Vincennes Man Gets 12 year Sentence for Child Molesting

      A Knox Superior Court-One judge sentenced David Wanke Senior to 12-years in the Indiana Department of Correction Friday for molesting his five-year-old granddaughter in July of 2022.
      The Vincennes man was convicted in 2023 and sentenced to 60-years in prison.
      However, that sentence was overturned a year later by the Indiana Court of Appeals.
      A second trial, held in March of this year, ended in a hung jury.
      Instead of proceeding to a third trial, Knox County Prosecutor Dirk Carnahan says he decided to enter into a plea agreement with Wanke to protect the victim’s well-being.
      Wanke was sentenced Friday to 12 years in prison under that agreement.
      Carnahan says that although proceeding to a 3rd trial and pursuing a sentence that would likely keep Wanke in prison for the rest of his natural life would be appropriate, doing so would likely have caused further and irreparable harm to the child victim who would have had to testify in person for a third time.