Police said witness statements and community tips helped turn a late-night death call into a murder arrest within hours.
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — Indianapolis police said detectives pieced together a murder case in less than two days after Kimberly Stewart, 51, was found dead in the backyard of her South Lynhurst Drive home, leading to the arrest of Travis Wolfe, 45, before sunrise.
The speed of the case became one of its central facts. Officers were dispatched just before 11 p.m. Tuesday to a report of an unresponsive woman. By early Thursday, Wolfe had been charged with murder. In between, investigators said, they gathered witness statements, tracked down the suspect across the city and relied on community members whose information helped tighten the timeline.
Police began with a scene in a backyard and a victim pronounced dead where she was found. Stewart was discovered near a wooden fence and an outdoor spa behind the house in the 1300 block of South Lynhurst Drive. Officers described injuries consistent with trauma, and the investigation quickly shifted from a death inquiry to a homicide case. Detectives identified Wolfe as a person of interest after speaking with a friend who had gone to the home and with others who knew the couple. Stewart lived at the residence, investigators said, while Wolfe lived in the garage. Sometime after the body was found, officers tracked Wolfe to the area of East 19th Street and North Drexel Avenue, several miles away on the city’s northeast side. He was taken into custody first on a separate warrant tied to unlawful possession of a firearm by a serious violent felon. That arrest gave detectives time to question him while they continued to build the case around Stewart’s death.
Investigators said the breakthrough came not from a single piece of evidence but from multiple accounts pointing in the same direction. One friend told police the couple argued often and said Wolfe had made threats a day earlier. Another witness told detectives he was outside about 10:30 p.m. Tuesday when he heard a woman yell and then saw a man between the fence and spa swinging something toward the ground. The witness also reported hearing the man yell at a dog to be quiet. Police later identified that man as Wolfe, according to the affidavit cited by news reports. A friend who went looking for Stewart also provided key details. He said he returned to the property shortly before 11 p.m., found the dog outside and the back door locked, then called Stewart’s phone and followed the ringtone to her body. Police and local broadcasters later pointed to that friend’s account as one of the pieces that helped detectives move quickly.
Wolfe’s own statement, as described in the affidavit, became another part of the developing timeline. He allegedly told officers that he and Stewart had argued and that he left the residence in her Dodge Nitro. He then said he noticed the vehicle was nearly out of gas, returned and switched to a BMW. He denied hitting Stewart with an ax. Detectives, however, were comparing that account with what witnesses said they saw and heard at the home later in the evening. The emerging picture was of a narrow window between the reported argument, the witness account around 10:30 p.m. and the 11 p.m. emergency call. Public reporting does not resolve every minute of that sequence, and court records released so far leave some details open. Still, for investigators, the overlap between the suspect’s account and the outside witness statements appears to have been enough to support an overnight probable cause filing.
The case also drew attention because of how much of the early evidence came from ordinary people rather than specialized forensic disclosures. Friends described the relationship, neighbors reported what they heard, and the person who went looking for Stewart became the one who found her. Police said that combination of detective work and public cooperation mattered. Deputy Chief Kendale Adams said community members provided information that helped secure the murder charge. That public statement cast the arrest not simply as a fast police response, but as a case shaped by residents willing to speak up while the investigation was still unfolding. At the same time, several issues remain unresolved in the public record, including whether investigators recovered the suspected weapon and what additional forensic testing may show about the backyard or the vehicles connected to the case.
An autopsy later found that Stewart died from blunt force trauma, according to police. One local report said a forensic pathologist found injuries consistent with a dull ax or the blunt side of an ax. Those findings, when paired with witness statements that Wolfe was known to carry an ax, gave detectives a more detailed account of what may have happened, though prosecutors still must prove the allegations in court. By just before 1 a.m. Thursday, police said Wolfe had been charged with murder. Booking records showed him in the Marion County jail. Because police affidavits establish probable cause rather than guilt, the case now shifts to prosecutors, defense attorneys and the court calendar. Hearings, evidence motions and further lab work will determine how much more of the fast-moving overnight investigation becomes part of the public record.
Adams praised “the relentless work of our detectives and the courage of the community” in remarks released after the arrest. The official language was brief, but the timeline itself carried the message police wanted to send: a woman was found dead late Tuesday, a suspect was located within hours and a murder charge followed before many residents woke up Thursday. The compressed pace does not lessen the gravity of the case. Instead, it highlights how quickly detectives can lock onto a suspect when witness accounts, officer interviews and physical findings begin to match.
Wolfe remains jailed while the murder case moved from overnight police work into the slower stages of court review. The next milestone is the formal court process that will test the probable cause case assembled in those first critical hours.
Author note: Last updated April 7, 2026.