Jacob Ind was a fifteen year old living in Colorado when he would murder his mother and stepfather
According to court documents Jacob Ind and another teen Gabriel Adams would murder his mother and stepfather using a gun, a knife and bear spray
Jacob Ind and Gabriel Adams would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole
Gabriel Adams would take his own life at a state psychiatric hospital in 2014
When juvenile life sentences were declared unconstitutional Jacob Ind would be resentenced to 60 years and would be released from prison in 2020
Jacob Ind Photos
Jacob Ind FAQ
When Was Jacob Ind Released From Prison
Jacob Ind was released in 2002
When Did Gabriel Adams Commit Suicide
Gabriel Adams would take his own life in 2014
Jacob Ind Case
Jacob Ind is a free man — not that it always feels that way.
Six months after his release on parole in the 1992 killings of his parents in Woodland Park, Ind says the notoriety he gained as a “broken” 15-year-old has made it difficult to grasp the second chance he has longed for.
“Door after door slammed in (my) face,” he said, recounting faltering attempts to explain his criminal history to potential landlords and employers.
Now 43 and living alone in an apartment near Denver, Jacob Ind was released from Sterling Correctional Facility in northeast Colorado late last September — four years after a judge ruled that his former attorney had improperly kept him from testifying at his nationally watched 1994 trial in the deaths of Pamela and Kermode Jordan, his mother and stepfather.
Under her ruling, Denver District Judge Jane Tidball overturned his first-degree murder convictions and ordered that he receive a new trial. Instead, Ind pleaded guilty in November 2017 to reduced charges of second-degree murder. He was later resentenced to a 60-year term, leaving him eligible for parole after factoring in time served and credit for good behavior.
Ind’s release on parole was approved on his second attempt under his new sentence, setting up his Sept. 24 release
After entering the prison system at 17 and growing up within its walls, Jacob Ind recalled the day of his release as “surreal,” partly because he was dressed in blue polo shirt and khaki pants — “real-world clothes” after decades in a jumpsuit.
A van shuttled him to the prison’s public parking lot, and he got out to greet his father, Charles Ind of Washington, and Jacob Ind’s wife of three years, Denise. The Northern Ireland native had started writing to Ind in prison after seeing a television news documentary about his trial, and romance took hold as she aided his efforts at getting released. Before Ind’s parole, their only in-person contact with one another came at his first parole hearing more than a year earlier.
“It was awesome. I got a big ol’ hug,” Jacob Ind said. “I got my stuff in the van and we took off and I was sitting in the back seat and got to hold her hand and I was not letting go.”
Ind’s two murder trials — one a mistrial — made national news, but there was no media attention as the trio left prison grounds.
Jacob Ind said a parole document cited “COVID considerations” among reasons for his parole approval, but that it didn’t elaborate.
“They were trying to reduce population and I think that helped,” Ind said. The Colorado Department of Corrections did not respond to a request for parole documents the newspaper lodged on March 1, and a department spokeswoman referred further questions to the parole board, whose members couldn’t be reached.
After his release, Ind’s wife, who lives in the United Kingdom, remained in Colorado under a 90-day visa to help him get his life started again. Ind said she ultimately rented the apartment where he now lives after the couple were rejected by multiple landlords who said they don’t rent to felons.
Jacob Ind works in retail, though he won’t say more for fear that attention could cost him his job.
Jacob Ind had to walk away from a well-paying job handling packages because late-night hours conflicted with his parole requirements. A grocery store that hired him despite his murder convictions later changed course and terminated him, after the store’s parent company learned of his past. His current employer didn’t do a background check, leaving him fearful of their reaction, should they find out.
For felons, getting by after prison is “extraordinarily difficult,” Ind said. “They generally lack credit history, they have no renter’s history, there’s hurdle after hurdle to go through, and a lot of places will not accept felons.”
Jacob Ind argued at trial that he killed his mother and stepfather in self defense after a lifetime of sexual and physical abuse — an account that hasn’t changed, and that prosecutors still reject.
During his 2018 resentencing hearing, prosecutor Beth Reed said Ind made no such allegations to Woodland Park police after the murders, nor to the treatment professionals who evaluated him. She said the District Attorney’s Office agreed to plea talks partly at the urging of some of Ind’s relatives, whom she said wanted to move on, and partly in recognition of changing attitudes regarding sentences for youthful killers.
Reed emphasized that the two were attacked in bed and shot, stabbed and sprayed with bear mace by Ind and an accomplice — calling it “a premeditated, violent, disgusting choice.”
Jacob Ind plotted for three months how to commit the crimes, Reed told the judge, and followed through only after enlisting a troubled classmate, Gabriel “Major” Adams, 18, whom she said was likely mentally ill. Adams was convicted of first-degree murder at a separate trial and sentenced to life in prison. He committed suicide in prison in 2014.
Ind’s brother, Charles Ind, has corroborated his reports of physical and sexual abuse in the Ind household, and one of Pamela Jordan’s sisters described a cold, unloving atmosphere in the home and said she believed the abuse occurred.
Ind, who says he wanted only “to escape an impossible situation,” says he tried to confide in a teacher, but that his comments about his troubled home life didn’t trigger the attention he had hoped
He scoffs at the suggestion he should have gone further in trying to report the abuse — saying he’d been “brainwashed” into believing his parents had “godlike powers of control.”
“It’s hard for a grown adult in a therapy session to talk about that stuff. Or to talk about that stuff to a loved one — let alone to a complete and total stranger as a child, while you’re still going through it,” he said. “It’s completely unreasonable to expect it.”
Ind said he should have been tried as a juvenile and received the treatment he needed.
During his years of incarceration, Ind received a paralegal certificate and earned a Ph.D in theology, his lawyer said, always believing he would one day be released. His story was profiled in a 2007 PBS Frontline documentary about people serving life sentences for crimes committed as children
A 2012 Supreme Court Case, Miller vs. Alabama, found that life sentences for children without the possibility of parole violated the constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. The ruling guaranteed Ind a shot at parole, though it was Tidball’s 2017 finding of ineffective assistance of counsel that overturned his 1994 convictions and hastened his release
Ind was among 48 so-called “juvenile lifers” in Colorado who suddenly had a path to release. He said he doesn’t like being associated with the others.
“I always had a problem having my case lumped in with the rest of the juvenile lifers,” he said. “I didn’t go kill somebody because I wanted the light to go out in their eyes. I wasn’t a criminal scum bag going around committing criminal acts and ended up killing someone along the way. I literally was defending myself.”
If Ind lost a loved one to violence, it wouldn’t matter if the person who did it “was 15 or 26,” he said.
“The effect on my life is the same and I would still want the other person not to get out,” Ind said, describing as “monsters” some of the other inmates serving life terms in Colorado for crimes they committed as juveniles.
Before his resentencing, Ind tried to fire his court-appointed attorney, Nicole Mooney of Denver, arguing, in part, that she was more committed to what Ind called the “cause” of sentencing reform, and that she failed to represent his case on its merits.
Ind said he pleaded guilty in part because he had no confidence that Mooney and her co-counsel, Michael Juba of Denver, would “present my case correctly.
“I’m not their poster child,” Ind said. “I’m not their example.”
A judge rejected Ind’s request, and found he was partly to blame for some of the miscommunication he had complained about.
Juba and Mooney declined to respond to Ind’s comments, citing attorney-client privilege.
“We were both happy to hear that Mr. Ind was released on parole and we wish him the best in the future,” Juba said in a joint statement.
With his wife again living abroad, Ind says he’s consumed with short-term goals — finding a better paying job, or buying a house instead of renting.
His “super long-term goal,” he says, is to move to the United Kingdom.
“That’s where my wife’s family is and where her kid’s family is,” he said. “I would love to get a fresh start there where people don’t know me as my crime and just know me as Denise’s husband. It’s a beautiful country. I just need a good place to get a fresh start.”
Ind’s sentence discharge date is in November 2046, prison records show, and immigration law experts say that his effort to gain lawful entry into the UK is likely to face headwinds.
“It’s going to be an uphill battle,” said Stephanie Izaguirre, an immigration lawyer in Colorado Springs. “There’s no guarantee that you’re going to succeed.”
No stranger to long odds, Ind said he will petition to have his convictions treated as juvenile offenses, recognizing that his fight isn’t over.
“By no means is it a guarantee for me.”