Kevin Comer, 37, is being held without bond at the Marion County Jail on a preliminary murder charge in the death of his father, Jody Comer, 63. Fox 59 reported that Comer told investigators he found the killing liberating. He was awaiting an initial hearing Tuesday.
Fox 59 reported that police found Jody Comer dead inside the Lupine Drive home on Saturday morning after officers forced open the front door. The station said Jody’s boss had requested a welfare check when he failed to show up for work; Jody had asked a coworker to make that request if he missed work. Fox 59 also reported that coworkers said Jody had recently worried his son might hurt him. WISH-TV reported that a 37-year-old man was arrested on a preliminary murder charge.
A Confession Described in Chilling Detail
According to court records described in Fox 59’s report, Comer told investigators, “I popped him two times in the head with a tomahawk.” The records say he called Jody a terrible human being and claimed Jody was not his biological father, but had assumed his father’s identity. Comer also reportedly said he would have killed Jody earlier if he had known it was so easy, and described the experience as liberating.
The court records, as reported by Fox 59, also say Comer covered his father’s body with clothes and blankets, making what he called a “plushie pile” in honor of his daughter, who loved such piles. He reportedly considered setting it on fire with a gas can but decided against it, saying he did not want to hurt other children in the complex.
Tools Offered for Sale, Boss Calls It ‘Sad’
In the aftermath, Comer allegedly told his father’s service manager that Jody was gone, and court records say he tried to get his father’s coworkers to buy his dad’s tools. Jody Comer’s general manager described the situation as sad, insane, and unfortunate, according to the same report. WISH-TV reported that police believe the incident was targeted and that there is no threat to the community, while the Marion County Coroner’s Office was still working to determine the exact cause and manner of death.
A String of Recent Indianapolis Homicides
Fox 59 has reported other recent Indianapolis homicides involving family members, but those cases do not establish a trend or a connection to the Comer case. The outlet reported that an Indianapolis man allegedly killed his parents at their home on Lakeshire Lane the previous month, and that police believe a mother killed her 9-year-old son on Village Lane before taking her own life. Nothing in the available account establishes a mental-health diagnosis in the Comer case.
Indianapolis relies on Mobile Crisis Assistance Teams and Clinician-Led Community Response teams to respond to mental health emergencies, tools that officials say only work when people aren’t ashamed to seek help. Andrew Merkley, director of the Indianapolis Office of Public Health and Safety, has said the city wants to provide Marion County residents with resources to address mental health needs and has called for destigmatizing behavioral health challenges.
The Clinician-Led Community Response program launched in downtown Indianapolis on July 1, 2023, before expanding across Marion County on May 1, according to the Indianapolis Recorder. The Recorder reported the program has responded to nearly 3,000 calls since its launch, with fewer than 2% requiring additional enforcement or detention, and that calls commonly involve welfare checks, suicidal ideation, and nonviolent situations involving unhoused residents or people experiencing substance-use disorders. WFYI had previously reported that the clinician-led effort, launched in 2023, operated only during certain hours and in limited geographic areas, and that more than 2,000 mental health emergency response calls in Marion County had been answered by the Mobile Crisis Assistance Team as of November 2024. Hoodline previously reported that MCAT responded to more than 2,700 calls in 2024 and made roughly 1,000 follow-up home visits that year.
What local data and response plans show
IMPD’s NIBRS description says the system records relationships between victims and known offenders. The available dashboard material, however, provides no family-homicide count or local trend and does not specify a period for a year-by-year comparison. In a separate case, Fox 59 reported that Thomas Parker was found dead at an apartment on Indianapolis’ southeast side on Nov. 14, 2023, and his son Julian Parker was later charged with murder. That case involved different people and a different location from the Lupine Drive killing.
On crisis-response policy, WFYI reported that under the city’s announced unified plan, dispatchers would assess whether a scene was safe and IMPD would take the lead if it was not. That general protocol does not establish what response was used for the Comers’ welfare check.
The allegations in the Comer case, as reported by Fox 59 and WISH-TV from court records and police statements, concern Jody Comer’s death on Lupine Drive and his son’s arrest. The coroner’s office was still working to determine exactly how Jody died.
