Kristine Guerra

kristine.guerra@indystar.com

Fourteen years ago, Judy Kirby drove the wrong way on a state road in Martinsville, causing a crash that killed seven people, including three of her children.

Kirby, a mother of 10, found herself at the center of a high-profile case that rocked the town of Martinsville in Morgan County. After a two-week trial in 2001, the jurors, who were selected from another county because of the media coverage, found Kirby guilty of all charges. Morgan Superior Court Judge Jane Spencer Craney sentenced Kirby to 215 years in prison.

Kirby, 45, appealed her case, and the Indiana Court of Appeals upheld her conviction in August 2002. The Indiana Supreme Court in January 2003 refused to hear the appeal.

Now, more than a decade later, Kirby is asking the same judge to grant her a new trial. Her new attorneys argued that Kirby was denied effective counsel in the 2001 trial and her drug dealing should not have been used as evidence in the trial, according to court documents. Kirby also claims the trial court abused its discretion and failed to provide an impartial jury.

The accident happened the afternoon of March 25, 2000. Police said Kirby, of Indianapolis, had been driving north in the southbound lanes of Ind. 67 for nearly two miles when her car crashed head on with a minivan. Killed were her three children, Jordan, 12; Joney, 9; and Jacob, 5; and a nephew she was raising, Jeremy Young, 10. Martinsville resident Thomas Reel, 40, who was driving the minivan, and his two teenage children, Bradley, 13; and Jesica, 14, also were killed.

Kirby and a friend of the Reel children who also was in the minivan survived the crash.

Reel's wife, Louise Cossari, was at home with their youngest daughter when the crash happened. Her husband and two other children were on their way home from a church youth function when they died in the accident. She said the news of Kirby asking for a new trial brought back pain from an old wound that's yet to heal.

"You move on, but you never forget," Cossari said. "Now, here she is again, peeling the band-aid off and there's the big old scab. I can't believe this is happening again."

The day of the crash, Kirby picked up her children from her sister's house where they spent the night, police said. She headed toward a Toys R Us store in Greenwood while her sister followed her in another car. On the way, they separated and Kirby disappeared.

Some witnesses testified that Kirby was driving at a high speed on Ind. 67, weaving in and out of oncoming traffic. Some waved and honked at her to stop. During the trial, a witness recalled seeing one of the kids holding on to the dashboard, screaming.

One question during the trial was whether Kirby knowingly drove the wrong way.

Former deputy prosecutor Terry Iacoli, who handled the case, said Kirby was despondent over her breakup with a boyfriend and paranoid that he might turn her in for dealing drugs. Efforts to reach Iacoli for comment were unsuccessful.

Kirby's attorney, Jennifer Auger of Franklin, offered a different version, saying Kirby did not know what she was doing. She said Kirby suffered an undiagnosed thyroid problem that diminished her mental capacity and "prevented her from responding the way most of us would have in that situation." One of Kirby's sisters had said she was hospitalized for depression three weeks before the accident.

The jury from Dearborn County found Kirby guilty of seven counts of murder, four counts of neglect of a dependent with serious injury and one count of aggravated battery.

Cossari saw Kirby for the first time in 14 years last week, when a hearing on her request for a new trial was held in Morgan Superior Court.

"When I saw her, it was like seeing the same person. There was no change, no remorse, no sadness, no nothing." Cossari said. "It was the same person with her head down, with that solemn look on her."

Kirby was represented by Auger and her father, Tom Jones. Cossari said she doesn't think they were ineffective.

"There were times when I sat in court and thought she is going to get away with this. She's going to get off or she's going to get five or 10 years," Cossari said. "Because that's how good of attorneys I thought they were."

Seven crosses were placed at the site of the crash on Ind. 67, just north of Wilbur Road. Those crosses are still standing to this day.

Cossari has remarried and now has a 10-year-old daughter with her second husband. But on holidays and birthdays, she said she misses the son and daughter she lost.

"I didn't get to be with her when she was 16 or with him when he was 16," Cossari said. "I didn't get to experience all those things."

Cossari's youngest daughter with Reel, Christine, struggled while growing up because of the loss of her brother and sister, Cossari said. She was 10 when her siblings died. Christine, now 25, saw Kirby for the first time last week when she attended the hearing with her mother.

"She took my family," Cossari recalled her daughter telling her.

Chief Deputy Prosecutor Robert Cline said the judge is expected to make a decision early next year.

"We feel strongly that she doesn't deserve a new trial because none of her allegations we believe to be true," Cline said.

Star reporter Tim Evans contributed to this story.

Contact Star reporter Kristine Guerra at (317) 444-6209. Follow her on Twitter: @kristine_guerra.