Being a probation officer is not for the weak. you just never know what is going to happen. A normal day turns on a dime and this kind of stuff happens.

Thomas Eric Gahl was a 38-year-old United States Probation Officer killed during a routine home visit on September 22, 1986. He went to a residence in Indianapolis, Marion County, Indiana, to administer a drug test to a recently released probationer. Arriving unarmed, he was shot with a shotgun and struck by three separate blasts; he died at the scene. Gahl had served eleven and a half years with the U.S. Probation Office and left behind a wife and two young sons.

The suspect, 41-year-old Michael Wayne Jackson, fled immediately and triggered an eleven-day manhunt. During that period Jackson committed two additional murders and several kidnappings across state lines before taking his own life as law enforcement closed in. Gahl’s family, colleagues, and the community were left to grieve his loss.

If anyone knew Officer Gahl, his work, or had information about his visits in 1986, please share what you remember.