Left: Joshua Alexander Farmer (Fishers Police Dept.). Right: Joshua Farmer’s ex-wife, Kaylah Ann Farmer (currentobituary.com). Inset: Speedway gas station where Joshua Farmer killed his ex-wife (Google Maps).
A 34-year-old man in Indiana will likely spend the rest of his life behind bars for stalking and killing his 33-year-old ex-wife, following her to a local Speedway gas station in a borrowed car where he shot her more than a dozen times two years ago.
Superior Court Judge David K. Najjar on Wednesday ordered Joshua Farmer to serve 80 years in a state correctional facility for the 2023 slaying of Kaylah Ann Farmer, records show. Joshua Farmer last month reached a deal with prosecutors in which he pleaded guilty to one count of murder and one count of stalking with a deadly weapon. In exchange for his plea, additional charges of criminal recklessness with a deadly weapon and unlawful carrying of a handgun were dismissed.
Najjar handed down a 65-year term on the murder charge and a 15-year term on the stalking charge, to be served consecutively. The judge also ordered that Farmer receive no credit for time already served.
Several of the victim’s family members read victim impact statements during the emotional sentencing hearing, according to a report from Indianapolis NBC affiliate WTHR
“No sentence will ever bring her back or erase the pain we live with every single day,” the victim’s mother, Tracey Walser, reportedly told the court. “But a just sentence can help us begin to heal. It can allow us to finally take a step forward knowing that the person responsible has been held accountable.”
Alisha Landis, Kaylah Farmer’s sisters who recently adopted her and Joshua Farmer’s three children, also addressed those in attendance.
Love true crime? Sign up for our newsletter, The Law&Crime Docket, to get the latest real-life crime stories delivered right to your inbox.
“This is the last time you will be acknowledged by me or by anyone in our family,” she reportedly said. “Once this hearing is over, you will be erased from our lives. You have no children. You have no legacy. The boys you once knew do not speak your name and they never will. I will spend the rest of my life making sure you are forgotten. Gone. Bye bye. You will have no power here, not over me, not over Kaylah’s children.”
When given the chance to speak, Joshua Farmer reportedly chose to remain silent.
As Law&Crime previously reported, officers with the Fishers Police Department at about 5 p.m. on June 28, 2023, responded to a call regarding a shooting at the Speedway gas station located near 116th Street and Allisonville Road, which is about 20 miles northeast of Indianapolis.
Upon arriving at the scene, first responders said they located an adult female victim — later identified as Kaylah Ann Farmer — who appeared to have suffered multiple gunshot wounds while seated in a red Chrysler van. She was pronounced dead on the scene.
In a probable cause affidavit, police said they obtained surveillance footage from the gas station showing that Farmer pulled into the establishment shortly after his ex-wife and “completely just unloaded [his gun] into her window,” Indianapolis NBC affiliate WTHR reported. A witness reportedly told investigators that they remembered hearing about “30 to 40 total shots” being fired during the attack.
Farmer was believed to be driving an orange or maroon Kia Soul that belonged to someone else when he allegedly ambushed his ex-wife. Investigators said that prior to the shooting, Farmer spent the day following Kaylah Farmer before finally deciding to proceed with the attack when she stopped for gas on her way home from work.
A subsequent autopsy revealed that Kaylah Farmer suffered “more than 15 gunshot wounds” throughout her body. An officer observing the procedure said that “over 25 bullet fragments were removed from Kaylah’s body,” per the affidavit.
The day after the shooting, detectives from multiple law enforcement agencies were conducting surveillance in the area of the attack when one of them spotted “a pair of shoes behind a growth of shrubs and exited his vehicle,” the affidavit states. The detective said he approached the bush and “made eye contact with the subject and identified him as Joshua Farmer.” Farmer was ordered to the ground and taken into custody without incident.
Prior to his ex-wife’s murder, Farmer was arrested on June 5 and hit with a total of 10 felonies, including confinement, strangulation, domestic battery, intimidation and pointing a firearm, records show.
In court documents filed by prosecutors in Hamilton County Superior Court, prosecutors reportedly claimed it was common knowledge that Kaylah Farmer was a victim of domestic violence at the hands of her husband and was known to wear excessive amounts of makeup to hide the bruises on her face and neck from being punched and choked.
One day after he was arrested for murder, Farmer appeared before a judge on a swath of charges from May 2023 in which he allegedly attacked Kaylah Farmer. Court documents state that Farmer’s 11-year-old son told police that he heard his father “start choking Kaylah to the point he could hear her struggling to breathe.” The child allegedly said that he “could hear the accused punching” his mother on the staircase of their home “for some time.”
The boy also told investigators about a particularly disturbing instance in which his father sat him and his mother in chairs facing each other, WTHR reported. The child reportedly said that his father then took a firearm, held it to his mother’s head, and “asked mom to choose between herself or him.”
