Jacob Cram received the maximum sentence after pleading guilty to killing Donald Bowers inside the victim’s Lebanon home.

LEBANON, Ind. — An Indiana man who admitted killing a wheelchair-using friend after offering to help him get into his home has been sentenced to 65 years in prison, the maximum term available for the murder conviction. Jacob Andrew Cram, 37, was sentenced Sept. 17 in Boone County after pleading guilty to killing Donald Lee Bowers, 64, during an attack inside Bowers’ Lebanon home in September 2025.

The sentence closes the main trial-court phase of a case that had been headed toward a jury trial before Cram changed his plea in August. Under the agreement accepted by the court, Cram admitted to murder while prosecutors dismissed a habitual-offender enhancement. Boone County prosecutors had said before sentencing that they intended to seek the full 65-year term allowed for the murder conviction. The agreement did not cap the judge below that maximum, leaving the court free to impose a sentence within Indiana’s 45-to-65-year range for murder.

The case began on Sept. 10, 2025, when Lebanon police responded to a home in the 500 block of South West Street after receiving information about a possible homicide. First responders found Bowers with severe injuries inside the residence. Two witnesses who approached police that evening identified Cram in connection with what had happened, according to reports describing the investigation and court records. Officers later located Cram near Bowers’ home and arrested him. The evidence gathered that night would become the basis of the murder case that remained pending for almost a year before the guilty plea.

Investigators said Cram knew Bowers and had offered to help him get into his house because Bowers used a wheelchair. According to accounts based on court documents, Cram later told investigators that once he was inside the home he attacked Bowers in several ways. Authorities said he struck Bowers with a broom handle, used a box cutter, tried to restrict his breathing with a blanket and stabbed him with a screwdriver. Cram also told investigators that Bowers resisted during the attack. Publicly available reports have not identified a motive, and authorities have not announced an explanation for why Cram turned on a man he had offered to assist.

The police investigation moved quickly because witnesses came forward the same evening. One witness told investigators that Cram had been trying to cover a doorway with a blanket and initially stopped the person from seeing what was inside. Cram then allowed the witness to look into the room, according to court documents summarized by local and national news organizations. The witness reported seeing Bowers on the floor and later told police what had been observed. Authorities said Cram warned the witness not to disclose what had happened. Police were then directed to the house and to Cram, who was taken into custody nearby.

Those witness accounts became especially important because the case did not proceed to trial, where jurors otherwise would have heard testimony and seen prosecutors present the evidence in open court. Instead, Cram’s guilty plea established his criminal responsibility without requiring Bowers’ family or the witnesses to go through a trial. Boone County Prosecutor Kent Eastwood said when the plea was announced that the agreement gave the state a guaranteed murder conviction while preserving its ability to ask for the maximum sentence. Prosecutors also said they had consulted Bowers’ family before presenting the agreement and that the family supported the resolution.

The plea was formally entered Aug. 21 before Boone Superior Court I Judge Matthew Kincaid. Prosecutors agreed to dismiss the habitual-offender enhancement, a separate allegation that could have affected the punishment Cram faced based on his criminal history. In return, Cram admitted guilt to the murder itself. Prosecutors said the decision avoided the uncertainty of a trial and reduced the possibility of extended litigation while still allowing them to argue for a 65-year sentence. The court ultimately imposed exactly that term at the Sept. 17 sentencing hearing.

Cram’s criminal history also formed part of the public record surrounding the case. Reporting based on court documents said he had been released from prison only about three months before Bowers was killed. He previously received a seven-year prison sentence in 2018 for robbery resulting in serious injury. The habitual-offender enhancement in the Bowers case was dropped as part of the plea agreement, however, so the 65-year punishment imposed this month is the sentence for the murder conviction itself rather than an additional term imposed through that enhancement.

Prosecutors had made clear before the sentencing hearing that they would ask Kincaid for the top of the statutory range. In announcing the guilty plea, Eastwood said the agreement allowed the state to seek the maximum punishment despite dismissing the habitual-offender allegation. The prosecutor’s office also said that, under Indiana law as it applied to the case, a person convicted of murder must serve at least 75% of the imposed sentence before becoming eligible for release. The precise date on which Cram could eventually leave custody will depend on the rules governing his sentence and any credit recognized by correctional authorities.

Bowers was remembered by his family as far more than the victim described in the criminal case. His obituary identified him as Donald Lee Bowers, known to friends as Donnie, and said he died Sept. 10, 2025, at his home. He was born in Ohio on Dec. 12, 1961, and was adopted the following year by Phillip Don and Shirley Jean Bowers. Other published obituary information described a man who readily talked with strangers, enjoyed the band KISS and cared deeply about animals. Those details provide a personal record of Bowers apart from the police reports and court filings that followed his death.

The timing of the guilty plea also changed what would otherwise have happened in Boone County court. Cram had been scheduled for trial in September, about a year after the killing. A trial would have required prosecutors to prove the murder charge beyond a reasonable doubt through witnesses, physical evidence and other admissible material. By pleading guilty, Cram gave up the need for the state to obtain a jury verdict on that charge. The remaining dispute was the length of the prison term, and prosecutors had already announced that they would seek 65 years.

With the guilty plea accepted and sentencing now complete, the central unresolved question that existed in August — how much prison time the judge would impose — has been answered. The Sept. 17 sentence delivered that maximum term and supersedes earlier reports that described Cram as merely facing 45 to 65 years. Authorities have still not publicly identified a motive for the killing. Cram is now subject to the 65-year sentence imposed for Bowers’ murder.

Author note: Last updated September 30, 2026.