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Last updated on Tuesday, April 24, 2018
(BLOOMINGTON) - Daniel Messel, who is serving an 80-year sentence for killing an Indiana University student, pleaded guilty on Tuesday in a separate case involving an attack on another IU student.
Daniel Messel faced charges including rape, criminal deviate conduct, criminal confinement, battery and theft in connection with the September 2012 attack.
Messel pleaded guilty this morning to battery. He was sentenced to 8 years in the Department of Correction with a 7-year enhancement for being a habitual offender. He'll serve the sentence concurrently with his 80-year sentence in the murder of 22-year-old IU student Hannah Wilson.
Wilson's body was found on April 24, 2015 in a parking lot face down at State Road 45 and Plum Creek Road near Helmsburg. Wilson had been reported missing the day before. Messells cell phone was found next to her body. She died of blunt force trauma to the head. Wilson's DNA was found on Messel's clothes and in his vehicle.
He appealed his sentence, but an appeals court upheld his conviction in a 2017 ruling.
After his murder conviction, Messel's DNA was entered into a database when he was convicted, police say it matched DNA taken from beneath the fingernails of a 22-year-old lU law student who was abducted and sexually assaulted in September 2012. She contacted police after reading about Wilson's murder and told police the circumstances in her case mirrored those of her assault.
The woman told police Messel offered her a ride and drove her to a secluded parking lot near Griffy Lake, where she was beaten and sexually assaulted.
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