Rainbolt sentencing hearing starts today

Joshuah Rainbolt, 21, Campbellsburg, faced Judge Larry Medlock to be sentenced for the murder of his roommate, Blake Box-Skinner, in January 2017.

"This is about hiding," said Prosecutor Dustin Houchin. "This has been about hiding from the beginning. The sentencing will be about what happened after the murder."

Rainbolt pled guilty to shooting Box-Skinner with a shotgun and then hiding his body in a shed behind the home they shared on Lost River Road before disposing of the gun in the White River.

Box-Skinner's body was found by his uncle, Indiana State Trooper Jonathan Cain. Cain spoke at the hearing, saying the shed stood out because it was the only outbuilding with a closed door. After moving debris and detritus that held the door closed, Cain said he opened the door and "I seen legs," he said.

A clothes washer was laying on top of Box-Skinner's head and torso. Cain moved the washer to find the rest of his nephew's body, surrounded by cardboard boxes and bags of items in storage. Photos were shown in court of a young man with his legs propped up on boxes and his head toward the opening of the shed, wearing a pair of jeans and a brown coat. When the picture was about to be show, Cain, on the stand, shook his head at the gathering of family and friends and mouthed, "Don't look."

After finding his nephew, Cain said he walked around to the front of the home, where his sister, Carol Box and his wife were standing.

"I couldn't tell my sister," he said. "She read my face and my expression and she dropped to her knees and wept."

Box-Skinner's older sister, Samantha DuVall, said he was "one of the kindest souls I've met." She said there were so many friends and family members, they couldn't all fit in the funeral home for the service.

"Our memory of him will always be tainted with sadness," she told Rainbolt. "That's not OK. You took him from us. Whatever small slight was worthy of taking my brother's life, you made yourself judge, jury and then executioner. We deserve an explanation and you haven't decided we are worth even that. We also deserve as much peace as we can get. We deserve our brother back, but that's something we'll never have. He'll never be able to walk through the door with that crooked little smile. I miss my brother every day."

She asked Medlock to be tough when it came to sentencing and to take into account "all the sleepless nights and tears my mother and Blake's father have shed every single day."

"We deserve justice," she said. "Blake deserves justice."

Seth Harvey, Box-Skinner's older brother, said the pain he felt was too difficult to write down.

"You're a murderer and a thief," he told Rainbolt. "You stole my brother."

He lifted a pendant on a chain around his neck and showed the court a tattoo he got on his shoulder. "I shouldn't be wearing memorial pieces of my younger brother," he said. "I can't sleep. It's hard to do my job and I'm an entertainer. I wear a mask every day to hide my pain. I moved in with my mother and father to make sure they're OK … I hope you suffer as much as my family has suffered and I'll never forgive you."

Luther Fleenor is Box-Skinner's cousin.

"He had that crooked smile, mischievous," he said. "He had a great deal of respect for me and in turn, I had great respect for him. … It's hard. I have to go on."

Fleenor said Box-Skinner had a "soft spot" for those he felt didn't get a "fair shake" in life. He told of how attentive Box-Skinner was to Fleenor's young daughter, who was in a special needs program at school.

"He was a representation of what I wish I could have been when I was his age," he said. "… He was the best kind of philanthropist. He gave from the heart. Blake was very, very special and had a bright, bright future."

As others spoke, the grief in the room became palpable as his grandmother, Alice Ryker, and parents, Carol Box and Derek Skinner, took the stand.

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