On the night of March 22, 1993, nineteen-year-old Carmen Van Huss returned to her apartment in Indianapolis, Indiana, after visiting her sick grandmother in the hospital with her father and brother. Her father suggested she stay the night at his place, worried about the late hour and the distance across town, but Carmen insisted she needed to wash her uniform for her shift at Pizza Hut the next day. She said goodbye and drove home. Two days later, a friend of Carmen’s stopped by the pizzeria hoping to ask for help landing a job there.
Carmen was not at work and had not shown up for her previous shift either. The manager said he had tried calling her several times with no response and assumed she had simply quit without notice. The friend knew Carmen was responsible and would not abandon her job without saying anything, so she urged the manager to call the emergency contact on file. That number belonged to Carmen’s father, who said he had tried reaching her the day before and gotten no answer.
Worried now, he drove straight to her apartment complex. The first thing he noticed was his daughter’s car parked outside, with her purse inside. At her door, he found a note from the building manager saying neighbors had complained about late-night noise coming from her apartment. He knocked and got no response, then realized the door was unlocked.
Inside, he found Carmen lying on the floor in a pool of blood, most of her clothing missing. She was already dead. The medical examiner determined she had been stabbed more than sixty times, sexually assaulted, and that one of her earrings was missing, apparently taken by her killer. Investigators found overturned furniture and torn pieces of Carmen’s clothing scattered across the living room, along with empty food wrappers and beer bottles, suggesting she had spent the evening with someone she knew well.
The killer had likely gone to the kitchen afterward to wash off the blood before leaving. Nothing of value had been taken, ruling out robbery as a motive. Neighbors told police they had heard Carmen return home around 11:30 that night, laughing and accompanied by a man whose voice sounded cheerful. Around 1:30 a.
m. , they heard her shout, “Get away from me! ” followed by the sound of someone running down the stairs. None of them called the police; the next morning, they simply complained to the building manager about the noise.
They assumed the man was Carmen’s boyfriend, so nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The police first questioned Carmen’s actual boyfriend, but he had been in Arizona, thousands of miles away, and was quickly cleared. Investigators then looked into her friends, coworkers, and acquaintances, focusing on men she knew without a romantic connection. No one matched the evidence.
Even though biological material from the attacker had been recovered, DNA technology at the time was too limited to produce a usable profile. No fingerprints or foreign DNA were found. With no witnesses, no leads, and no suspects, the case went cold. Carmen’s funeral was held a week after her murder.
During the service, her father received a call from the hospital: her grandmother had died. The family, already devastated, could not afford a second funeral. Friends organized a fundraiser, and through the generosity of others, they managed to cover the costs. In the months and years that followed, police periodically revisited the case but found nothing new.
Carmen’s family never stopped pushing for answers. Her father spent years seeking justice until his own tragic death in a car accident in 2002. After that, her younger brother Jamie took up the cause, staying in constant contact with police. For more than a decade, he was told the same thing: there were no leads.
In 2013, Detective William Carter, normally assigned to other types of crimes, took an interest in the cold case and began working on it in his spare time. He requested a new forensic analysis of the evidence from Carmen’s apartment. Experts examined several items from a garbage bag and managed to extract some genetic material, but the sample was partial, and they could only confirm it belonged to a man. In 2015, Carter pushed for DNA testing on the biological samples taken from Carmen’s body, hoping modern techniques would finally produce a clear profile.
The lab results came back with a shocking error: the DNA belonged to a woman. Carter discovered the lab had mixed up Carmen’s sample with that of a suspect from a different case. He requested a new test, but the lab refused, citing a lack of funds despite having made the mistake themselves. The police department had already paid sixteen hundred dollars for the botched analysis and would not cover another round.
Carter refused to give up. He launched a crowdfunding campaign, contributing some of his own money to show his commitment. The response was overwhelming; the goal was met within seven hours. He announced any extra funds would go toward increasing the existing ten-thousand-dollar reward for information.
Two days later, Carter was ordered to stop working on the case. The department did not say the order was connected to the public campaign, but it seemed clear enough. When Carmen’s brother learned what had happened, he started a petition demanding Carter be reinstated. The petition gained rapid traction, drawing local media attention and hundreds of angry residents who flooded the police department with complaints.
Under mounting public pressure, the department called a press conference the same day, calling the whole thing a misunderstanding and insisting Carter had never been removed from the case. They promised to reimburse all donors and cover the cost of the DNA test themselves. Carter returned to the investigation and immediately ordered a new analysis of the biological samples from Carmen’s body. This time, the lab handled the correct sample and produced a full genetic profile of an unknown man.
But the profile did not match anyone in the FBI’s database. For years, Carter investigated every man Carmen might have known, convinced the killer was someone she trusted enough to let into her apartment. Still, no breakthrough came. In 2023, the police department brought in Parabon, a company known for advanced forensic techniques, and decided to try genetic genealogy.
This method involves taking an unknown DNA sample and searching public genetic databases where people voluntarily upload their profiles. Often the matches are distant relatives who have no idea who the person being sought is, but even those distant connections can give investigators enough to start building family trees. By narrowing down the possibilities through age, sex, location, and other details, experts can eventually identify the most likely suspect. After several months of work, they identified a fifty-two-year-old man named Dana Shepherd.
At the time of Carmen’s murder, Shepherd had been living in the same apartment complex, in the apartment directly next door to hers. He had a long criminal record, but mostly for nonviolent offenses like theft, car theft, and driving without a license, which is why his DNA had never entered the FBI database. More shocking still, Shepherd’s name had never appeared in the original case files. Police had apparently assumed the killer fled the scene because neighbors reported hearing footsteps running down the stairs, and they never considered the possibility that the murderer lived just a few steps away the entire time.
By the time the DNA results came in, Shepherd was living in Missouri and working as a custodian at a university. Police obtained a warrant for a DNA sample and traveled to his state. When they arrived at his door, Shepherd was visibly trembling but cooperated and provided the sample. The results were a perfect match.
In September 2024, Dana Shepherd was arrested and brought to Indiana to face justice. Despite the match, he denied any involvement, and the case was referred to court. As of this writing, the trial has not yet begun, but prosecutors believe they have a strong case for conviction. According to their account, Carmen knew Shepherd well.
That evening, he allegedly came to her apartment for dinner and drinks. At some point, he began harassing her, and when she resisted, he attacked her with a knife. Shepherd remains in custody, awaiting trial, with bail denied. Carmen’s brother thanked the investigators for finally identifying a suspect, even though it took more than thirty years.
He and the rest of the family are now preparing for the difficult road ahead as the trial begins, a process that could stretch on for years. One thing is certain: if convicted, Shepherd faces up to one hundred and five years in prison. The prosecution may also be holding additional evidence linking Shepherd to the crime, which could emerge during the trial.
Even without it, the DNA match alone may be enough to convince a jury of his guilt, or to push him toward a plea deal to avoid a harsher sentence.