Indiana Innocence Project announces wrongfully convicted Kristine Bunch as first ever Director

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — After 17 years behind bars, Kristine Bunch turned her pain and loss into purpose when she helped create the Indiana Innocence Project.

Bunch was convicted of setting the fire that killed her three-year-old son, Anthony, on June 30, 1995.17 years later she walked out of Indiana Women's Prison with the help of Indiana's first and only innocence project at the time. Now she's working to help pay it forward.

"In order to deal with that pain and loss, I have to feel like I am turning that into something better."

Something better for Bunch is becoming the first ever Director of the Indiana Innocence Project, an organization she helped create in 2025. That pain and loss she talks about comes from her 17 years behind bars, wrongfully convicted for the death of her three-year-old son.

"I lost my three-year-old son, and I went to prison pregnant with my second son, because they had mislabeled it as an arson," Bunch shared.

Bunch gave birth to her second son, Trent, while in prison. She says it was an electrical fire that caused her home to go up in flames. She tells ABC57 a falsified report is what had her facing concurrent prison sentences of 60 years for murder and 50 years for arson.

However, Indiana's only innocence project at the time proved otherwise.

"They went back and got a federal subpoena to get the original ATF file. When they received it, they found the first report that had been presented to my jury, and then they found the original report that didn't say accelerant had been found," she explained.

Bunch walked out of prison in 2012 and instead of creating a quiet life away from the justice system after coming home, she helped create the Indiana Innocence Project.

"Our intake system was the heart of this project when we started. I want to make sure that it is always the heart of our project, because it follows people through every aspect of where they're at, fighting their wrongful conviction."

Bunch breaks down how she handles people reaching out who say they're wrongfully convicted. She puts them into three groups.

"So, the first group, they've never even filed a PCR. They may only be at appeals. We get letters from people that are still in county jail. We log them into the system if they need forms, so they can file a PCR. We send that to them with a sheet that tells them this is how you do it to make sure that they are in court getting the evidence reviewed, especially if they're innocent. You want that to happen as quickly as possible, because the courts don't go fast," Bunch explained.

"Our group two, they have a PCR pending, so they are actively in court, whether with an attorney or without an attorney. If they have an attorney, we tell them you need to depend on your attorney. If the attorney wants to invite someone from an Innocence Project in, they can do so, but you rely on your attorney. So, we refer them back, but we keep track of the case, just so we know where they are at in that process, because if they get denied for that PCR, then they're at a level three," she continued.

"Level three means they need a successive PCR, that's a lot of where most of the clients are for the innocence projects, they're on that successive PC, and they need litigators to go in there and prove that they are actually innocent."

Bunch says her second son, Trent, who she had in prison is doing well, living his own life and writing his own story. She and her team are moving into a new office space and getting established so they can help wrongfully convicted Hoosiers.