An Indiana man has been sentenced to life in prison for the 1975 killing of a 17-year-old girl who was found dead in a river after she failed to return home from her job at a church camp.
A Noble County judge sentenced Fred Bandy Jr., 69, on Tuesday to a life term with the possibility of parole in Laurel Jean Mitchell’s August 1975 death. The Goshen man was convicted of first-degree murder this month following a bench trial.
A message was left seeking comment from Bandy’s attorney Wednesday.
He was charged along with John Wayne Lehman, 69, of Auburn, Indiana, last year in Mitchell’s killing. 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.
Although Mitchell’s cause of death was ruled as drowning, police say the autopsy report suggested that she “had fought for her life,” so police initiated a murder investigation.
Prosecutors charged Bandy and Lehman in Mitchell’s killing in February 2023, nearly a half-century later.
Lehman said in an August deposition that Bandy raped Mitchell and drowned her. Lehman denied participating in the rape or the murder and said his fear of Bandy kept him from trying to stop the crimes, The News-Sun of Kendallville reported.
According to a probable cause affidavit, investigators said they believed Bandy and Lehman “forcibly, deliberately drowned” Mitchell after taking her to the river in Bandy’s car.
A DNA profile was obtained in recent years through testing on Mitchell’s clothing, which was saved along with other evidence collected in 1975. According to the affidavit, Bandy voluntarily provided a DNA sample in December 2022 to state police, and testing determined 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.”
The DNA testing came after three people who were teens at the time of Mitchell’s killing tied Bandy and Lehman to the crime based on incriminating comments they had made about her death, the affidavit states.
CBS affiliate WTTV reported that because Bandy had to be sentenced by 1975 standards, the potential outcomes were either life with the possibility of parole or the death sentence, prosecutors said. The state’s death penalty as of 1975 was later declared unconstitutional, ruling out that option.
