A 23-year-old defendant appeared in court one day after investigators said he shot his father and stepfather in Greenville.
NEW ALBANY, Ind. — A Floyd County man accused of killing his father and stepfather in a Greenville home appeared in court Friday as newly released records described a chaotic series of events before the shootings and a standoff that ended with his arrest.
Investigators say Easton Goode, 23, faces two murder charges and two criminal recklessness charges after the early Thursday shootings on Georgetown-Greenville Road. The newly filed affidavit matters because it gives the first detailed account of what witnesses told police happened inside the home, identifies the two men who died and shows that defense lawyers are already seeking a mental health evaluation and a medical referral for Goode.
According to the affidavit, the episode began shortly before 5 a.m. Thursday at the home of Goode’s mother and stepfather in Greenville, a community in Floyd County north of Louisville. Goode’s mother told investigators she found him in a bedroom drunk and vomiting. She said he later wrestled with his stepfather, Bradley Butler, 53, and then went into a bathroom. When he came back out, she told police, he was half naked and covered in feces. After attempts to calm him failed, she called Kelly Goode, 55, his father, to come pick him up and take him away from the house. Court records say Kelly Goode arrived with a family friend. Easton Goode then came out of the bedroom holding a gun and shot both men. Investigators wrote that he later admitted shooting them.
The affidavit says Goode’s mother and a family friend were inside the house when the shots were fired. His mother was not shot, but investigators documented a bullet hole in her shirt, a detail that helped support the two criminal recklessness counts. The filing also says there was another gun in the bedroom, though it had been placed in a safe. Deputies were dispatched to the 6700 block of Georgetown-Greenville Road at about 5:44 or 5:45 a.m., according to published accounts from local media and law enforcement. The affidavit says police reached the home around 5:55 a.m. and had to give repeated verbal commands before using a flash-bang device to bring Goode out and take him into custody. The records do not answer several key questions, including what triggered the initial fight, whether alcohol was the only substance involved, or how long the confrontation lasted before the shooting.
The killings stunned neighbors in Greenville, a rural area where residents described the neighborhood as quiet and close-knit. Earlier reports from the sheriff’s office identified the dead men as Butler, the homeowner, and Kelly Goode, both of nearby Georgetown. Neighbors who spoke publicly after the shooting said they knew the people at the house mostly in passing but remembered them as friendly. One nearby resident said the case was one of the first acts of violence he could recall in more than 40 years living in the area. That reaction has become part of the story’s weight in Floyd County, where investigators are now trying to explain how an early morning family disturbance turned into a double homicide involving two generations of the same family. The affidavit adds detail, but it still leaves gaps about the family’s recent history and whether deputies had been called to the address before.
In Friday’s initial court appearance, defense attorney Evan Bardach asked the judge for a mental health evaluation and a medical referral to the hospital. “I am not a doctor. Obviously, there were some clear injuries on him. But I would just like to have him fully evaluated, and then we’ll go from there on everything,” Bardach said in court. Public reports indicate Goode was brought before a judge in handcuffs a little more than 24 hours after his arrest. The murder and criminal recklessness allegations are all felonies under Indiana law. At this stage, the public record shows no trial date, no plea entered in open court and no formal explanation from prosecutors about whether additional filings could follow. The next immediate court step listed in local reports was a return hearing set for Monday.
The scene described in the affidavit is unusually grim even by the standards of homicide investigations. It places family members and a family friend in the middle of a rapidly changing confrontation inside a home before dawn, with one witness close enough to end up with a bullet hole through her clothing. The sheriff’s office has released the names of the dead and confirmed the arrest, but investigators have not publicly laid out a motive beyond the witness account of intoxication and violence inside the house. That has left family members, neighbors and court watchers focused on the same unresolved issue: whether the behavior described before the shooting will shape the defense case as the prosecution moves ahead. For now, the affidavit serves as the clearest public window into the final minutes before Butler and Kelly Goode were killed.
The case stood Saturday with Goode jailed in Floyd County and facing four felony counts, while the next expected milestone remained his scheduled court return Monday.
Author note: Last updated March 8, 2026.