Susan Grund, Oversexed Murderess

A second trial was mounted seven months later, in March 1994.

Prosecutor Siders made a key change in his presentation, based upon suggestions from interviews he conducted with jurors from the first trial. He called a procession of five new witnesses, all prominent Indianans who had become acquainted with Susan through Jimmy Grund.

Each gave the same clear message: Susan Grund was a pathological liar.

Defense attorney Charlie Scruggs

Meanwhile, defense attorney Charlie Scruggs, from Kokomo, made a momentous decision of his own. He ordered Susan not to delve into her alleged affair with David Grundeven though most courtroom wags agreed that that particularly testimony had swayed the holdout jurors in her favor at the first trial.

Siders' strategy prevailed.

On March 23, 1994, the jury convicted Susan Grund of murder. Prosecutors had not sought capital punishment in the case, and three weeks later, Judge John Surbek ordered Susan to serve 60 years in prison for "calmly, coldly and calculatingly" murdering her husband.

Susan's children, Jacob and Tanelle, were 13 and 8, respectively, at the time of the murder. They were raised by Jimmy Grund's sister, Jane, and her husband, Fred Allen.

By the fall of 2007, Grund had spent 15 years at the Indiana Women's Prison in Indianapolis, housed with some 325 other female inmates. She will turn 50 behind bars in 2008. Her first parole eligibility date will not arrive until 2025, when she would be 67 years old.

Susan Grund

At last word, she was still professing her innocence.

When her parole date arrives, Susan likely will face a vigorous legal argument against freedom by a man with a keen interest in the case.

David Grund, her former stepson and the man she alleged was her lover, completed law school a few years after the second trial. In 1997, he joined his grandfather in the family law practice in Peru.