CROWN POINT, Ind. — A Tennessee man has been charged with murder in the 1992 fatal shootings of a Gary, Indiana, woman and her 4-year-old daughter, the FBI said Monday.
Victor Lofton of Humboldt, Tennessee, was charged last week in Lake County Superior Court with two counts of murder in the July 1992 killings of Felicia Howard, 21, and her daughter, DenNisha Howard, who were found dead inside their Gary apartment, the FBI said in a news release.
Lofton, 57, was arrested by police in Jackson, Tennessee, on Friday and is currently awaiting extradition back to Lake County, Indiana, the FBI said.
Online court records do not list an attorney who could speak on Lofton’s behalf.
The FBI said its Gang Response Investigative Team, or GRIT, began looking into the unsolved Gary killings in February 2019.
GRIT member Detective Lt. Nicholas Wardrip of the Hobart Police Department said Lofton was interviewed by investigators in September 2020, and he denied knowing either of the victims and said he wasn’t in Indiana at the time of the killings.
“Investigators utilized DNA technology and interviewed witnesses to bring the case together against Lofton,” Wardrip said in a statement. “… This was a horrific crime that shocked our local community in 1992.”
FBI Indianapolis GRIT Task Force Supervisory Special Agent Michael Peasley said the “GRIT Task Force will never rest to ensure justice for those who have been victimized, even if it’s 29 years later.”
