Cop arrests man on bogus charge to get information on missing mom, IN suit says
An Indiana man is suing after he says police falsely arrested him to try to get information on his missing mother.
The federal lawsuit was filed against the city of Boonville, the Boonville Police Department and several individuals who worked for the police department.
McClatchy News reached out for comment Aug. 12 but did not immediately hear back.
The lawsuit is tied to the case of a woman who has been missing for six years.
On Aug. 26, 2019, Donna Hatfield was reported missing from Boonville, according to a civil complaint.
At the time, Hatfield was 72 years old and had dementia, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. She was never located.
Nearly four years later, on March 14, 2023, an FBI agent saw that Hatfield’s vehicle was listed for sale on Facebook Marketplace, the lawsuit said. After determining the vehicle was still in Hatfield’s name and would need her signature to sell, investigators said “the only way someone else could sign for her is if they had a duly appointed power of attorney executed by her in front of a notary,” the complaint said.
Detectives learned that Hatfield’s son, Thomas Rainey Jr., sold the car for $600, the lawsuit said. Rainey had been a person of interest in his mother’s disappearance ”for some considerable period of time,” the lawsuit said.
Investigators learned that a document naming Rainey as power of attorney for his mother was prepared by an attorney. An FBI agent also told a detective he recalled seeing a power of attorney document at Rainey’s home during an earlier search, according to the lawsuit.
However, investigators never asked Rainey if he indeed had power of attorney for Hatfield and instead arrested him on fraud charges for signing his mom’s name on the car’s title, the lawsuit said.
The detective then told an FBI agent “Once Mr. Rainey is arrested, I plan on giving him the opportunity to have these felony charges disappear if he shows me where Ms. Hatfield is. I assume everyone would be okay with this? Once again, I am doubtful he will cooperate, but I figured I would give him a chance. Moreover, this case has no bearing on anything that may come up criminally around Ms. Hatfield’s disappearance,” according to the lawsuit.
After his arrest, agents searched Rainey’s home and found the power of attorney document, which had been notarized in 2015, years before Hatfield went missing, according to the complaint.
Despite learning Rainey “had not committed a crime,” the complaint states, the detective “decided to continue the false arrest and incarceration of [Rainey] based upon an arrest warrant that he knew was critically flawed so that he could interrogate Thomas, while in custody, regarding the disappearance of Mrs. Hatfield.”d
Rainey spent two days in jail and paid a $10,000 bond before the charges against him were dropped, the complaint said.
The lawsuit said his arrest was “damaging” and “subjected Thomas to intense humiliation and ostracization from the community.”
This story was originally published August 12, 2025 at 10:23 AM with the headline "Cop arrests man on bogus charge to get information on missing mom, IN suit says."
