A former Jackson County man will be sentenced next month in Jackson Circuit Court after pleading guilty to a charge of child molesting.
Charley Hollin of Salem, Oregon, is scheduled to be sentenced at 10:15 a.m. March 6 if Judge Richard W. Poynter approves a deal between Hollin and the state on the Class A felony charge.
During Friday’s hearing at the courthouse in Brownstown, Hollin gave short answers to questions from Poynter, who explained the plea agreement.
After the hearing, Hollin held his head down and did not answer questions from the media as police escorted him to a cruiser to be returned to the Jackson County Jail in Brownstown. His attorney, John Goodridge, could not be reached for comment, either.
Prosecutor AmyMarie Travis said she was satisfied with the agreement, which calls for the state to dismiss a second charge of criminal confinement of a person less than 14 resulting in bodily injury.
“I had an opportunity to speak to the original victim in this case, and what was important to the original victim was that he get a conviction and a substantial amount of time in jail that would leave him in jail until he was elderly,” she said. “She was very satisfied with the plea agreement, and I was satisfied with the plea agreement.”
That agreement calls for the 62-year-old Hollin to spend 40 years in prison but will allow him to spend the final 10 years on home detention, monitored by Jackson-Jennings Community Corrections or another court-approved program.
Poynter plans to conduct a pre-sentencing investigation, required by convictions on Class A felony charges, to gain an understanding of how Hollin should be sentenced.
The charge stems from an incident in 1999 when Hollin kidnapped a girl at knifepoint in Seymour, molested her and left her naked on a county road near Cortland. Hollin threw her clothing out of the vehicle before she was found and rescued by a passing motorist.
Investigators said Hollin was identified as a suspect from evidence collected at the scene, including a coat and a day planner that belonged to him and DNA evidence in the car, which also had been recovered as evidence.
Hollin disappeared a little more than 16 years ago after being identified as a suspect. He fled first to Minnesota and then later to Oregon, investigators said. He also stole the identity of an 8-year-old North Vernon boy, Andrew David Hall, who died as the result of a wreck in Kentucky in 1975.
Hollin was arrested a year ago at his place of employment in Oregon. He was returned to Jackson County on March 15, 2017, and booked into the Jackson County Jail.
After his arrest, Hollin initially was held in federal custody on charges of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution and identity theft, but those charges were dropped, said Tim Horty, a spokesman with the U.S. District Attorney, Southern District of Indiana, in Indianapolis. Those charges were filed to ensure Hollin would be brought back to Jackson County to stand trial on the local charges, Horty said.
Hall’s mother, Judy Hall-Thorpe, drove from Middletown to attend Friday’s hearing.
She said knowing Hollin will be sentenced brings her some sense of closure.
“He took my son’s name,” she said. “We came here to see this through for him.”
The plea deal calls for the state to dismiss the remaining counts in the case and not file any other state or federal charges related to the incident and Hollin’s arrest in Oregon.
Hollin had been set to stand trial Tuesday in circuit court on charges of child molesting, a Class A felony, and criminal confinement of a person less than 14 resulting in bodily injury, a Class D felony.