Geneva, IN – A nearly 50-year-old murder mystery involving a World War I veteran from rural Indiana has officially been solved, authorities confirmed this week.
According to the Indiana State Police, Everett Armstrong, 84, was found fatally shot in his Geneva-area mobile home on August 19, 1977. A fuel oil delivery driver discovered Armstrong’s body on CR 300 West, just north of State Road 116 in Adams County. His death was ruled a homicide, but despite early leads and witness statements, no arrests led to a conviction.
The case briefly saw renewed attention in 1981 when three individuals were arrested, though charges were dropped after six months due to a lack of evidence. The case then went cold until 2013, when the Indiana State Police Cold Case Unit reopened the investigation.
According to the investigation, four witnesses reported that James A. McBride II confessed to the murder within 24 hours of the incident and even displayed the weapon used. McBride allegedly shared crime scene details that had never been publicly released, further corroborated by a contemporaneous Bluffton Banner article dated August 20, 1977.
James McBride II, born in 1954 in Decatur, Indiana, died in June 2024. In 2025, Cold Case investigators presented new evidence to Adams County Prosecutor Jeremy Brown, who concluded that overwhelming circumstantial evidence confirmed McBride as the killer. Brown stated that if McBride were still alive, he would have been formally charged with Armstrong’s murder.
The 48-year investigation was a joint effort involving the Indiana State Police, the Adams County Sheriff’s Department, the County Coroner’s Office, and the Prosecutor’s Office.
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