Caught Burglar Leads Police to Killer and Poisoned Root Beer Float

A burglar who tried to rob the wrong house handed Jackson County, Indiana detectives the evidence they needed to solve a months-long poisoning murder, unlocking a conspiracy so methodical it had gone undetected for nearly a year.

The victim was Harold "Peanut" Allen, 52, of Freetown. He died on December 20, 2022, after drinking a root beer float his wife, Marsha Allen, had laced with ethylene glycol, the principal compound in antifreeze. At the time, no foul play was suspected. It would take a bungled burglary and thousands of incriminating text messages before police understood what had really happened inside the Allen home.

The break came on September 19, 2023, when Marsha Allen called the Jackson County Sheriff's Department to report a break-in at her North State Road 135 home. Firearms and jewelry had been stolen. Reviewing her security camera footage, Marsha identified one of the intruders as Steven White, a close friend of her daughter, Ashley Jones. "Ashley Jones and Steven White were actually best friends," Detective Clint Burcham said. Officers located White within hours. He confessed to the burglary but immediately volunteered something far more significant, declaring that Marsha was a "murderer" and directing investigators to text messages she and Jones had exchanged.

Those messages documented a poisoning campaign that had begun in November 2022. Police say Jones and Marsha attempted to kill Harold Allen at least four times with an escalating series of toxins: Pong Pong seeds, foxglove root placed into chili and brownies, water hemlock, and tainted Sprite and margarita drinks. Harold's symptoms from the foxglove brought him to Schneck Medical Center twice in late November 2022, but doctors did not identify poisoning at the time. The texts captured the conspiracy in the women's own words. In one exchange, Jones wrote to Marsha, "He needs to go and drop in the hole too." In another, she declared, "I planned it all."

When the plant-based methods proved too slow and, as Jones herself texted, potentially "traceable," she ordered ethylene glycol online on December 13, 2022. Seven days later, Harold was dead. Lt. Adam Nicholson of the Jackson County Sheriff's Department described the chemical's particular danger: "If you're consuming ethylene glycol … you're not gonna know. … You're not gonna smell it … it doesn't have any color to it. … it's described as maybe a slight sweet taste." Investigators believe that faint sweetness is precisely why the women chose to deliver it in a root beer float.

About a month after the burglary, Detective Burcham confronted Marsha Allen with the allegations. She denied killing her husband. Hours later, on October 16, 2023, she was found dead at her Freetown home, having taken her own life. She left a handwritten note: "I did not kill my husband. You win Ashley!"

Ashley Jones was charged with Harold Allen's murder. His son Matthew Allen described the betrayal: "He surrounded himself with people he thought loved him, and to be poisoned on a nightly basis, basically … infuriates me … they poisoned him, and they waited for, um, him to die."

In August 2025, Jones accepted a plea deal, pleading guilty to attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Jackson County Prosecutor Lynsey N. Fleetwood secured a 50-year prison sentence. The motive, investigators concluded, was financial: Jones and Marsha had plotted to seize Harold's retirement savings and what their own texts described as his "hidden" money.