A 20-year-old Indiana man is behind bars, accused of killing his mother and burning her body in the backyard.
Nicholas Yates was arrested after police investigated his own missing person report for Cheryl Yates, WTHR reported.
Court documents say Yates reported his mother missing on October 5, telling Vermillion County deputies that he last saw her two days earlier.
He further told police that he’d been calling his mother’s phone, although the phone was at the house, because she’d gotten a new phone but kept the same number. When officers asked to see the phone left behind, he said he’d sold it “because he needed the money.”
Then police asked to go inside the home, but he declined, saying he’d asked two people to move in after his mother disappeared because he didn’t like to be alone. He said he needed to ask them if it was all right for police to come in because they were staying in his mother’s bedroom.
A deputy asked Yates if he knew anyone who might want to hurt his mother, and he replied, “No, she was the sweetest person.” The deputy noted that his use of the word “was” was suspicious.
Later, Yates showed the deputies an appa that showed his mother’s last location at a bingo hall on October 3, but he later admitted he was the one at the bingo hall and that he had his mother’s phone with him at the time. That’s when he told them he sold the phone at a Kroger kiosk after leaving the bingo hall.
Yates eventually let the deputies look inside the house, and they noted that his mother’s pill organizer had stopped being used on the morning of October 3. Then they went into the backyard and found a “smoldering pile of papers.”
Yates told them that the papers belonged to his mother and that he had burned them because she wasn’t there and he didn’t want to get in trouble for having confidential documents.
Eventually, Sheriff Mike Holtkamp spoke with Cheryl Yates’ supervisor at her job, who said that she had left work at about 2:30 p.m. on October 3, saying she was going to “kill him” when she got home, apparently referring to her son who, she said, had been spending money hand over fist while she paid all the bills.
Eventually deputies also spoke with the two people who were allegedly living at the home, and they said they did not go the Kroger kiosk with Yates as he said they did. They said Yates was in the home’s attic all that day. Over the weekend, they said, they went to stores and restaurants with him, and he paid for everything.
Then, deputies sought cell phone records for Cheryl Yates’ phone and noted that it pinged in a wooded area some miles away, but they were not able to locate here.
Finally, deputies obtained a search warrant for the home and found that all of the mother’s clothing was missing, although her medication remained. Then they found bones in the burn pit, including one that appeared to be a human spinal cord.
Once they made that discovery, deputies again questioned Yates, and this time he said he had taken his mother’s phone and computer to an electronics store and sold them.
Eventually, however, he admitted that he’d argued with his mother on October 3 when she asked him to move out. He said he “struck his mother in the throat” and her face turned blue. She fell backward and hit her head on a metal bed frame, then hit her head on a wooden chest and “became unresponsive.”
Yates told investigators he put his mother’s body in the box until the next day, then pushed the box into the back yard to the burn pit, where he burned the body.
In further interviews, the two friends told investigators that Yates had asked them to move in on September 30, telling them he needed to know by October 3 because his mother was moving out.
Yates was formally charged on October 7 with one count of murder. His trial is set for February 24, 2026.
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[Featured image: Nicholas Yates/Vermillion County Sheriff’s Office]
