Jury selection is underway for the trial of Daniel Messel in the Brown County Courthouse in Nashville, IN.
Messell, a print shop worker from Bloomington, is accused of killing 22-year-old Hannah Wilson, two weeks before she was to graduate from Indiana University.
A passerby found Wilson’s body on April 24, 2015 in a parking lot laying face down at State Road 45 and Plum Creek Road near Helmsburg.
Wilson had been reported missing the day before the discovery of her body.
A judge granted Messel’s attorney a continuance at that time and moved the trial to June 1.
Messel’s attorney asked for another continuance and the trial was moved once again this time to August 1.
Wilson was last seen by her friends around 1 a.m. on April 24, 2015.
The group had been at a party at the Hilton Garden Inn hotel in Bloomington and was walking to Kilroy’s Sports Bar, according to the police report.
Wilson’s friends told police that she was too intoxicated to enter the bar, so she took a marked, white-and-green taxi home alone.
Police say the cab dropped her off at her home in the 500 block of East Eighth Street, just a few blocks from campus. Around 8:30 that morning, police received a 911 call about a body found in an isolated stretch of woods at Plum Creek Road near Ind. 45, about a 30-minute drive from Wilson’s home.
Wilson’s skull was crushed. She died from repeated blows to the head, an autopsy found.
Police arrested Messel, of Bloomington, later that afternoon.
Court documents say he was found with a garbage bag full of clothes, and claw marks on his arms. Investigators say they discovered blood and clumps of hair in his vehicle.
And the piece of evidence noted in court documents and referenced by multiple potential jurors: Messel’s cellphone, which police say was found near Wilson’s feet.
