"What other people think of me are none of my business."
Lawrence "Larry" Howard Groves was someone you either liked or didn't know due to his frank nature and no-nonsense approach. He was dependable and would do anything for anything to anyone. His partner, Tom Bennet, was about ten years his senior and taught him everything he knew about antiques.
In 1979 Larry was 17 and had moved in with Tom in a Bungalow in the town of Lakeville, Indiana. The couple had a hard time being accepted there. Larry took the brunt of the harassment due to him being more effeminate and less aggressive than Tom.
In 2001, Tom passed away from a heart attack. Derl had previously retained the house that Tom and Larry lived in. Once Tom passed away the ownership of the home reverted to Derl, who told Larry that he could continue to live in the bungalow as long as he wanted.
On January 12th, 2003, Larry was 40 years old and along with his two dogs, was still living in the home he once shared with Tom. He was staying busy running his antique business.
At around 11 p.m. Larry was on the phone with his friend Sandy Smith from Mississippi. The pair were 10 minutes into their nightly phone call when someone on the other side of Larry's door began angrily pounding on it. Sandy could hear a man angrily shouting to be let in. Sandy asked Larry who it was. Larry said he would handle it and call her back in 20 minutes. Larry never did call her back, and he was never heard from again.
Larry had stopped going to his successful antique business. When his family went to his home and found it was locked and no one had access.
In the month after Larry's initial disappearance, his neighbor, Fred claimed to have seen trucks coming and going from Larry's home. Fred didn't think anything of this since Larry often drove a truck and loaded it up with antiques.
In April Larry's sister Pam went to his house and searched for details that the police might have missed. The house was immaculate with nothing taken, nor out of place. On Memorial Day weekend Larry's mother also searched the house for clues and found nothing out of place.
Then on June 18th, Larry's neighbor, a man named Dick, noticed that the peach tree in Larry's garden was starting to come far over the fence, which separated their properties. The ripened fruit was falling to the ground and was attracting bees that would attack his dog every time he would let it outside. This annoyed Dick and he went out and began cutting back the branches that were hanging over the fence. As he was cutting the branches Dick noticed a disturbing amount of big flies covering the inside of a window in Larry's house.
There were crows that had gathering on the fence by Larry's house and had been feasting on the flies. Dick felt uneasy and called Derl and he came over and together they went to investigate what was going on in Larry's house.
Once inside Larry's home Dick and Derl were hit with a foul odor. They surmised that it was the rotting meat in the fridge, but on closer inspection they realize it mostly was coming from the crawl space. Together the men move Larry's desk and pulled back the rug that revealed the trap door to the crawl space. Inside the crawl space was Larry's body, that had disintegrated so badly in the summer heat that the cause of death could not be determined. However, investigators did find evidence Larry had bravely fought his killer. There was blood on Larry’s clothing that didn’t belong to him. There was also hair that didn't belong to him on his clothes and te crawl space.
Larry' family was devastated. They also didn't know there had been a trap door or a crawl space in Larry's house. It seems the only person that knew about the crawl space was Derl and Larry's killer.
Indiana state police found the man who had turned up at Larry's door on January 12th. The suspect has never been publicly named, but was described as cold and calculated by the detective that had interviewed him. The detective said that the man never lost his composure. The interview had ended with the remaining suspect silent until his lawyer arrived.
The police did find out that the suspect had used Larry's truck to load up antiques and sell them to Michigan-based dealers in the years following Larry's death.
In November of 2006, the FBI crime lab in Phoenix established the hair and blood samples taken from Larry's body and in the crawl space did not conclusively match the man suspected of the murder, although one year later, it was revealed that there might be more evidence to test.
I cannot find anything more on Larry's case. And as far as i know his dogs were never found. To me it seems that Larry's killer must have been familiar with Larry's house and possibly is dogs. There might also be more than one suspect, but i could be wrong.
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