INDIANAPOLIS — A man who pleaded guilty in 2018 to his role in the death of a pastor’s wife during a robbery spree is now learning his sentence.
The Marion County Prosecutor’s Office said Diano Gordon was ordered Monday to serve a 30-year sentence for his role in the case. He will serve 25 years in the Indiana Department of Correction and five years suspended.
The sentence comes after Gordon pleaded guilty to robbery resulting in serious bodily injury and burglary in 2018. In exchange for his guilty plea, other charges, including murder, were dismissed.
As part of the plea deal, Gordon agreed to help prosecutors make their case against Larry Taylor, who was found guilty of murder after a bench trial Thursday. While Gordon and Jalen Watson, another man who took a plea deal in the case, both conceded they’d been involved in multiple burglaries on the day of Blackburn’s murder, they said Taylor was the person who shot Blackburn inside her home.
Blackburn and her husband, Davey Blackburn, had moved from South Carolina to Indianapolis in 2012 to start a church on the north side.
Blackburn, who was pregnant at the time, was shot during a home invasion in November 2015. She died from her wounds two days later; the autopsy found she suffered a gunshot to the head and ruled her death a homicide.
Watson was sentenced to 29 years in prison for his role in the crime. Taylor’s sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 14.