UPDATE (4/28/2023): Jeremy Farmer was sentenced to 57 years in prison.

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INDIANAPOLIS — An Indianapolis man has been found guilty of murdering his father, hiding the body in a Brownsburg storage unit and bragging about it to his family.

Jeremy Farmer, 39, was found guilty of murder Wednesday in Marion Superior Court. The charge stems from the death of Jeremy’s father, an Indianapolis man named Roger Farmer who was reported missing in Dec. 2019 and found dead inside a storage facility nearly 18 months later.

Court documents filed against Jeremy at the time of his arrest in Feb. 2021 detail how sometime between November and December of 2019 the man knowingly shot and killed his father Roger, who was better known as Fred.

The case against Jeremy began on Dec. 27, 2019, when the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department was contacted by Fred’s daughter about a missing person. The woman told detectives she had not seen her father since Nov. 22 at his home on the city’s west side.

Detectives were told by the daughter that she had been getting texts from her dad’s phone but, “due to the structure and grammar used,” she did not believe it was him sending the texts. These discrepancies included the new texts using emojis and punctuation, which Fred “never used.”

A missing persons report was filed, and a citywide search that would last over a year began.

During the investigation into Fred’s disappearance, IMPD detectives were told by his daughter that she had accessed her dad’s financial info and saw a negative balance, which was abnormal. The records also showed transactions occurring after Fred went missing.

IMPD got a search warrant for the finances and found multiple purchases occurred between Dec. and Nov. 2019. One such purchase, court docs state, was for $225.73 at a Lowe’s on Michigan Road.

Surveillance from the Lowe’s, IMPD said, showed a man later identified by his sister as Jeremy Farmer making the purchase. Farmer, court docs state, bought cleaning supplies including:

• Heavy Duty Cleaning Wipes,
• Febreze
• a 96-gallon two-wheel trash can
• germicidal bleach
• a Duracell flashlight
• Venom-brand latex gloves
• extra heavy plastic drop cloths
• Tide detergent pods

IMPD said that given how long Fred had been missing and the suspicious financial activity, homicide detectives took over the case on Jan. 13, 2020.

Soon after, homicide units found that contact information on several of Fred’s credit card accounts had been changed to Jeremy’s email address: jeremyj.yeary@gmail.com.

Further investigation into Jeremy showed that IMPD had been previously contacted by Fred about his son allegedly stealing his credit card.

Court docs show that Fred’s daughter told IMPD detectives that while she knew her father had allegedly gone on a hunting trip, she did not know where. She also said that when she had asked her brother where their dad went, he “told her a couple of different stories”.

“Jeremy had said that their father had gone hunting in Paragon, Indiana, and then said it might
have been someplace else but he was not sure,” a probable cause affidavit filed against Jeremy reads.

Later, a close friend of Fred’s told IMPD that Jeremy had stolen from Fred multiple times and that Fred has suspicions of Jeremy fraudulently opening a charge card in his name. That same friend also told detectives he did not believe it when Jeremy said he thought his dad went to the Versailles, Indiana area to hunt.

While IMPD did not know where Fred was, they had gained access to his cell phone’s location history, which had not appeared to have ever left the Wayne Township area of Indy’s west side. Additionally, Jeremy’s phone had been seen near his father’s since the disappearance.

Further evidence against Jeremy came to light when IMPD detectives spoke with a former roommate of his. That roommate, court docs show, told police that Fred and Jeremy had been living together, and they “did not have a stable relationship”.

Additionally, the roommate told detectives that Jeremy’s former stepbrother said Jeremy had bragged about killing Fred. This was later confirmed by the ex-stepbrother himself.

“Jeremy was bragging about shooting his dad in the head twice and placing the body in ‘the freezer’.”

PCA filed against Jeremy Farmer

IMPD first interviewed Jeremy on Jan. 21, 2020, at the homicide office. While detectives said they just wanted to hear about his father’s routines, court docs show Jeremy “consistently wanted to talk about trouble” his father has with his roommate.

“Jeremy at one point said that he has even heard a rumor that [his dad’s roommate] shot his dad and put him in a freezer at the house on Wandering Way which is his dad’s house,” court docs read. “Jeremy stated then that the only freezer they had at the house was the one in the kitchen which is attached to the refrigerator.”

Contrary to Jeremy’s statement to police, photos taken at Fred’s house showed a “large chest-type freezer” in the garage.

Surveillance done on Jeremy showed that he had been driving a brand new black 2019 GMC Sierra that his father had purchased just before his disappearance. Furthermore, Fred’s phone had recently started pinging at the house Jeremy was parking the truck.

Jeremy was again called to IMPD’s homicide office on Feb. 8, 2020, and was confronted with the evidence police had compiled. When asked about him purchasing cleaning supplies at Lowe’s, police said Jeremy requested an attorney.

IMPD then seized Jeremy’s iPhone with a cracked case on the back, court docs show, and was arrested for felony murder.

A few months later, in May 2021, police in Brownsburg, Indiana, discovered human remains in a storage business on Green Street after witnesses told them they thought something was decomposing in one of the units.

The remains were later confirmed to be those of 58-year-old Fred. His cause of death was ruled as a gunshot wound to the head and his manner of death was ruled a homicide.

The unit where Fred’s body was found, IMPD said, was rented by Jeremy.

Jeremy was found guilty of his felony murder charge on Wednesday, April 5, by Judge Jennifer Harrison. He has a sentencing hearing scheduled for 1 p.m. on April 28.