On the evening of December 12th, 2012, Sherese Walker Bingham set out with her two German shepherds for what should have been an ordinary walk along the White River in Indianapolis, Indiana. Instead, the fifty-one-year-old woman was found fatally shot on a walking path near the intersection of Limestone and West New York streets, not far from the IUPUI campus. Her dogs remained beside her, fiercely guarding their owner and initially preventing emergency personnel from approaching.
Known to her family as “Rese,” Sherese Bingham was the youngest of three siblings. Relatives remembered her as energetic, generous and devoted to her family. She had no children of her own and treated her German shepherds, May-Day and Tsunami, as members of the family. Sherese had spent much of her adult life working in manufacturing. Her obituary said she worked for RCA for eight years, Navistar for thirteen years and, after the Navistar plant closed, had recently begun working as a machine operator for PepsiCo. She was also a member of New Haven Missionary Baptist Church.
Sherese regularly walked her dogs near the White River, and December 12th appears to have begun as another normal day. Early that evening, however, a passerby discovered her lying on the trail. Indiana State Police responded, but investigators had to wait while animal-control personnel dealt with the two German shepherds, which were behaving protectively around Sherese and would not allow strangers close to her. Once investigators could reach her, it became clear that she had suffered a gunshot wound. A handgun was recovered at the scene.
The gun would become a crucial part of the mystery. Subsequent reporting based on investigative records said ballistics testing determined that Sherese had been shot with her own weapon. Police did not believe she had committed suicide, and investigators also considered the circumstances inconsistent with a simple robbery. No obvious stranger had been seen attacking her, and the continued presence of her two highly protective dogs raised an obvious question: how had anyone been able to get close enough to Sherese to shoot her without being attacked by the animals?
That question inevitably brought investigators’ attention to people the dogs already knew. Sherese had been married for many years to Eugene Bingham Jr. Members of her family later told reporters that the marriage had been experiencing serious problems and that Sherese had learned Eugene had been involved with another woman. Those claims became part of the background examined by investigators, as did Sherese’s life-insurance policies. Eugene denied killing his wife, however, and suspicion alone was not enough to establish who pulled the trigger.
According to investigative material, police also scrutinized Eugene’s account of his movements on the night of the shooting. He reportedly told investigators that he had been at home, where he had fallen asleep while watching television. Detectives examined his telephone records and believed that one call had connected through a cellular-tower sector covering the area where Sherese was found rather than the area around the couple’s home. Investigators regarded the information as potentially significant, but cell-site evidence would later become one of the weaknesses in the prosecution’s case rather than the decisive proof authorities had hoped it might provide.
For more than a year, the investigation continued without an arrest. Then, in July 2014, Indiana State Police arrested Eugene Bingham Jr. and charged him with murder after what authorities described as a nearly twenty-month investigation. He was fifty-three at the time. For Sherese’s family, the arrest appeared to offer the possibility that the case might finally be resolved in court.
But the prosecution never reached a jury. In August 2015, approximately a month before Eugene Bingham was expected to stand trial, prosecutors dismissed the murder charge. The case against him was largely circumstantial, and prosecutors concluded that the available evidence was insufficient to proceed. Because the charge was dismissed rather than taken through a trial ending in an acquittal, prosecutors retained the possibility of filing charges again if stronger evidence emerged. No such charges have been filed.
The dismissal is essential to understanding the case. Eugene Bingham was accused of Sherese’s murder, but the accusation was never proved in court. He was not convicted, and the dismissal left Sherese’s homicide legally unresolved.
The case also produced a separate fight over life-insurance proceeds. Federal court records show that Protective Life Insurance Company brought an interpleader action after Eugene had been charged, asking a court to determine who was legally entitled to money from policies on Sherese’s life. Sherese’s brother Keith Walker Sr., acting as personal representative of her estate, also pursued a wrongful-death claim against Eugene. A federal judge eventually dismissed the remaining federal claims without prejudice in 2016 so the parties could pursue the related issues in Marion Superior Court.
Indiana State Police have not forgotten the case. In December 2024, investigators issued another public request for assistance, describing Sherese’s killing as an active homicide investigation.
Nearly fourteen years after Sherese Walker Bingham was killed, no one has been convicted of her murder.
