Lawrence M. "Larry" Collins, 62, died October 3 in his niece Sarah Walter's car, which was stopped along 126th Street in Carmel at the time. Walter, who has been arrested and charged with Collins' murder, was driving her uncle home from an appointment with his podiatrist. In a statement issued through her attorney, Walter said, "I know it's the time of year when it's hard to adjust the air in the car. You turn on the vent and it gets chilly or steams up the windows, but you put on the heat to clear the windows and it gets too warm." Her statement continued, "But Uncle Larry just kept fiddling and fiddling and fiddling, even after I told him over and over to leave it alone or just turn it off. But no, he kept right on fiddling and fiddling. Well, I don't quite remember what happened after that." Police were initially reluctant to call the incident a murder, based on their disbelief that a fully-grown, overweight man could fit entirely between the slats of the dashboard vent on a PT Cruiser. Medical examiners later verified, though, that Collins' whole body had indeed been stuffed in there. "I can't imagine the force that must have taken," said John Kramer, one of the investigators charged with recovering the body. "It's like one of those tornado putting a straw through a telephone pole kind of things. Somebody would have really had to snap to do that."
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