An Indiana man was sentenced to life in prison for the 1975 murder of a 17-year-old girl who was found dead in a river after she failed to return home from her job at a religious camp.
A Noble County judge on Tuesday sentenced Fred Bandy Jr., 69, to life in prison with the possibility of parole in Death of Laurel Jean Mitchell in August 1975. The Goshen man was convicted of first-degree murder this month following a bench trial.
A message was left Wednesday seeking comment from Bandy’s attorney.
He was indicted with John Wayne Lehman69, of Auburn, Indiana, last year in Mitchell’s murder. Lehman was sentenced to eight years in prison this month after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit murder.
Mitchell was found drowned in the Elkhart River on Aug. 7, 1975, the morning after she failed to return home in North Webster, about 140 miles northeast of Indianapolis.
WTTV
Although Mitchell’s cause of death was ruled a drowning, police said the autopsy report suggested she “had fought for her life,” the police therefore opened a murder investigation.
Prosecutors charged Bandy and Lehman with Mitchell’s murder in February 2023, nearly half a century later.
Lehman said in an August deposition that Bandy raped Mitchell and drowned her. Lehman denied participating in the rape or murder and said his fear of Bandy stopped him from trying to stop the crimes, the News-Sun of Kendallville reported.
According to a probable cause affidavit, investigators said they believe Bandy and Lehman “forcibly and deliberately drowned” Mitchell after taking her to the river in Bandy’s car.
A DNA profile was obtained in recent years through testing of Mitchell’s clothing, which was kept with other evidence collected in 1975. According to the affidavit, Bandy voluntarily provided a DNA sample in December 2022 to state police, and tests determined it was 13 billion. times “more likely to be the contributor to the DNA present in Laurel J. Mitchell’s clothing than any other unknown person.”
The DNA testing occurred after three people who were teenagers at the time of Mitchell’s killing linked Bandy and Lehman to the crime based on incriminating comments they made about her death, the affidavit states.
CBS affiliate WTTV reported that because Bandy was to be sentenced under 1975 standards, the potential consequences were either life in prison with the possibility of parole or the death penalty, prosecutors said. The death penalty carried out in the state since 1975 was later declared unconstitutional, excluding this option.
