A Noble County judge convicted 69-year-old Fred Bandy Jr. of murder in connection with the 1975 abduction and killing of a teenage girl.
Bandy waived his right to a jury trial in September. On Monday, Noble Circuit Court Judge Michael Kramer heard evidence in the case.
Kramer returned a verdict Tuesday, finding Bandy guilty of killing 17-year-old Laurel J. Mitchell. Bandy will be sentenced later this month.
Also charged in the case was 68-year-old John Wayne Lehman.
The two men were charged in February 2023 after DNA evidence connecting Bandy to Mitchell was discovered, resurrecting the long-cold case worked by the Indiana State Police.
Lehman pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder on Oct. 2. He will be sentenced on Friday.
At 4:16 a.m. on Aug.7, 1975, Mitchell’s parents called the Indiana State Police, saying their 17-year-old daughter had not returned home from her job at the snack barat the Epworth Forest Church Camp in North Webster the evening before.
The plan was to have met friends at the Adventureland Amusement Park a half mile away. According to witnesses, she had started walking that way, waving at a man as she passed.
At 10:30 a.m. Aug. 7, 1975, someone called the Indiana State Police post in Ligonier about a body in the Elkhart River at the Mallard Roost public access site on Noble County road 600 North, just west of 400 West.
Police identified Laurel with her class ring from Wawasee High School, class of 1976, her initials engraved inside.
The cause of her death was drowning, and ruled a homicide.
The two men had been identified by witnesses as having confessed to the crime on separate occasions over the years.
Bandy has prior felony convictions, having served time in the Indiana Department of Correction for child solicitation in 2001, and child molesting in 2016.
