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 Darren Vann, 43, of Gary, Indiana, was charged in Lake County with
one of the seven murders, according to online court records. He was
being held in custody, said John Doughty, police chief of the
neighboring city of Hammond.
Vann, a registered sex offender from a 2008 assault in Texas, was
arrested in Gary on Saturday, a day after police were led to the
slain body of 19-year-old Afrika Hardy in a Motel 6 in Hammond.
Doughty said Hardy had advertised sexual services on the classified
ads website Backpage.com, and that she and Vann met at the motel.
When Hardy did not return from the appointment, a woman who had
helped to arrange the encounter went to track her down and found her
dead from strangulation.
Once in custody Vann was cooperative, admitted his involvement in
Hardy's murder and led police to the bodies of six other women, all
in abandoned houses in Gary, Doughty said.
"It could go back as far as 20 years based on some statements we
have and that's yet to be corroborated," Doughty said. "It is
possible other victims could surface."
Doughty said the victims included Anith Jones, 35, of Merrillville,
Teiarra Batey, 28, of Gary, and Christine Williams, 36, also of
Gary. Three other victims have yet to be identified.
Doughty was unable to say whether the other victims were sex
workers.
Jones was reported missing on Oct. 8, triggering a search for her in
Gary, a city on the southern tip of Lake Michigan, 30 miles (50 km)
south of Chicago.
Abandoned houses overgrown with trees and weeds are a prominent
feature of Gary's landscape - as they are in much of the U.S. rust
belt of formerly well-off manufacturing and steel towns that have
fallen on hard times. More than 35 percent of Gary's residents live
under the federal poverty level and the population has dropped to
78,000 from more than twice that in the 1960s.
"As we find buildings are open, we do in fact board them up. We are
in the process of demolishing buildings. But when you have 10,000
buildings you don't have the resources to demolish all of the ones
that would be candidates," Gary Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson told
reporters.
Doughty said it was not known if the victims were murdered in the
abandoned houses or if their bodies were dumped there.
Vann lived in a ranch-style home in Gary with his brother and his
brother's girlfriend, said a neighbor who asked not to be
identified. The neighbor said he was shocked that Vann was a suspect
and that he was a nice person who took care of his brother's young
children.
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Another neighbor, Latonya Ramson, 36, said abandoned homes in the
neighborhood have long been a concern.
"It makes me very uncomfortable. There's abandoned houses everywhere
you look. If we didn't have all these abandoned houses, he wouldn't
have been able to leave people in them, that's part of the problem,"
she said.
Authorities in Gary and in Austin, Texas, said they were reviewing
missing persons cases to try to identify the bodies or other
potential victims.
Freeman-Wilson said some of the bodies were significantly decomposed
but not skeletal. Doughty said the victims known so far were killed
more recently than two decades ago.
Vann was sentenced to five years and served a little more than one
year after he was convicted of sexually assaulting and trying to
strangle a 25-year-old woman in Austin, Texas Department of Criminal
Justice spokesman Jason Clark told Reuters.
On the on-line Texas Department of Public Safety sex offender
registry, Vann's risk level was listed as "low."
The Chicago Tribune reported that Vann's former wife said he had
served in the Marines. Yvonne Carlock at the U.S. Marine Corp's
manpower and reserve affairs office told Reuters that Darren Vann
had contracted into the Marines but she was unable to immediately
confirmed whether he completed basic training.
(Additional reporting by Karen Brooks in Austin, Texas and Brendan
O'Brien in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Writing by Fiona Ortiz; Editing by
Doina Chiacu and Alan Crosby)
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