line. He also advised that Dad would be opening the county to a potential lawsuit by failing to maintain a consistent practice regarding visitations. Shutting down visitations just because someone has been deemed “under investigation” without any formal charges, would mean shutting down visitations for most every inmate in the jail – an infeasible and likely illegal proposition if applied consistently.
My dad explained these concerns to Warsaw Police Chief Scott Whitaker and Detective Paul Heaton. But Whitaker insisted that attorney Williams was ill-informed, and that Dad’s refusal to follow WPD’s directives was a sign of disrespect. He made clear that such disrespect would have consequences: If this is how it’s going to roll, he told Dad, then you created this monster, and if anything comes of our investigation, it’s on you.
Dad continued to listen to his attorney. WPD ultimately concluded that Dad’s decision-making in the jail was motivated not by his attorney’s legal advice but by a desire to be named as a beneficiary on a penniless conman’s will. He was indicted on that basis and the case was set for trial.
Williams remained steadfast in his advice and was infuriated by the indictment. He was set to appear as the star witness on behalf of the defense, where he would have testified both to his role in Dad’s decision-making and as an expert on the Indiana Jail Standards to rebut the more generalized “special privileges” accusations. He passed away on March 2, 2017, from complications following surgery a month before the trial was set to begin. He was an irreplaceable witness.
Nelson Chipman knows all of this, and he also knows that the general public doesn’t. His press conference struck me as a perfidious and cynical attempt to repair his public image after some negative press.
