When 17-year-old Laurel Jean Mitchell’s body was discovered submerged in water shortly after she went missing in August 1975, police initially believed that she’d drowned. An autopsy, however, revealed that the teenager had “fought for her life” and launched an investigation that frustrated authorities for decades. Now, the police have finally made arrests in the case.
On February 6, the Indiana State Police and the Noble County Sheriff’s Department arrested Fred Bandy Jr., 67, of Goshen, Indiana, and John Wayne Lehman, 67, of Auburn. Almost 50 years after Mitchell’s death, police announced that they’d collected both DNA evidence and witness statements that suggested that Bandy and Lehman killed the teenager.
"This case is a culmination of a decades-long investigation… and science finally gave us the evidence we needed," Indiana State Police Captain Kevin Smith announced in a news release according to the IndyStar He commended the work of the Indiana State Police Laboratory Division.
As the IndyStar Reports indicate that Mitchell went missing on August 6, 1975, after leaving her job at the Epworth Forest Church camp. Her parents reported her missing, and the 17-year-old’s body was discovered the next morning in the Elkhart River. Although police initially thought she had accidentally drowned, an autopsy showed signs that she had fought for her life.
Convinced that Mitchell had been killed, the police launched an investigation that endured for the next several decades. They picked up clues in recent years that led them to focus on two men: Bandy and Lehman.
According to the Associated Press , multiple witnesses have come forward to tell police that both Bandy and Lehman had claimed responsibility for the crime. In 2013, a woman who’d gone on a date with Lehman told police that Lehman had “admitted his involvement in a crime that he committed with his friend, Fred Bandy.” Lehman also told the woman details about the case, including “anatomical findings” from Mitchell’s autopsy.
Bandy, too, had apparently boasted about Mitchell's murder. In 2014, a man who had known Bandy in high school told the police that Bandy had admitted to the crime and even knew the location where Mitchell’s body was found. In 2019, another man who had attended a party with Bandy in high school said that when the conversation turned to Mitchell’s death, Bandy “stated he and John Wayne Lehman committed that crime, together.”
But the police weren’t able to arrest the duo until DNA evidence backed up the witness statements. Associated Press The reports indicate that DNA recently recovered from Mitchell’s clothing matched Bandy. The police have stated that they believe Bandy and Lehman “forcibly and deliberately drowned” Mitchell in 1975 after picking her up in Bandy’s car.
"This case is a culmination of a decades-long investigation," Smith said, according to CBS In addition to "science," he thanked the "many citizens" whose information about Bandy and Lehman "was key to solving this case."
The police have also been in touch with Mitchell's brother and sister. Smith said that he hopes that Bandy and Lehman's arrests have brought them "at least a little peace" a half-century after their sister's murder.
Smith added: “I cannot imagine having dealt with that for 47 years, wondering what happened.”
But even though the arrests have brought a measure of closure to Laurel Jean Mitchell’s family and the community at large, there’s still work to do.
"While the arrest of these two individuals is a very important step, this isn’t the end," Noble County Prosecutor Jim Mowery explained according to the IndyStar The investigation of this crime is still ongoing and the prosecution of these defendants has just begun.
After reading about the cold case murder of Laurel Jean Mitchell, see how DNA evidence helped solve the 40-year-old murder of five-year-old Anne Pham in California. Or, see how police were able to arrest an alleged rapist after he He uploaded his DNA to a genealogy website. .
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