(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — Indiana State Police have charged two men in their 60s for the 1975 murder of Laurel Jean Mitchell, who was 17 years old at the time.
Authorities arrested 67-year-old Fred Bandy Jr., of Goshen, Ind., and 67-year-old John Wayne Lehman of Auburn, Ind., the Indiana State Police announced Tuesday.
Police said that at 10 p.m. on Aug. 6, 1975, Mitchell left work at the Epworth Forrest Church camp in Kosciusko County — but she never returned to her North Webster home.
Her parents reported Mitchell missing the next day at 4:16 a.m. Hours later, Mitchell’s body was found in the water at the Mallard Roost public access site in Noble County, about 17 miles northeast of her home.
Investigators said it appeared Mitchell was abducted, sexually assaulted and drowned. Police said she "made a violent struggle to survive."
In an affidavit detailing the charges, investigators said a break in the case came nearly four decades after Mitchell's murder, when a Florida woman came forward to say she'd been on a date with Lehman.
While Lehman drove her home, the woman said he admitted to being involved in a crime that he committed with his friend, Fred Bandy, according to the affidavit.
Investigators said Lehman provided details of the crime to the woman that matched findings made by police and the Noble County coroner.
In 2019, Indiana State Police Captain Kevin Smith resubmitted items of Mitchell's clothing to the Indiana State Police Laboratory Division. In February 2020, an analysis from the lab showed male DNA was present on her clothing.
Over the next few years, state police were able to obtain Bandy's DNA via cheek swab. In 2023, a forensic scientist with the state police concluded Bandy was "13 billion times more likely to be the contributor of the DNA in Laurel J. Mitchell's clothing than any other unknown person."
“This case is a culmination of a decades-long investigation … and science finally gave us the answers we needed,” Smith said.
Both men were taken into custody Monday morning without incident on one count of murder.
Bandy and Lehman were incarcerated in the Noble County Jail and remained held without bond.
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