***MEDIA ADVISORY***

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 18, 2014

WINKLEMAN PLEADS GUILTY TO 2013 KNIFEPOINT ROBBERY OF TWO WOMEN AT ELKHART HAIR SALON CONTRIBUTING TO A TOTAL SENTENCE OF 96 YEARS IN IDOC

Media Contact: Curtis T. Hill, Jr. (574) 296-1888

On November 17, 2014, immediately prior to jury selection in Elkhart County Circuit Court, Tyrone Winkleman pleaded guilty to Armed Robbery, a Class B felony, with an agreed sentence of 20 years in the Indiana Department of Correction. Twenty years is the maximum sentence for a Class B felony.

On July 24, 2013, seventy-five year old Janice Kramer was finishing her weekly appointment with eighty-seven year old Betty Schmuhl at Studio 327 located at 327 North Main Street in downtown Elkhart. The women were alone in the shop, and as Schmuhl sat under the dryer, a man, later identified as Tyrone Winkleman, approached the back door asking Kramer if she could trim his beard. Kramer allowed him inside at which point Winkleman pulled out a knife, slammed her against the wall, and demanded the money in the shop. The women provided him with a total of approximately $100 in cash, at which time he shoved them into a tiny storage closet in a back room and pushed various items in front of it, including a mini refrigerator.

Kramer had cleaned the outside of the refrigerator that day, and police were able to lift latent prints from the front of it that were later sent to the Indiana State Police Laboratory in Fort Wayne. Through descriptions of the suspect and reports, the lead Elkhart Police investigator, Tim Freel, was able to develop Tyrone Winkleman as a suspect. A positive fingerprint identification was made by the ISP lab, concluding the fingerprints found on the refrigerator were Winkleman’s.

Later in the evening on July 24 and into the early morning hours of July 25, 2013, Tyrone Winkleman attacked and held hostage a man who was transporting RVs when the man checked into his room at an Elkhart motel. Winkleman was convicted in that matter at a separate trial in Elkhart Circuit Court in March 2014 and was ultimately sentenced to seventy-six years in the Indiana Department of Correction.

Winkleman's sentencing is scheduled for December 4, 2014 in Elkhart Circuit Court. This case was prepared by Deputy Prosecuting Attorneys Kathleen Gring and Don Pitzer.

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“Under Indiana law, all persons arrested for a criminal offense are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.”