The Indiana Court of Appeals rejected Joseph Pridemore’s appeal Thursday in the abuse death of his then-finace’s three-year-old son Keegan Fugate.
Pridemore, now 35, got a maximum 65 years in November for murder in the boy’s Oct. 12, 2021 death. The mother Kylie Fulgate was sentenced to 10 years, plus another three on probation after a plea deal in July 2022.
In a 3-0 decision, Chief Judge Robert Altice wrote Pridemore could not successfully argue that the admission of a text a friend sent to the mother, Kylie Fugate, was hearsay when he objected “generally”, but not specifically to hearsay at trial. It was part of a stipulation, i.e. a written agreement between parties at trial, which Pridemore didn’t renege on, the appeals judge wrote.
“Pridemore’s contention on appeal essentially amounts to little more than a claim that the text message was — in some way — disadvantageous to him,” Altice wrote.
The Appeals Court also rejected Pridemore’s claim that parts of his father’s testimony was hearsay. On Oct. 4, 2021, Pridemore’s father Larry Tindall said he came over to the apartment and saw a purple bruise on the child’s face. Kylie told him what happened, he said.
His testimony was acceptable because it detailed “how this information affected him, i.e., that he was skeptical about Kylie’s explanation,” Altice wrote.
The judge also concluded there was enough evidence to convict, in the 15-page opinion. Pridemore didn’t want the kid, Fulgate’s child, living with them and his actions afterward — such as not calling 911, or telling the mother to delete their texts — also suggested he knew he was guilty, Altice wrote.
Gary police were called Oct. 12, 2021, to Methodist Hospitals Northlake after a child died with “suspicious bruising,” according to court documents.
Paramedics who tended to him at the apartment estimated the child died about three hours earlier.
Lake County Coroner’s Office Forensic Pathologist Dr. Zhou Wang concluded a lot of the abuse had been done over three days. He died of multiple blunt force trauma to the head and torso, along with a dislocated neck. The child also had internal bleeding, a lacerated liver and bruised organs, including his pancreas, trauma to his lungs with several bruises from different times on his abdomen, face and head, according to an affidavit.
At Methodist, Fugate’s behavior was “a little odd,” police wrote in documents. She appeared stoic when she peaked around hospital curtains at her son, but started crying uncontrollably when police looked at her.
She first told police Pridemore’s mother was watching the boy, but later admitted he watched the child in the hours before his death, according to court records. The child was eating a hamburger and seemed fine before she left for work at a gas station around 3 p.m.
By 5:30 p.m., Pridemore texted her several times that the child was vomiting several times, and he gave him fluids, broth and Tylenol.
Pridemore’s sister later told Fugate that his mother wouldn’t lie to the police for her.
“Well, I’m screwed then,” she allegedly texted.
When Fugate got home from her gas station shift hours later, the child was “breathing heavily,” but she didn’t call 911 until overnight when he vomited again and Pridemore said he stopped breathing and she saw the child was turning purple, the affidavit states.
She told detectives that Pridemore said some abrasions were from the dog knocking the child down, or he jumped off the couch. She had been asking him for a few days why there were marks on the boy, but none on her other two children.
Fugate denied the boy was afraid of Pridemore, but said he had kept some distance from him, for example, in a room where the child hugged everyone except him.