Defense for Daniel Messel said he will seek a change of venue when he is tried for a 2012 rape he was linked to by DNA evidence. Messel is currently serving 80 years for the 2015 murder of IU student Hannah Wilson.
Messel’s attorney, Patrick Schrems, said he will bring the request for change of venue in October. Another pretrial conference, in which defense and prosecution update the court on preparations, is scheduled for 2:15 p.m. Oct 11.
In the 2012 case, a student reported that a man she did not know offered her a ride after she had been out drinking, according to the probable cause affidavit. He drove her to a secluded parking spot in the woods near Griffy Lake, where he forced his penis into her mouth.
She tried to fight him off, and he hit her so hard it “knocked the contact out of her eye and she was spitting blood,” according to the affidavit.
The man drove away, and the student found help from residents nearby. The woman’s underwear was found at the scene the next day.
After reading a news story about the Wilson case, the 2012 victim felt her case was “eerily similar” and called the IU Police Department to say she believed Messel might be her attacker.
DNA collected in 2012 from under her fingernails was compared to Messel’s, and the samples matched. Messel was charged in 2016 with the rape a few months after his conviction for Wilson’s murder.
[Haley Wilson's life at IU after the murder of her sister | IDS]
Messel appealed his murder conviction, which the Court of Appeals denied in June. He is now serving his sentence at the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility.
