BOONE COUNTY, Mo. — With crimes dating back over 30 years ago, a man from Colombia, Mo. now faces charges for murder and rape that took place in Indianapolis.
On Thursday, a case was filed against 52-year-old Dana Jermaine Shepherd. He is charged with two counts of murder and one count of rape with deadly force against a woman named Carmen Vanhuss. In addition, the Boone County, Mo. court charged Shepherd with being a fugitive from out of state.
Online court records date these charges to March 23, 1993. Per police docs from the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, Marion County Sheriff Deputies were dispatched around 7:34 p.m. the following day to an apartment in the 8200 block of N Harcourt Rd. There, they found Vanhuss’s body, which police said was nude and nearby pieces of evidence (including a knocked over table, clothing thrown on the floor and a large pooling of blood near her head) indicated signs of struggle.
The case was reopened in 2000, an affidavit for probable cause reports. This investigation resulted in obtaining a DNA sample from a witness. That witness was then eliminated as a suspect in December of 2009.
Four years later, in 2013, further DNA evidence was studied, which was connected to both Vanhuss and an unknown male.
Finally, in 2023, police got a lead. Parabon, a company focused on studying DNA evidence, directed officers to a possible person-of-interest within close proximity to Vanhuss’s old apartment.
That person turned out to be Dana Shepherd. He was arrested on Friday.
According to police documents, Shepherd has previously been arrested for both public intoxication and battery in Indiana. The former took place in 1992; the latter in 1996.
Per Missouri online court records, Shepherd also has a criminal record in Missouri. He was charged with stealing in 2001, a first offense of peace disturbance in 2009 and driving on a highway without a license in 2013.
FOX59/CBS4 will update this story once more information is made available.
