A Gary teen has been charged in the death of a 61-year-old Gary woman who had been missing for several days before her body was discovered in 2015.
Calvin Dimetrius Poston, 17, will be tried as an adult on charges of murder, murder in perpetration of robbery, robbery resulting in serious bodily injury, rape and criminal confinement, which were filed in the death of Carolyn Rimpson, 61, of Gary.
Rimpson died of blunt force trauma, and her death was ruled a homicide, an autopsy at the Lake County coroner’s office showed.
At the time, Rimpson had worked at a Strack & Van Til store for 17 years but failed to show up for work on Sept. 24, 2015. Rimpson, who was mentally challenged and had Alzheimer’s disease, last was seen at 8 a.m. Sept. 24, 2015, near 40th Avenue and Connecticut Street in the Glen Park section of Gary, according to court documents. Her body was found Sept. 29, 2015, along the railroad tracks in the 4000 block of Broadway, about three blocks from where she lived, said Jack Hamady, Gary police commander of investigations.
In a separate case, Rimpson also is charged as an adult with attempted rape and battery resulting in serious bodily injury to an endangered adult from a Nov. 29, 2016, incident in Gary.
Early in the investigation, Gary police investigators found Poston in possession of some of Rimpson’s personal property, Hamady said. Poston was interviewed, but the case went cold, he said.
In January, Detective Sgt. Jeremy Ogden, a member of the Lake County Metro Homicide Unit, started investigating the case with Detective Alex Jones, Hamady said. By the end of January, Poston was reinterviewed. “He ended up knowing intimate details that only the killer would know,” Hamady said. “He gave a full confession on both crimes.”
“It was a great job on a cold case,” Hamady said. He credited the initial interviews and evidence collection as a good start in the investigation that led to charges being filed.
Sishman Rimpson, Carolyn Rimpson’s nephew, said he was relieved to hear of the charges. “I’m just glad that justice is being served,” the disabled Air Force veteran said. “It was a very, very tough time for the family, but God is good,” he said. The family had just lost his grandmother a month earlier. “Her unexpected death was very hard.”
“The shock value that his young man was only 15 at the time” made it even more difficult to comprehend, said Rimpson, who lives in Texas. Rimpson said he has 16-year-old triplet sons turning 15 in a couple of weeks, and twin 13-year-olds who loved their “great Auntie Carolyn.”
Rimpson, who grew up in Gary, said the family was overwhelmed “with the abundance of love that our family received from the city. It gave us hope. We want to say thank you.”
His aunt was known as “Grandma Carolyn” in the community and at work. “Everybody knew who she was. She caught the same bus, walked home the same way,” he said.
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