A Princeton man once charged with the murder of a man in Decker four years ago appeared in court Monday morning, pleading guilty to a lesser charge.
Jeremy Schatz, now 45, pleaded guilty in Knox County Superior Court I not to murder, as he was originally charged, but to a lesser charge of conspiracy to commit murder, a Level 1 felony.
A plea deal struck between Knox County Prosecutor Dirk Carnahan and Schatz, one that would see him serve 40 years in prison, was taken under advisement by Judge Gara Lee, and a sentencing hearing was set for 8:30 a.m. on Nov. 10.
Both Jeremy Schatz and his cousin, Christopher Schatz, were arrested in May of 2017 after they were accused of killing 46-year-old John D. “Doug” Lowe on May 3; Knox County police found his body slumped over the threshold of his apartment in the old Decker High School, now a saw mill.
The two men initially told local police that they were hired by the federal government to silence Lowe, whom they said was a potential informer.
According to court documents filed in the case, the Schatz cousins told police that they’d been working with the U.S. Department of Justice and that they were contract killers hired to murder Lowe.
Both men claimed the other actually pulled the trigger, but Christopher Schatz, pleaded guilty to the murder in May of 2018 and was sentenced to 45 years in prison.
Jeremy Schatz — now with long hair and a beard, clad in a black and white prison uniform and using a walker for assistance — spoke little during the brief hearing Monday morning.
He admitted to driving Christopher Schatz to a location near Lowe’s home that night knowing that he planned to kill him.
The two cousins, too, were believed to have been involved in an an earlier incident in which someone shot at a home on Old Indiana 65 near Owensville.
That incident, too, was referenced here in court on Tuesday.
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