Timeline: Sarah Jo Pender's crime, escape and court battle

June-July 2000: Sarah Jo Pender, then 21, meets Richard Hull, a convicted felon and drug dealer, at a concert by the band Phish. They start dating and by the August or September of 2000 she and Hull begin sharing a house in the 900 block of Meikel Street with another couple, Andrew Cataldi and Tricia Nordman.

Oct. 24, 2000: In the morning, Pender purchases a 12-gauge shotgun and ammunition at an Indianapolis Wal-Mart store. That evening, Hull uses the shotgun to kill Cataldi and Nordman.

Oct. 24-25, 2000: Pender returns to the house and finds her boyfriend had killed Cataldi and Nordman. She gets Hull blankets and rides with him in a pickup truck as he dumps the bodies in a trash bin in the 800 block of South Meridian Street. She does not report the killings to police.

Oct. 27, 2000: Indianapolis police arrest Hull, then 22, in connection with the murders.

Oct. 28, 2000: Police arrest Pender in the murders.

September-October 2001: Hull's attorney gives prosecutors a letter he claims was penned by Pender in which she confesses to killing the roommates.

In 2005, Hull repeatedly admitted in court that the letter is a fake.

September 2001: Pender and another inmate, convicted child molester Floyd Pennington, strike up a jailhouse pen-pal romance. The two arrange to fake illnesses and meet at Wishard Memorial Hospital on Sept. 22, 2001. Pennington tells police that during this meeting Pender confided in him that she manipulated Hull into killing Cataldi and Nordman. Authorities at the jail intercept a letter Pender wrote to Pennington, dated Sept. 22, 2001, confirming the two were together at Wishard.

July 2002: A Marion County jury finds Pender guilty of the murders of Cataldi and Nordman. During the Aug. 22, 2002, sentencing hearing, Deputy Prosecutor Larry Sells calls Pender the "female Charles Manson" and argues that she had manipulated her boyfriend to kill the roommates in a dispute over drugs and money.

August 2002: Marion Superior Court Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson sentences Pender to 110 years in prison.

January 2003: Hull pleads guilty to double murder; Magnus-Stinson sentences him to 75 years in prison.

May 2004 - September 2005: Hull wins an appeal for a new sentencing but a judge increases his prison time to 90 years, citing an affidavit Hull signed in 2003 admitting that Pender's alleged confession letter was a fake. On Sept. 6, 2005, Hull testified in court that he got a fellow inmate named Steve Logan to forge the confession letter.

Pender's fingerprints were not on the letter, but prints belonging to Hull and Logan were. Pender's lawyer, James Nave, did not question Logan or suggest the possibility that he had forged the letter during her trial.

During this same 2005 hearing, Hull admits that he shot and killed both victims.

Hull also testifies that he was not concerned about the people he killed.

Hull tells the court that Pender was not present when he shot the victims. She helped, he said, "after the fact."

Aug. 4, 2008: Pender escapes from Rockville Correctional Facility with the help of Correctional Officer Scott Spitler and former cellmate Jamie Long. Spitler and Long are later arrested and convicted for their roles in Pender's escape.

Fall 2008: The TV show "America's Most Wanted" features Pender's story.

Dec. 22, 2008: Police arrest Pender on the north side of Chicago, where she had been living and working under the name Ashley Thompson.

Fall 2009: Sells, the prosecutor who tried Pender's case, helps author Steve Miller do research for a true-crime novel. While poking through the old detective files, Sells and Miller discover a "snitch list" written by key witness Floyd Pennington that lawyers did not know about during her trial.

June 2011: Miller's book, "Girl, Wanted: The Chase for Sarah Pender," is released.

Spring 2012: Sells retires after working part-time for the Clinton County prosecutor. He reads Miller's book and remembers that snitch list. He realizes that this document was an important piece of evidence that should have been given to Pender's lawyer. Sells becomes convinced that Pender was wrongly convicted. He contacts Pender's mother and expresses his willingness to help in the effort to win Pender a fair trial.