SCOTTSVILLE — An Allen County man who came to the Scottsville Police Department on Christmas Eve and confessed to killing his drinking buddy is scheduled to appear in court next week.

Tommy W. Mulhall Sr., 43, of Scottsville, will be arraigned Tuesday in Allen Circuit Court on charges of murder, tampering with physical evidence and abuse of a corpse.

He is accused of killing Stuart Hearell, 58, of Scottsville on Nov. 26 after the two drank several beers at Mulhall’s residence on Cartertown Spur Road.

An Allen County grand jury indicted Mulhall on Feb. 26. 

Mulhall came to SPD headquarters on Dec. 24 and claimed to have killed Hearell and buried his body in his yard. According to court records, Hearell and Mulhall knew one another from when they both stayed at Cornerstone Manor, an assisted living facility.

Hearell lived there as a ward of the state and was known to wander from the facility. 

SPD Chief Jeff Pearson said in December that Hearell had been entered into a national crime database as a missing person five times in the span of a year, but he normally returned to the facility on his own and people in the community remembered him as polite.

According to an affidavit for a search warrant drafted by SPD Detective John Rose, Mulhall told police that he met up with Hearell in Scottsville around Thanksgiving, they traveled together to Tennessee to buy beer and returned to the single-wide trailer where Hearell lived.

After the two men drank several beers, Mulhall “snapped,” he told police.

“Mulhall … hit Hearell in the head with part of a toilet lid,” Rose wrote in the affidavit. “Mulhall advised he then stabbed him with a kitchen knife and buried Hearell on the east side of the mobile home with a shovel.”

Police went to Mulhall’s residence and found part of a toilet lid and knife in a plastic bag, as well as a mound of dirt where Mulhall claimed he buried Hearell’s body after putting it in a plastic bag.

Allen County Coroner Darren Davis used a probe to search the mound of dirt, and at a depth of about six inches the probe located a clear plastic bag.

Hearell’s body was located where Mulhall told police it would be. An autopsy was performed on Dec. 26 that determined blunt force trauma as the cause of death.

“It appeared that Mulhall had attempted to saw off body parts,” Rose wrote.

The Kentucky State Police confirmed Hearell’s identity through fingerprints on Dec. 29, court records show.

Scottsville police obtained search warrants and collected Hearell’s body, a knife, several pieces of a toilet lid, a pair of black shoes, handwritten notes, a shovel and swabs of suspected bloodstains at different locations in the residence.

Mulhall is in Allen County Detention Center under a $1 million cash bond.

— Follow courts reporter Justin Story on Twitter at twitter.com/jstorydailynews or visit bgdailynews.com.