An Indiana man was sentenced to life in prison after he voluntarily provided DNA that connected him to the 1975 murder of a teen girl.
Fred Bandy Jr., 69, was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole for the first-degree murder of 17-year-old Laurel Jean Mitchell. She was found drowned in the Elkhart River on Aug. 7, 1975, after she did not return home from working at a church camp, AP News reported.
John Wayne Lehman, 69, was also sentenced to eight years in prison after he pled guilty to conspiracy to commit murder. Lehman told police he did not participate when Bandy raped and then drowned Mitchell, according to The News Sun, but he was too afraid of Bandy to go to police.
Investigators were able to prosecute Bandy after three people told police Bandy and Lehman made incriminating comments about Mitchell's death throughout the years, according to reporting by AP News.
Bandy then voluntarily provided a DNA sample to state police in December 2022. Testing found he was 13 billion times "more likely to be the contributor of the DNA in Laurel J. Mitchell's clothing than any other unknown person."
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