CROWN POINT, Ind. — The man who allegedly told police that he’d killed seven women remained silent during his court appearance Wednesday, despite the judge’s admonishment that he’d face prison for “the rest of his life” unless he cooperated, media reports said.
“Mr. Vann, are you choosing not to take part in this hearing?” asked Lake Superior Court judge Kathleen Sullivan, who presided over the hearing at the Lake County Jail in Crown Point.
Darren Deon Vann, 43, who appeared in court shackled at the wrists and legs, stood mute and expressionless between two guards when asked if he swore to tell the truth at his appearance in the strangulation death of 19-year-old Afrikka Hardy.
“Tell your client that he stays in jail the rest of his life until this hearing takes place,” Sullivan told the public defender, whose efforts to prompt his client’s speech were unsuccessful. Sullivan then stated that she’d schedule another hearing next week.
Hardy’s lifeless body was found Oct. 17 in a bathtub at a Hammond Motel 6. Police say the teen met Vann through a website. After Vann’s arrest Saturday, police investigators said Vann confessed to killing six other women and directed them to where the bodies lay in abandoned buildings in Gary.
Investigators recovered the body of Merrillville resident Anith Jones on Oct. 18. She had been missing 10 days. On Sunday, Oct. 19, the bodies of five other women were found, among them Gary residents Teaira Batey, 28, and Kristine Williams, 36.
Texas police are also investigating, as Vann has ties to the Lone Star State. He was convicted in 2009 of raping a woman at his Austin apartment. Upon his release from prison in 2013, he returned to Indiana.
Prior to the rape conviction, Vann was incarcerated for a year in Indiana after dousing a Gary woman with gasoline and threatening to burn her in 2004. Police say in both the Texas rape conviction, and the Indiana conviction, Vann received plea bargains.
Meanwhile, in Gary officers searched vacant buildings for additional bodies.
The officers face what by any measure is a herculean task, as there are thousands of abandoned buildings in Gary. “We have 10,000 abandoned buildings and can only account for five that were the location of these bodies,” said Gary Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson. “Do the math.”
