Daniel Messel, the man who received an 80-year prison sentence last fall for killing Indiana University student Hannah Wilson in Apr. 2015, is now facing new charges in a separate case. This happened on the same day he appeared in the court on Tuesday for an appeal in Wilson murder conviction.
Messel was found guilty in August 2016 in Wilson murder conviction, a senior at IU, whose body was found in a vacant lot in Brown County. According to Fox News, the 51-year-old man is now facing new charges of rape, criminal deviate conduct, criminal confinement, battery, and theft of the woman's clutch purse, shoes, and cellphone.
Prompted by Messel's Wilson murder conviction, another victim contacted police in August to discuss details of a similar offense. Investigators entered Messel's DNA into a database, and discovered that it matched DNA that came from skin cells scraped from beneath the woman's fingernails after her attack.
The victim, also an IU student at the time, went to Nick's and Dunkirk Bar on Sep. 1, 2012. She was very drunk and the next thing she finds is being in a car with a white man she did not know, according to WBIW. Messel apparently grabbed the victim's hair, threw her to the ground, and punched her till he knocked a contact lens out of her eye and caused her to spit out blood, as she tried to fight back. The man involved in Wilson murder conviction, then sexually assaulted her, left the victim in the parking lot and fled the scene - taking away her clutch purse, shoes, iPhone, credit card, and drivers permit with him.
These new charges were filed against Messel on the very same day he filed an appeal for Wilson murder conviction. Meanwhile, Brown County Prosecutor Ted Adams released a statement with regard to the appeal, "I feel confident that the record is solid and that the conviction will stand while the Defendant exercises his constitutional right to appeal his conviction."
