ANDERSON — An inmate at the Pendleton Correctional Industrial Facility has been sentenced to 13 additional years for trying to have his ex-girlfriend killed.
Chester Kardel, 46, pleaded guilty in Madison County Superior Court 1 Tuesday to Class B felony conspiracy to commit aggravated battery. He will serve 13 years after he finishes a previous 10-year sentence in Henry County.
According to a police report, Kardel unintentionally solicited the murder-for-hire skills of an undercover Indiana State trooper in August 2007. Kardel was awaiting trial for holding his ex-girlfriend at gunpoint in 2007. He has since pleaded guilty to Class B felony criminal confinement and is serving 10 years in that case.
Madison County Prosecutor Thomas Broderick said murder-for-hire schemes by inmates are rare.
“Usually, it seems like when they go to jail, they just move on,” he said.
The police report says Kardel asked another inmate if one of the inmate’s motorcycle gang members would be interested in killing his ex-girlfriend, her new boyfriend and her daughter. The inmate told a correctional officer because “Kardel was wanting a kid killed.”
Correctional authorities and Indiana State Police sent a trooper undercover to visit Kardel. Kardel discussed the scheme in code during the first visit. But he discussed payment and how to commit the crime during the next visit.
By that time, he no longer wanted the daughter or new boyfriend killed; he wanted his ex-girlfriend “beat down,” according to the police report.
The report said that, when the trooper asked how Kardel would feel if the woman died during the beating, Kardel responded, “too bad.”
When the officers asked Kardel about trying to have the woman killed – without letting him know about the undercover operation - he said he and the woman were still in love, and he would never want to see her harmed.
“Kardel has attempted to call (the woman) collect 840 times on the prison phone from July 9, 2007 to October 4, 2007,” the report said, noting that would be an average of 9.5 calls per day.
However, none of the calls were accepted.
Officers didn’t find any love notes that Kardel told them were in his cell. But, the report said, they did find a letter to the undercover trooper – addressed to the trooper’s undercover name – and a letter to a person named Ross.
“She let me rot away in prison,” the letter to Ross said. “And I made a promise to myself I would get her back in a way that she will surely suffer for the rest of her life.”
Contact Christina M. Wright, 640-4883, christina.wright@heraldbulletin.com.
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Inmate sentenced to 13 more years in murder-for-hire plot
Chester Kardel, 46, pleads guilty to trying to have his girlfriend killed
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