Skip to content

Man convicted in Indiana University student’s killing now accused in 2012 student attack

PUBLISHED: | UPDATED:

A man serving an 80-year sentence in the killing of an Indiana University student now faces charges in the sexual assault of another IU student.

Monroe County, Ind., prosecutors charged 51-year-old Daniel Messel with attempted rape, criminal deviate conduct and several felonies stemming from the September 2012 attack on a 22-year-old woman.

The Indianapolis Star reports court documents filed Friday say a DNA analysis linked Messel to samples taken from beneath that woman’s fingernails.

Daniel Messel, age 51.
Daniel Messel, age 51.

Messel was sentenced in September to 80 years in prison for the April 2015 slaying of 22-year-old Hannah Wilson and for being a habitual criminal. The 22-year-old Wilson from Fishers, Ind., was slain two weeks before her scheduled graduation from IU.

The woman sexually assaulted in 2012 told investigators that testimony in Messel’s trial was “eerily similar” to her own case.

This woman said that a man she thinks is Messel coaxed her into his car during the weekend after Halloween. He tried to force her to perform oral sex on him, but she jumped from the moving car. The attack was reported to police, but the woman could not identify her attacker until after the trial for Wilson’s killing began.

The Star reports DNA samples from under the woman’s fingernails were taken in 2012, but returned no matches until after Messel’s August conviction when investigators ran the samples against Messel’s DNA.

Even though Wilson was slain, her violent resistance of Messel dislodged his cellphone, which was found near Wilson’s body, and led police to Messel before he could dispose of bloody evidence, police said.

Associated Press