MARTINSVILLE, Ind. — On a rainy fall night in 1968, someone drove a screwdriver deep into the chest of a young black woman, and she was left bleeding to death on a sidewalk along the city's main thoroughfare.

        Most people assumed a Martinsville resident murdered the 21-year-old as she sold encyclopedias door to door. The nearly all-white city, already known for its Ku Klux Klan activities, gained a reputation as “that place where they killed Carol Jenkins.”

        Now, a woman who was 7 years old on that night 33 years ago has come forward to tell investigators that she saw her father stab Ms. Jenkins while yelling racial slurs. The fact that the suspect, Kenneth Richmond, had no ties to Martinsville offers hope for some residents that their city may now be redeemed.

        “I'm just glad it was nobody in Martinsville that did it,” said Pauline Frye, an 81-year-old who still recalls the night Ms. Jenkins was killed in front of her son's house. “It gave this town a black mark, and it held over this town for a long time.”

        Mr. Richmond, an indigent and frail 70-year-old, was arrested Wednesday at a nursing home in Indianapolis. His daughter, Shirley Richmond McQueen, says that at age 7 she watched from her father's car as he plunged a screwdriver into Ms. Jenkins' chest in a fit of drunken rage.

        A Morgan County judge entered an innocent plea on Mr. Richmond's behalf and ordered him held without bail pending an Oct. 1 jury trial.

        Mr. Richmond's attorney, Steve Litz, said prosecutors will be hard pressed to prove such an old case with no forensic evidence and only the testimony of someone who was a child at the time.

        Regardless, the city was glad to have a break in the case.

        “It's a good day for the city of Martinsville,” Mayor Shannon Buskirk said after the arrest was made.

        Martinsville, located about 30 miles south of Indianapolis, remains an almost exclusively white community. Like many Indiana towns, its hub is a courthouse square ringed with shops and restaurants, its population of 12,000 fervently supports the high school basketball team and the state highway bordering the city is lined with car dealerships, gas stations and a mobile home park.

        It's a prime stopping point between Indianapolis and Bloomington, the home of Indiana University. But many minorities in the state, fearful of the city's reputation, say they refuse to ever stop in Martinsville.

        Along with the murder in 1968, there were reports of Ku Klux Klan activities through the 1960s and 1970s.

        In 1998, players on a visiting high school basketball team from Bloomington said they were met by a crowd chanting racial insults.

        And last year, the city's assistant police chief made national news when he sent a letter to the city's newspaper mocking non-Christians and homosexuals with the terms “Buddy Buddha,” “Hadji Hindu” and “queers.”

Changing faces

        Joanne Stuttgen, a Martinsville resident, said she doesn't think the recent arrest will make a difference in how the town is perceived.

        “It will always go back to, "Well my friend was stopping for gas and this happened,'” she said. “It will always be these personal stories that keep the legend going.”

        Ms. Frye laments that, and wishes people could learn the truth about what she calls “a real nice” community.

        “When you've been here all your life,” she said, “it's kind of hard to take.”

        Bette Nunn, managing editor of the Reporter-Times, wrote a column the day after Mr. Richmond's arrest.

        “This case has been terrible for Martinsville, and we wonder if the outside news media will let us forget it even now or even if there is a conviction,” she wrote. “Will they ever write a favorable story about us without adding something negative? Or will they continue to bring up all the accusations of the past?”

        Ms. Stuttgen and others believe that remains to be seen.

        “There's all this history that still can't be undone with one new fact,” said Christy Wareham, a Presbyterian minister and member of a city group that promotes diversity. “But I think this allows us to turn a corner.”

        And Ms. Nunn, who has often written columns defending her city, hopes that corner is not too far away.

        “Maybe someday, the outside world will know the hearts of Martinsville people,” she wrote. “Maybe someday, it will get better for all of us.”

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