New DNA evidence and witness testimony helped investigators arrest two elderly suspects this week in connection to the practically 50-year-old homicide of an Indiana teenager.
Indiana State Police and the Noble County Prosecutor introduced Tuesday that they’d arrested Fred Bandy Jr. and John Wayne Lehman, each 67, on Monday for the Aug. 1975 killing of Laurel Jean Mitchell, WANE reported.
Mitchell, 17, disappeared on the night time of Aug. 6, 1975 after leaving her job on the Epworth Forest Church camp snack bar in North Webster, the outlet stated.
Her drowned physique was found the following day in the Elkhart River. ISP Capt. Kevin Smith told Fox News this week that her stays additionally bore indicators of an intense bodily wrestle.
Despite witnesses who noticed a darkish automobile and heard yelling close to the place Mitchell was final seen, the case went cold till 2013, when possible trigger affidavits point out {that a} girl contacted the Noble County Sheriff’s Department to say that Lehman, her former boyfriend, confessed to killing the teenager with Bandy.
The following yr, investigators interviewed one other man who stated Bandy confessed to the homicide at a highschool occasion not lengthy after. A 3rd individual additionally got here ahead and stated Bandy confessed to them.
In 2019, police resubmitted Mitchell’s clothes for DNA testing on the Indiana State Police Laboratory Division. The outcomes have been ultimately in comparison with a 2022 pattern from Bandy, which revealed that he was 13 billion instances extra more likely to be the supply of the genetic materials on Mitchell’s clothes than one other unknown particular person.
According to each affidavits, police now consider that Bandy and Lehman kidnapped Mitchell into Bandy’s 1971 Oldsmobile and drowned her at a public entry web site on County Road 600 N.
Both Bandy and Lehman are actually in custody on homicide expenses. They are due at preliminary hearings on Wednesday.
“This case is a end result of a decades-long investigation…and science lastly gave us the evidence we wanted,” Smith told ABC7.
“The public’s willingness to deliver ahead vital data was key to fixing this case, and I thank them.”
Noble County Prosecutor Jim Mowery additionally assured the general public that the case towards Bandy and Lehman was simply starting.
“While the arrest of those two people is a vital step, this isn’t the tip,” he stated.
“The investigation of this crime continues to be ongoing and the prosecution of those defendants has simply begun.”
