Heidi Marie Littlefield, a 42-year-old Indiana resident was sentenced Friday to a total of 115 years in prison for the death of 46-year-old Francis Kelley. The man, who was found dead in his Indiana home in January 2021 was Littlefield's ex-boyfriend.
Buzz reported that Littlefield was found guilty of murder in August as well as conspiracy to murder Kelley after a weeklong trial wherein her 23-year-old daughter Logan Runyon swore to have helped her mother accomplish the brazen plan of poisoning Kelley.
Runyon had testified giving chilling detail of her mother’s plans and how Kelley was killed in January 2021. She is serving a 26-year jail sentence for conspiracy to murder in a plea agreement.
Runyon presented evidence proving that they tried three times to poison Kelley's food, Mirror reported. The third time was on Jan. 14, 2021, then, they entered Kelley’s home the following day and located him struggling to breathe while face-down on the floor. She added that her mother wanted her to break his neck but she couldn’t do that due to Kelley’s size. That is when Littlefield ran upstairs and grabbed Kelley’s favorite tie and pulled it around his neck. The authorities found Kelley dead three days later.
Littlefield allegedly gave 30-year-old Robert James Walker, Runyon's ex-boyfriend, $2,500 to hire a hitman but the couple spent the money on drugs, clothes, and hotels. Littlefield and Kelley share a two-year-old child together and their custody battle led to her hatching the murder plot.
Toronto Sun reported that Walker was also arrested in relation to the murder. He confessed to the investigators that Littlefield put fentanyl in Kelley’s miso soup in October 2020 and that it was her idea to drug his oatmeal on Jan. 15, 2021. Kelley was discovered dead on his sofa three days later.
Littlefield was sentenced to 60 years for murder, 35 years for conspiracy to commit murder resulting in death, and 20 years for conspiracy to commit murder but not resulting in death for the attempted poisonings. The sentences will run concurrently.
An autopsy report revealed that Kelley's death was a homicide and that he died from asphyxia due to manual strangulation. The report also said that Kelley suffered from blunt force trauma to the head, left hand, elbow, and knees.
