A look at women who have been sentenced to death in Indiana


Associated Press

A prosecutor said he is considering seeking the death penalty against a woman accused of strangling her four young children.

Five women have been sentenced to death in Indiana since 1900, but none executed. They are:

_ Debra Denise Brown - Sentenced to death in 1986 for murdering a 7-year-old Gary girl, one of several victims of Brown and her boyfriend, who committed murders, rapes and robberies across several states. Brown also was sentenced to death for murder in Ohio, but that sentence was overturned, and she is currently serving life in prison there. Her death sentence in Indiana remains active.

_ Paula Cooper - Sentenced to death in 1985 for stabbing to death a Bible school teacher in Gary. At the time, Cooper was 15 - the youngest person to be sentenced to death in Indiana since the death penalty was reinstated in Indiana in 1977. The state Supreme Court overturned her death sentence because of her age at the time of the murder.

_ Cindy Lou Landress - Sentenced to death in 1989 for robbing and stabbing to death her live-in boyfriend in Lake County. Landress, whose friend was an accomplice in the murder, was resentenced to 60 years in prison.

_ Lois Thacker - Sentenced to death in 1985 for arranging for three men to kill her husband in Orange County so she could inherit his life insurance money. In 1990, the state Supreme Court reduced the sentence to 60 years in prison, in part due to lack of evidence that Thacker had paid her husband's killers.

_ Opal Collins - Sentenced to death in 1956 for the murders of her husband, his mother and two of his sisters in Hammond. Her sentence was later reduced to life in prison.

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Sources: Indiana Historical Society, Clark County Prosecutor's Office.