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John Jeffers

State: Indiana
Incident Date: 03/01/75
 Age at Arrest: 17
 Conviction: murder and rape
 False Confession: True
Details

Seventeen-year-old John Jeffers confessed to abducting, raping, and killing Sherry Lee Gibson in an adolescent effort to gain notoriety. His initial confession was inconsistent with the facts of the case and self-contradictory. Jeffers also implicated another teenager, who at that time was serving in the U.S. military. Nine months later, Jeffers recanted his testimony of the other youth's involvement, and the charges against him were dropped. Jeffers restated his guilty plea, which was accepted, and he was sent to prison for thirty-four years. He died in prison after serving five years. In 2001, nineteen years after Jeffers's death, Ella Mae Dicks admitted that she and her husband, Wayne Gulley, were the true assailants and confirmed that John Jeffers had nothing to do with Gibson's murder. Jeffers's brother hypothesized that Jeffers's confession was motivated by an impulse to seek attention.