A university custodian was ‘visibly shaking’ as police arrived to conduct a DNA test that finally linked him to the decades-old rape and murder of a teenage art student, it was revealed this week.
Dozens of people were interviewed after the naked body of 19-year-old Carmen Van Huss was found with 61 stab wounds by her father at her Indianapolis apartment in March of 1993.
It took more than three decades for police to get the breakthrough they needed when Carmen’s former neighbor, Dana Shepherd, was identified through the DNA of a distant cousin.
The 51-year-old University of Missouri worker was arrested last week and is awaiting extradition back to Indiana to face charges of murder, felony murder and rape.
‘There’s a lot of people that missed Carmen all these years,’ her brother, Jimmy Van Huss Jr., said during a press conference on Tuesday. ‘For my dad to have to find his daughter after what was brutally done to her makes this day bittersweet.
‘I wish he was here to see it.’