A woman’s friend followed her phone’s ringtone to the backyard and found her dead near an outdoor spa, say police.

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — A friend checking on Kimberly Stewart late Tuesday followed the sound of her ringing cellphone through a backyard on South Lynhurst Drive and found the 51-year-old dead near a wooden fence and outdoor spa, leading police to arrest her boyfriend within hours.

Authorities say the case moved quickly from a welfare check to a homicide arrest because of the timing of witness accounts, the friend’s description of what he found and detectives’ fast work overnight. Travis Wolfe, 45, was jailed and accused of murder after police said Stewart was found with injuries consistent with blunt force trauma and community members helped place him near the scene.

The account in court records begins earlier in the day, when a longtime friend of Stewart texted that he planned to stop by the home to pick up a car title from a vehicle they had sold. The two had known each other about 10 years and worked together selling vehicles, investigators said. He arrived about 4:30 p.m. Tuesday and did not see Stewart, though that alone did not alarm him because police said she often worked overnight shifts at a UPS distribution site and sometimes slept during the day. Her blue Dodge Nitro was at the house, but she did not answer texts. Later that night, he returned just before 11 p.m. and found details he said were wrong: Stewart’s dog was outside, the back door was locked and the garage was empty even though, as police quoted him saying, Wolfe usually did not leave. When he called Stewart’s phone, he followed the ring toward the rear of the property and found her body.

Police said Stewart was lying between a wooden fence and the outdoor spa and was stiff and cool to the touch when the friend reached her. Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officers were called to the property at about 11 p.m. on a report of an unresponsive woman and found injuries consistent with trauma, according to police. Wayne Township medics pronounced Stewart dead at the scene, local outlets reported. Detectives then began interviewing people who knew the couple and tracing Wolfe’s movements. Officers found him less than three hours later near East 19th Street and North Drexel Avenue, about 12 miles from the home. WRTV reported that SWAT officers assisted in taking him into custody. Police first arrested Wolfe on an unrelated firearm warrant, then questioned him about Stewart’s death as detectives continued to collect statements from people around the neighborhood.

The evidence described publicly by investigators centered on two strands: the condition of Stewart’s body and what witnesses said they heard and saw. Police said an autopsy found she died from blunt force trauma, and one local report said the injuries were consistent with a dull ax or the blunt side of an ax. Court records reviewed by news outlets said Wolfe was known to carry an ax, and a friend told police the couple argued often. Another witness told investigators he was in his driveway about 10:30 p.m. Tuesday when he heard a woman yell and saw a man between the fence and spa swinging something toward the ground. The witness also recalled the man yelling at a dog to “shut up,” according to the affidavit. Police later identified that man as Wolfe. Wolfe, for his part, denied striking Stewart and told officers he left after an argument, then returned because Stewart’s Dodge Nitro was low on gas and switched to a BMW.

The setting described in the affidavit added to investigators’ understanding of the relationship and the house where the killing happened. Police said Stewart lived in the home on South Lynhurst Drive while Wolfe lived in the garage. A friend told officers arguments between them were common. The day before Stewart was killed, that friend said, they had argued about a water pump Wolfe had installed in a BMW. He also told investigators Wolfe had been “threatening to kill people” on Monday, yelled at neighbors, believed people were out to get him and did “crazy stuff” in the backyard. Those statements are allegations in a probable cause filing, not findings by a jury, but they became part of the timeline detectives were assembling as they worked through the night. Taken together with the witness account from the driveway and the discovery in the backyard, the statements helped turn a late-night death investigation into a murder case by early Thursday.

Wolfe was charged just before 1 a.m. Thursday with murder, according to the reports. He also faced a count of unlawful possession of a firearm by a serious violent felon. Booking records showed him held in the Marion County jail after his arrest. The Marion County Prosecutor’s Office was expected to make the final charging decision, a routine step in Indiana cases after police submit a probable cause affidavit. That means some details could still be refined as prosecutors review interviews, autopsy findings and any forensic testing tied to the property and the vehicles mentioned in the case. Public records available so far do not answer every question, including exactly when Stewart was attacked, whether investigators recovered the suspected weapon or whether additional charges could follow. What is clear from the police timeline is that detectives treated the first overnight hours as critical and moved quickly to locate Wolfe before daybreak.

Deputy Chief Kendale Adams credited both investigators and residents for the speed of the arrest. “Thanks to the relentless work of our detectives and the courage of the community, a dangerous individual is in custody today,” Adams said in a statement carried by local media. The physical details of the discovery remained some of the most haunting in the case: a dog outside when it usually stayed in, a locked back door, a dark path toward the garage and the sound of a phone ringing somewhere behind the house. Those details came not from a staged police search, but from a friend who thought he was making an ordinary pickup stop and instead became the person who found Stewart. His late-night search now anchors the first chapter of the criminal case.

The case stood Tuesday with Wolfe jailed in Marion County and the murder allegation already filed, while prosecutors continued reviewing the evidence gathered in the first hours after Stewart’s body was found. The next milestone is likely a court appearance as the charging documents move through the county system.

Author note: Last updated April 7, 2026.