Terry Ogle reported his wife’s death himself, beginning an investigation that ended with a voluntary-manslaughter conviction and 15-year prison term.
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — The criminal case against Terry Ogle began with the defendant on the telephone. On Jan. 17, 2025, the retired Indianapolis school principal called 911 from his home and told a dispatcher there had been violence. He acknowledged that his wife, Mary Ogle, was dead and that he was responsible. Eighteen months later, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
The call immediately narrowed what police needed to determine when they were sent to the northwest Indianapolis residence shortly after 1 p.m. Ogle told the dispatcher that Mary had been struck with a hammer and indicated that she had already been unresponsive for some time. When asked about trying CPR, he said it was too late. Rather than a report from a neighbor or an unidentified caller, the emergency communication came from the man who would soon become the homicide suspect.
Officers with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department reached the home in the 2800 block of Questend Drive South and found Mary Ogle, 76, in a rear bedroom. She had sustained blunt-force trauma and was pronounced dead at the scene. Court records described by news organizations later detailed suspected blood in several parts of the house. Terry Ogle was present when police arrived and was taken into custody.
The officers also saw that Ogle had an injury to his wrist. Authorities described it as self-inflicted, and he was taken to a hospital for treatment while under police supervision before being jailed. The death investigation quickly became a murder case. Ogle’s own account, however, meant investigators were not starting with the usual uncertainty about who might have caused the fatal injuries. His statements instead became evidence in deciding why the killing occurred and what offense the state could prove.
Ogle expanded on his explanation when speaking with authorities. He said he had been depressed and believed Mary was having an affair, although that suspicion has not been independently established in the available reporting. He said the two had not been arguing immediately before the violence and described himself as suddenly losing control. That account became significant later because Indiana law allows a killing that otherwise would amount to murder to be treated as voluntary manslaughter when it is committed under legally recognized “sudden heat.”
There was another immediate admission outside the 911 system. Court records cited in news reports said Ogle sent a message to a family member after the attack saying he was going to jail and had killed Mary. Taken together with the emergency call and his later police interviews, the communications created a record in which Ogle repeatedly acknowledged causing his wife’s death. Reporting on the eventual trial said he also admitted the killing during the proceedings.
For more than a year after the initial arrest, the case remained a murder prosecution. Then Ogle waived a jury and proceeded to a bench trial, placing the verdict in the hands of Marion County Judge Marshelle Dawkins Broadwell. After the multiday proceeding, Broadwell found him guilty June 4, 2026, not of murder but of the lesser offense of voluntary manslaughter. Reports on the decision said she determined Ogle had acted under sudden heat and that his judgment was likely altered during the attack.
The ruling gave legal significance to Ogle’s emotional state without validating every claim he made about what preceded the killing. His suspicion that Mary was unfaithful remained his assertion. The finding of sudden heat did not establish that an affair existed, nor did it make the killing justified. Under Indiana law, sudden heat is a mitigating factor that can reduce murder to voluntary manslaughter when the necessary legal conditions are proved.
The next major event was sentencing. On July 17, Broadwell imposed a 15-year prison term. True Crime News reported that Ogle was given credit for 547 days already served, reflecting the long period he had spent in custody since his January 2025 arrest. The sentencing converted a case that began with a same-day admission and murder accusation into a final trial-court judgment for voluntary manslaughter.
That legal timeline unfolded alongside a separate effort by former students and relatives to describe Mary Ogle as more than the victim named in a homicide case. She was widely known as Marge Embry and had spent most of her adult life working in education. Her obituary said she was hired by Indianapolis Public Schools in 1970 and spent much of her career at Forest Manor Junior High School, where generations of students encountered her as a math educator.
Her work continued after her public-school career ended. The obituary said Mary Ogle co-founded and operated the Indianapolis Algebra Project, which focused on improving mathematics skills in marginalized communities. She also created scholarship and mentoring opportunities and volunteered in the community. Former students speaking after her death remembered someone who sometimes helped with needs extending beyond a standard lesson plan and who remained a strong presence in their memories years later.
Terry Ogle’s professional life was connected to the same school system. He served as principal of Forest Manor Middle School and, like Mary, retired from Indianapolis Public Schools in 2006. Reports on the couple’s background described decades of combined service in local education. That history made the killing resonate with people who knew one or both of them through schools rather than through the neighborhood where the crime occurred.
The neighborhood account was markedly different from the violence described in the court case. Residents said the Ogles had been seen walking together, and one neighbor recalled that they appeared to do many things as a couple. When police gathered outside the house after Mary’s death, an IMPD spokesperson described what had happened as tragic and noted the quiet character of the surrounding area. Nothing about the ordinary residential setting explained what officers had just encountered inside.
The 911 call remained the clearest starting point for everything that followed. It brought police to Mary Ogle, identified her husband as the person saying he had caused her death and preserved some of his earliest statements about the killing. Investigators later collected physical evidence and additional statements, but the case did not begin with a hunt for a suspect. It began with a confession conveyed through the emergency system.
That unusual beginning also shaped how the later trial was understood. Because Ogle did not deny causing the fatal injuries, the proceeding focused heavily on how the law classified his conduct. Broadwell’s sudden-heat finding moved the case from murder to voluntary manslaughter, and the July sentence fixed the punishment at 15 years. The credit for 547 days served will be applied to that term.
The emergency call that opened the investigation therefore ended up as only one part of a much larger record, but it captured the essential fact that never changed through the case: Ogle said he had killed his wife. What changed was the legal judgment attached to that act. After the bench trial and sentencing, the Marion County case stands as a voluntary-manslaughter conviction, while Mary Ogle is remembered by family and former students for decades of education and community work that preceded the final day of her life.
Author note: Last updated August 24, 2026.