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Inmate Claims Messel Trolled IU Campus Looking For Women

Last updated on Friday, November 6, 2015

(NASHVILLE) - An inmate who knows Daniel Messel claims Messel trolled the Indiana University campus looking for intoxicated women to sexually assault. He also claims he knows facts about another woman who was killed.

According to a letters in Messel's court file, 42-year-old David Hayden, an inmate who is serving time in a psychiatric unit at New Castle Correctional Facility, has vital information about Messel and wants police to come speak to him.

The two served time in prison together in 1996.

His allegations get more specific, and he implores someone to come and talk to him about his claims.

In one letter Hayden says that while working as an escort in 2005, he encountered Messel at a gay bar in Terre Haute. He claims that a week later, he met up with Messel at Night Moves in Bloomington. Hayden claims Messel confided that he would sometimes cruise student apartment complexes and around fraternity and sorority houses, wearing a shirt with a campus security logo on it.

Hayden claims that Messel offered a young women a ride home and then sexually assaulted her when she passed out in his vehicle.

Messel told him, "I just left her in someone's yard down the road with her bottoms off" he wrote in the letter.

Hayden says he told a prison counselor about his concern about Messel in December 2014, just months before Hannah Wilson's death.

Messel is being held without bond at the Brown County Jail after police say he beat 22-year-old Hannah Wilson to death.

Defense attorney Dorie Maryan has asked that the trial be moved from Brown County because of allegations that Messel might be involved in the June 2011 disappearance of IU student Lauren Spierer.

Hayden claims that Messel disposed of a decomposing woman's body on a Memorial Day camping trip to Brown County in 2012 to "protect a friend who accidentally struck her with a vehicle."

He said there were two discolored pieces of identification with the body, one with the name "Rebecca" on it and the other an IU campus debit card. Spierer's older sister's name is Rebecca.

Despite national attention and years of investigation, no arrests have been made in the Spierer case, and the cause of her disappearance remains unknown. She was last seen at 4:30 a.m. on June 3 at the intersection of 11th Street and College Avenue, headed south on College. She was last seen wearing black leggings, a white shirt, and no shoes.

Hayden says he helped Messel recover the woman's remains along Ind. 46 between Bloomington and Ellettsville and gave a detailed description of the area where the body was hidden. He also claims he took pictures of body, clothing and the woman's identification and has those photos stored in a safe place.

Bloomington Police Department Capt. Joe Qualters says they can not discuss details in either investigation.

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