Indiana woman admits guilt in 2011 patricide

An Indiana woman has pleaded guilty but mentally ill to killing her father by setting him on fire in 2011.

The Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office filed an agreement with 30-year-old Nina M. Holbrook on Friday, according to Richmond media reports.

The Centerville, Ind., resident pleaded guilty to murder and arson resulting in bodily injury, and will serve concurrent sentences of 55 and 50 years, if the judge assigned to the case accepts the deal.

She told police four years ago that she poured fuel on Carl D. Holbrook, 50, and set him on fire using a candle, according to an affidavit of probable cause.

Her father was flown to Miami Valley Hospital, where he died.

A man who was supposed to meet Carl Holbrook at his house on Chapel Road in Richmond found him on the porch, badly burned. According to the affidavit, Carl Holbrook told the man Nina Holbrook set him on fire.

According to the document, she climbed out of her bedroom window and walked through a field before she was spotted by her uncle.

The uncle, Harvey Holbrook, told investigators at the time that Nina Holbrook admitted to him she had “torched” her father, according to the affidavit.

Nina Holbrook’s attorney has filed to use mental illness as a defense twice since his client’s arrest and each time she was examined to determine her competency for trial. She has spent a majority of the last four years receiving mental health treatment at Logansport State Hospital, according to the media reports.

A hearing on the change of plea in the case or the sentencing has not been scheduled.

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