Police received numerous tips over the years but nothing that could lead to an arrest.
Then in 2013, Noble County Sheriff's Department Detective Lt. Shawn Dunafin was contacted by a women from Port Charlotte, Florida, who claimed to have information relating to the Mitchell murder. Dunafin interviewed the woman in Florida on June 7, 2013.
The woman told Dunafin that she had lived in Noble County as a teenager, and that she was 16 years old in 1975. She alleged she had gone on a date with Lehman and while on the date, Lehman allegedly admitted his involvement in a crime that he committed with his friend, Fred Bandy.
On July 3, 2014, Kevin Smith, now a captain with the Indiana State Police, interviewed a man at the Ligonier Police Department who had been a student at West Noble High School in 1975. That man told Smith that he socialized with Fred Bandy Jr. and that Bandy told him that Bandy had committed the murder that had taken place at Mallard's Roost.
On Sept. 25, 2019, Noble County Sheriff's Department Detective Sgt. Joe Hustell interviewed a man who allegedly said that had attended a a high school party in 1975 with Bandy and Lehman. According to court documents, "while at the party, a conversation about the murder of Laurel J. Mitchell camp up, and Fred Bandy Jr. stated he and John Wayne Lehman committed that crime together."
DNA evidence from Mitchell's clothing was resubmitted to the Indiana State Police Laboratory in 2019.
Bandy provided a voluntary DNA sample to police on Dec. 5, 2022.
ALBION — Two men have been charged in the murder of a 17-year-old North Webster girl found drowned on the Elkhart River in Noble County in August 1975.
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