Editing Ina, Illinois (section)

=== Crimes ===
An infamous murder case occurred in Ina in 1924, when Rev. Lawrence Hight and his lover Elsie Sweeten poisoned Sweeten's husband in July and Hight's wife in September. Autopsies revealed [[arsenic]]. Hight and Sweeten were both sent to prison. Elsie Sweeten was granted another trial and was later acquitted of murder and released from jail.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://genealogytrails.com/ill/jefferson/news_crimehightsweetin.html | title=HIGHT-SWEETIN MURDER CASE Jefferson County, Illinois }}</ref><ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.kmov.com/2022/01/21/gruesome-murder-an-illinois-family-remains-unsolved-main-suspect-is-executed/ | title=Gruesome murder of an Illinois family remains unsolved as the main suspect is executed | date=January 21, 2022 }}</ref>

{{main|Dardeen family homicides}}
Over six decades later a quadruple homicide occurred outside of town. The victims were the [[Dardeen family homicides|Dardeen family]], who lived in a [[mobile home]] on [[Illinois Route 37]] just north of the [[Franklin County, Illinois|Franklin County]] line. One evening in November 1987, the police came to the house since Keith Dardeen had not shown up for his job at the Rend Lake Water Conservancy District treatment plant that morning and did not answer phone calls.<ref name="Dardeen killings">{{cite news|last=Suhr|first=Jim|title=Unsolved 1987 slaying of Illinois family haunting|url=http://www.nwherald.com/2014/04/12/unsolved-1987-slaying-of-illinois-family-haunting/auj00b/|newspaper=[[Associated Press]]|via=[[Northwest Herald]]|date=April 12, 2014|access-date=November 6, 2017|archive-date=October 23, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201023021213/https://www.nwherald.com/2014/04/12/unsolved-1987-slaying-of-illinois-family-haunting/auj00b/|url-status=dead}}</ref> Elaine had not been raped, valuable items remained in the house, and police found no reason why anyone might want to have killed the family. [[Serial killer]] [[Tommy Lynn Sells]] confessed to the crime after he was arrested in Texas in 2000; however, police and the other members of the Dardeen family did not completely believe his accounts, which he changed three times, and he did not seem to know any nonpublic information about the crime. He was never charged before his 2014 execution, and officially the Dardeens' killings remain unsolved.<ref name="Dardeen killings" />