LAWRENCE CO., Ill.—In a somewhat dramatic turn to an already dramatic and gruesome case, an arrest has finally been made in the mid-January beating of a Lawrence County woman in St. Francisville…and authorities didn’t have far to go when making it.
Tommy Shoulders
Yesterday (Friday, February 21, 2014), Tommy Shoulders, 38, being held at the Lawrence County jail on separate counts unrelated to the matter, was charged with a Class X felony Attempted Murder count for his alleged actions against his long-time girlfriend Lea N. Catt, 40, on January 15.
Catt was beaten so severely on that night at Shoulders’ uncle’s residence in St. F that responding officer Billy “PeeWee” Darnell, upon viewing her lying on the floor unresponsive, when calling for an ambulance told dispatch that her wounds appeared as though “somebody had bit her face off.”
Surgeons at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis later advised that while they couldn’t state it conclusively, in their opinion, it appeared as though she was a victim of blunt force trauma…but there was no weapon to have been found at either the residence where Catt was beaten, nor the location where Shoulders was later discovered hiding, just outside of Lawrenceville near the radio station building of WAKO. Shoulders was taken in and jailed on a separate charge stemming from a beating of another man in December of 2013, which was a violation of terms of his release on yet another situation of battery against Catt, to which he’d already entered a plea and was awaiting sentencing in Lawrence County.
Lea N. Catt, DOC mug
The charge came about, not because of blood evidence collected from the clothing Shoulders was wearing when he was apprehended by police hours later, but because Catt, who is still recovering from her grievous injuries in the hospital in Indiana, was conscious and alert enough this past week to write three words on a scratch pad: “Tommy” and “ball bat.”
This was enough for authorities to provide a positive identification from the victim, as well as a weapon, and prosecutor Chris Quick filed the charges (which also included felony Aggravated Domestic Battery) and Shoulders was advised of the situation while in jail in Lawrence.
Catt, it’s been reported to us, has had both sides of her skull shattered, left and right, and is still facing surgeries.
Shoulders is set for a preliminary hearing on the new charge on delivery date of the next print version of Disclosure, March 19, 2014, at 11 a.m. before Judge Robert Hopkins.