Former Starke County Sheriff's deputy pleads guilty in criminal case from 2020

Wednesday, September 24, 2025 at 12:10 PM

By Kathy Bottorff

In January of 2020, the Indiana State Police Investigations Division at the Lowell Post was requested to initiate an investigation into the misappropriation of evidence at the Starke County Sheriff’s Department. The investigation centered around drugs and cash that went missing from the evidence room at the sheriff’s department.

As a result of this investigation, in September of 2022, a grand jury was assembled, and an indictment was subsequently brought against Don Ferguson with the following charges:

Official Misconduct - Level 6 Felony (4 counts)
Theft of a Firearm - Level 6 Felony
Theft - Class A Misdemeanor
False Reporting - Class B Misdemeanor
Conversion - Class A Misdemeanor

For the next three years, this case worked its way through the court system, and in August 2025, a jury trial began and concluded with not-guilty findings on four of the eight charges. He was found not guilty of two of the official misconduct charges, the theft of a firearm and misdemeanor theft.

There was a hung jury on the remaining four charges.

On Tuesday, Don Ferguson pleaded guilty to filing a false police report as a Class B Misdemeanor. The remaining charges were dismissed. He was sentenced to 60 days in the Starke County Jail to begin immediately and four months of probation upon release from the jail.

A special judge and a special prosecutor were assigned to this case. The judge was Judge Crystal Kocher (Pulaski County), and Stanley Levco (Evansville) was the prosecutor.