By RYAN LENZAssociated Press Writer

Anthony Ray Stockelman of Seymour, Ind. exits a police van at the Jackson County Courthouse in Brownstown, Ind., Thursday, April 7, 2005. Stockelman was charged with the murder of Katie Collman on May 20. Investigators say the murder charge against Stockelman was based in part on DNA evidence taken from a cigarette butt found at the crime scene. Yet they are still gathering DNA samples from people connected to the case. (AP Photo/The Republic, Matt Ooley) CROTHERSVILLE, Ind. — Katie Collman’s picture still clings to business windows in this southern Indiana town, a public reminder of a little girl whose life ended too soon and of a community struggling to find closure.

Nearly five months after Katie’s body was pulled from a snowy creek, investigators are still piecing together the final moments of the 10-yearold’s life. Their investigation, with eerie parallels to a 1987 case in England that was the first to use DNA to solve a crime, has prompted a continued search for suspects, raising questions about whether police have the right man in custody.

Even the prosecutor says the doubts are understandable. Police arrested four people in the weeks after Katie’s body was found Jan. 30 in a creek 15 miles from her Crothersville home. They filed a murder charge against Charles ‘‘Chuckie’’ Hickman, a 21year-old high school dropout who confessed to being involved in the killing because Katie had stumbled across a methamphetamine lab. Then last month, prosecutors abruptly dismissed the confession and shifted the murder charge to another man — a father of three previously charged with molesting Katie around the time of her death.

They also threw out the meth theory, saying they longer believed it was valid. The move raised questions about whether investigators, under pressure from an otherwise quiet rural community to solve Katie’s murder, might have pushed too hard in their quest for justice.

Attorney John Plummer III, who represented Hickman, believes the pressure to solve the case

THE GAFFNEY LEDGER — Serving might have played a role in his client’s confession, which initially came during an untaped interrogation. Plummer wasn’t present at the time.

‘‘The dynamics in that town were such when they arrested my client that there was a lot of pressure to get a child killer off the streets,’’ Plummer said. Attorney James Kilburn, who represents the new suspect, Anthony Stockelman, 38, agreed.

‘‘Let’s just say they needed to charge somebody, and my client is the unfortunate person who has been charged,’’ Kilburn told The Associated Press in his first public comments about the case since Stockelman was charged with murder on May 20. ‘‘We believe he’s a victim of happenstance and happened to be in the wrong town on the wrong day.’’

Investigators say the murder charge against Stockelman was based in part on DNA evidence taken from a cigarette butt found at the crime scene. Yet they are still gathering DNA samples from people connected to the case.

Jackson County prosecutor Stephen Pierson said swabs have been taken from close to 70 people to ensure a thorough investigation.

The case parallels the 1987 case in England, when Scotland Yard police tested the DNA of 4,000 men to arrest a 25-year-old baker in the murders and sexual assaults of two 15-year-old girls in Narborough, Leicestershire.

In both cases, police scoured nearby rural towns for suspects and got one to confess despite DNA evidence implicating another. Just as prosecutors described Hickman as mentally slow, the man who confessed in England was a ‘‘pliable’’ suspect, said Joseph Wambaugh, a retired Los Angeles Police Department detective who recounted the investigation in his book ‘‘The Blooding.’’