Questions and allegations in wake of suicide
Laura Lane
In the end, the story of Frankie and Kelly did not turn out all right.
Not by a long shot.
An 11-minute documentary two Indiana University film students produced in 2014 called "We'll be All Right" detailed a storybook life a gay couple had created with their adopted kids amid difficult circumstances and daunting challenges.
The movie focusing on Frankie Presslaff and Kelly Compton was screened at the Heartland International Film Festival that year, promoted as a project in which "an unconventional family remembers the life of Mimsie, the matriarch who had always held them together."
Mimsie Price-Presslaff had encouraged her son to bring more children into the family, and was its beloved matriarch. The filmmakers used cassette tapes of her talking about her son and grandchildren, found after her death in 2009, as a storyline for the short film.
Presslaff and Compton met through a personal ad 25 years ago. They moved in together after a few months, and by 2007 were parents to eight kids from rough backgrounds who entered their home as foster children. After the first two brothers, who were 4 and 7, came a 9-year-old, followed by another 4-year-old, then three siblings who were 6 years, 18 months and 3 months old. The next child in the family, the biological brother of one of the kids, came to them straight from the hospital, just 2 days old.
Two dads. Eight kids — seven boys and a girl. This Bloomington clan became a newsworthy family.
A 2016 article from the website "Gays with Kids" describes their life, from Presslaff's adoption of two brothers when he was a 20-year-old college student, his long-term relationship with and 2013 marriage to Compton and the family's expansion to 10. The headline was "Two Real-Life Superheroes: Frankie and Kelly."
Disturbing events from last year, though, tear at the fabricated portrait of a big happy family.
Frankie disappears
The week of Sunday, Aug. 11, 2019, started out badly for the family, days rife with revelations and accusations of past sexual abuse allegedly perpetrated by Presslaff.
The situation escalated quickly as the week progressed.
That Tuesday, one of the adopted sons, now 27, reported to an Indiana State Police detective abuse he said had happened when he was a teenager. He had told his older brother, Devin Price-Presslaff, who was angry and encouraged him to come forward.
"Everybody thinks Frankie was some kind of saint," Price-Presslaff said. "He wasn't."
The son reporting the abuse said that the next day, police confronted 51-year-old Presslaff with the allegations at the house in Spicewood where he and Compton lived with their two youngest children, who are in high school.
Later that Wednesday, Presslaff disappeared after a family confrontation outside a Kirkwood Avenue restaurant where one of the sons worked. Presslaff, who was a resource officer for the Bloomington Police Department, reportedly threatened to kill himself over the sexual abuse accusations, saying his life was over.
Compton filed a missing persons report that initiated searches in Bloomington and around Lake Lemon. Then on Saturday, Aug. 17, Presslaff's white 2016 Mini Cooper was found parked near Lake Lemon.
Five Bloomington police officers searched the woods along the lakeside. Among them was Detective Sgt. Dana Cole, a 16-year member of the department who serves as a liaison between police and the LGBTQ community. He also is a close friend of the Presslaff family.
As they walked the woods, Capt. Ryan Pedigo turned on his body camera when he saw a man hanging from a belt attached to a tree limb. He recognized Presslaff, whom he had hired five months earlier. Pedigo called for a coroner to come to the scene.
After an autopsy, Monroe County Coroner Joani Shields said Presslaff died from asphyxiation by hanging. He had killed himself.
Investigation ensues
There was no announcement of Presslaff's death, no obituary, no public funeral. There was no inquiry into the allegations against him, since he was deceased.
On Oct. 22, two months after Presslaff died, Monroe Circuit Judge Mary Ellen Diekhoff appointed former Vanderburgh County Prosecutor Stanley Levco to investigate unspecified criminal allegations made against Compton. The move was prompted by the complaint Presslaff's son filed at the state police post in Bloomington.
Levco reviewed what he called a comprehensive report compiled by ISP Detective Brian Smith, who had interviewed the sons. Levco said he asked for further information to complete his review and was "satisfied with the state police investigation."
Had he been convinced Presslaff had committed a crime, Levco said, it was not relevant to his assignment, which was to determine if Compton should be charged. "That would have been good to know, if it was true," he said. "But that wasn't my focus."
Court records show that on Feb. 3, Levco, in his role as special prosecutor, filed correspondence with the court "that there is insufficient evidence in this cause of a crime and that the matter should be concluded." Records from the investigation have been sealed since no charge was filed.
Pedigo was in charge of the Presslaff missing person case. His boss, BPD Chief Mike Diekhoff, said it was clear Presslaff had committed suicide and that there was no crime to look into.
It's not unusual, he said, for Bloomington officers to leave the city limits to pursue leads in a case that originates in the city. "We frequently go to the county to complete an investigation," Diekhoff said. The coroner's office ultimately was responsible, he said, charged with the official determination of cause and manner of death.
"There was nothing to indicate it was anything but a suicide," he said.
Suicide rattles department
Diekhoff said coworkers liked Presslaff and were shaken by his suicide. He said the police department knew nothing of the abuse allegations until Presslaff did not show up for work and was reported missing.
Ten BPD officers searched for the missing man the night Compton called and said the family did not know where Presslaff was and feared for his safety.
He had been hired as a neighborhood resource officer in March. He was local, had had grown up in the city and had owned the Table Talk Cafe in 1993 before becoming a life coach and counselor. He seemed a good fit for the job, which included responding to citizen concerns as a liaison to solve issues that arise in neighborhoods.
Presslaff listened to people and was known around Bloomington for his devotion to helping children in need. Six months before he died, Presslaff launched a nonprofit organization called Frankie's Closet that was to collect and distribute high-quality clothing to children who land in the foster care system.
"It's not about Frankie," Presslaff said when he announced his venture. "It's about the village of Bloomington, Monroe County and Indiana all coming together to make something positive happen. It will take a lifetime to change the inside, the heart and soul of a child from what happened."
Serving on the board of directors was Cole, the friend who found Presslaff's car at the lake that Saturday and raced to the scene to search. Also on the board of the now-defunct organization was the son who accused Presslaff of abuse, and Devin Price-Presslaff. He was 7 years old when college student Frankie Presslaff adopted him three decades ago.
'The children are safe'
It was 1988, a Wednesday night in April, when Karen Parker reported that her three sons — aged 3, 6 and 9 — were missing from Bloomington's College Mall. The youngest, she said, had been taken from a seat in a shopping cart at Target. The older two, she said, had gone across the parking lot toward a mall entrance and disappeared.
The next day, Bloomington police found the boys. It turns out Parker had dropped them off at a friend's home and said she would return after running an errand. She never came back.
"She couldn't remember where they were," Detective Sgt. Barbara Webb said in a Herald-Times story published 32 years ago. "She was driving the roads and looking all night."
A man named Bill White was the mall security manager back then, and told a reporter "the most important thing is that the children are safe."
Parker was arrested on two charges: child neglect and filing a false police report. The 33-year-old mother went to jail, and her sons were placed in foster homes. The two youngest were the first children Presslaff adopted.
That 6-year-old? He was Devin Parker then.
Devin Price-Presslaff now.