The Indiana Caper

Sheriff Ben Willis of Jackson, Indiana responds to an emergency call on a cold November afternoon and ends up dead when his cruiser hits ice and goes over an embankment. A few days later, people tell stories about seeing Ben Willis in other parts of the county. Everyone asks the same question: Was Sheriff Ben Willis really killed in the accident?
Lisa Willis, Ben’s wife doesn’t believe her neighbor, Tracy Arnold when she tells Lisa that she saw Ben in her front yard on a snowy night. Tracy offers to stay with Lisa the rest of the night. Her real reason for staying is to search Lisa’s house for evidence that Lisa and Frank Arnold have been messing around. When Tracy accuses Lisa of having an affair with her husband, Lisa denies it.
Lisa becomes alarmed when Ben, or his ghost visits her on several occasions. It seems to her that his ghost is trying to torment her and drive her to confessing his murder.
As events unfold, Lisa has an affair with Frank Arnold, Tracy’s husband. Forming a dire coalition with Frank she helps plan and implement several other murders. As Sheriff Randall Petrie (Ben’s successor) becomes suspicious of Frank and Lisa, he also senses that something isn’t quite right about Ben’s accident.
Lisa ponders her past life and seeks a reason for why things went wrong. After she saw Ben and Tracy making love in her back yard one night, she had a nervous breakdown. After her recovery, she plots with Frank Arnold to kill Ben and benefit from a million-dollar insurance policy she took out on him. She also plans to inherit the estate that is worth millions of dollars. She hires an ex-con, Mary Clayton as her business manager. Frank and Mary kill Tracy Arnold and Ralph Naylor, a man that looks suspiciously like Ben Willis. They leave fingerprints and other clues at the murder scene that leads Sheriff Randall Petrie down their path.
She isn’t sure if Ben Willis is alive or if the ghost that haunts her is real. In the final days of Lisa’s rein, Ben Willis appears and takes her to the woods where he has Frank and Mary Clayton tied to trees hoping to force a confession from them. Freezing, they sign confessions stating that they committed the murders knowing that the confessions will be thrown out of court because they were obtained under duress. Frank warns Ben that he will contest the confessions in court. A state investigator and two insurance agents have been witnessing the drama and appear after the confessions are obtained.
The court throws out the confessions. Nonetheless, they convict all of them for murder based on evidence obtained from other legitimate sources. Ben has succeeded in getting them into court and bringing other evidence to the attention of the authorities. Ben inherits the estate and the two kids. Lisa is sent to a prison for women where the prisoners aren’t exactly sane.
Ben knows she will come for him and that she isn’t as insane as the State believes she is. He visits the site of the accidents and says goodbye to his old friend Rufus Jones who tried to kill him. Lisa and Frank hired Rufus to kill Ben and make it look like he skidded on ice and went over the embankment.