Acquitted in ex-wife’s slaying, Jarod Ingram talks about all he lost and hopes to regain

The day after a jury found him not guilty of stabbing his ex-wife to death in 2012, Jarod Ingram sat for an interview with the Ledger-Enquirer and talked about the six years he spent awaiting trial in the murder case.

“If I focused on my problem, it would be like standing with my nose to a brick wall,” he said of the years he lived under suspicion of murder.

Tuesday’s verdict tore that wall away, he said: “Yesterday was like just watching those bricks go crumbling to the ground.... It’s beautiful. It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”

His ex-wife Ciara Ingram, 28, was found slain June 8, 2012, in her second-floor bedroom of Apt. 206 at the Village on Cherokee, 3113 Cherokee Ave. Her body was so badly decomposed that investigators believed she was killed six days earlier, on June 2, the last time she used her cell phone.

That was the day Jarod Ingram brought the couple’s two kids to her apartment to tell their mother goodbye, as she was moving home to Indiana, and the children were to spend the summer with their father before rejoining their mother in the fall, when the next school year began.

Police alleged the ex-husband stabbed Ciara Ingram three times in the neck as their children waited for him outside, in his car. At the time, the Ingrams’ son was 8 years old and their daughter was 6.

Jarod Ingram was questioned for hours the night of June 8, 2012, but not charged with murder until the following July 1. He spent 15 months in jail before a judge dropped his bonds to a level he could afford, and then waited years more for his trial.

He lost two jobs while jailed, and after his release, few employers wanted to hire him upon learning he was charged with murder. One business summoned security and had him escorted from the building when he admitted he was awaiting trial. Others never called him back.

Eventually he got a job at a hardware store, where he became an assistant manager.

In January 2016, he remarried. His new wife, Katie, was an old friend he’d known since they were in band class together at Shaw High School. She never doubted his innocence, he said.

Others who never lost faith in him included his mother, Pat Ingram, who’s in the Chaplain Services Department at St. Francis Hospital, where nuns with the Sisters of Mercy offered him their support. He also was comforted by members of the Asbury United Methodist Church, which he used to attend, and from Pierce Chapel United Methodist, which he joined because it was Katie Ingram’s church.

“I’ve been able to find fulfillment where I can,” he said Tuesday, just hours after jurors found him not guilty of all charges related to Ciara Ingram’s death.

But he has not been able to reunite with his children, whom he has not been allowed to contact since they had a supervised visit on June 11, 2012.

His son now is 13, and his daughter is 12. Both testified during his nearly month-long trial that started May 3.

He would like to have custody of the children again, but defense attorney Mike Reynolds said that likely will be a challenge: Ciara Ingram’s mother got custody of the kids when Jarod Ingram was suspected of murder, and they now have been living in Indiana for six years. That could pose a jurisdictional issue, requiring the father to go to court in Indiana to regain custody, Reynolds said.

Ingram, meanwhile, must rebuild his life, now that the suspicion spawned by the charges he faced no longer shadow him.

This story was originally published May 30, 2018 at 4:25 PM with the headline "Acquitted in ex-wife’s slaying, Jarod Ingram talks about all he lost and hopes to regain."