A 71-year-old Indianapolis man who was initially found incompetent to stand trial has pleaded guilty to one count of child molestation and was sentenced to serve seven years in prison.
William Zimmerman pleaded guilty to child molesting, a Level 4 felony, in February. A Level 1 felony child molesting charge was dismissed as part of the plea agreement.
He was sentenced on March 5 to serve seven years with the Indiana Department of Correction with four years executed. He received credit for 1,093.66 days served already. He will serve three years on probation with sex offender conditions included. He was sentenced to pay $1,286 in fine and total court costs.
He was remanded to the Brown County jail after the sentencing hearing and was transferred to the DOC the next day.
The sentence closes out a case that has stretched nearly five years since the incident, Prosecutor Ted Adams said.
Zimmerman was accused of molesting an 8-year-old girl at Brown County State Park in September 2015. He was arrested more than a year later.
The girl, her father and her mother identified Zimmerman in statements given to the Greenwood Police Department.
The allegations first came to light when the girl’s sister told her aunt about the incident, and the aunt then told the girl’s mother, according to a probable-cause affidavit completed by Brown County Deputy Brian Shrader.
The girl described waking up around midnight in Zimmerman’s camper and that he was molesting her. After he went to sleep, the girl said she ran out of the camper to a tent where her aunt, uncle and sister were sleeping. She did not tell them what had happened then because she was scared they would not believe her, the report said.
While talking to police, the girl also described another incident at Zimmerman’s Greenwood home, as well as times leading up to the first alleged incident when Zimmerman had shown increased interest in the girl, the report said.
Last year, Zimmerman was found incompetent to stand trial right before the start of his trial. He was sent to Logansport State Hospital for competency restoration. At a hearing last May, Dr. Frederick Nolen and Dr. Don Olive testified after doing further evaluations of Zimmerman’s psychological state.
Nolen said that Zimmerman was not competent to stand trial because he has suffered two strokes, and his “short-term to long-term memory memory transfer” has deteriorated to the bottom 1 percent for his age group. Nolen noted that Zimmerman has “significant slowness” when processing new information, and that he has “no ability to abstractly reason.”
Zimmerman was found to be competent to stand trial by Logansport State Hospital last November.
“This was one of the most difficult and frustrating cases I’ve had in my entire legal career,” Adams said in a press release after the plea was accepted.
“The case was unnecessarily delayed from the beginning. Then Zimmerman received a liver transplant and died twice during the operation. He had a stroke, which caused competency issues. … Finally, after four-and-a-half years and preparing the matter twice for a weeklong jury trial, we were able to secure a conviction and justice for the young victim.”
The plea agreement was reached prior to the case going to trial.
Adams said the victim and her family “desperately wanted closure” and “to avoid the traumatic experience of trial for their little one.”
“Ultimately, we were happy to secure a conviction for child molesting, the requirement for sex offender registry, sex offender probation and prison time,” Adams said.
Zimmerman will have to register as a sex offender after he is released from prison and will be required to serve under sex offender probation, “which is the most restrictive form of probation,” Adams added.
“I’m proud of our victim, who was 8 years old at the time. Through her bravery, I believe she prevented future victimizations,” he said.
