BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (WTHR) - The mother of a slain Indiana University student says she's not surprised the man who killed her daughter has allegedly committed another violent crime.
"I knew it would be coming at some point," said Robin Wilson, mother of IU student and murder victim Hannah Wilson.
She is not surprised to learn Hannah may not have been Daniel Messel's only victim.
"A person of that age doesn't just wake up and decide to create a crime of that nature," Robin Wilson says. "So I did not ever feel that Hannah was the first. I never doubted in my mind that there was other victims."
Messel was found guilty in August of taking Wilson's vulnerable daughter from her home near IU, driving her to rural Brown Country and killing her. DNA tied him to Hannah's murder. Now, it allegedly ties him to another violent attack three years before.
Prosecutors say in August 2012, Messel allegedly drove an IU Law student to Griffey Lake north of campus by force. He'd allegedly dragged her into his car after she had spent a night drinking in Bloomington bars.
He drove her to a gravel drive just up from the lake. That's where the young grad student fought a life or death struggle with Messel, who allegedly punched her repeatedly in the head, knocking her contact lens out. He struggled to get her clothes off, but she clawed and fought back.
According to court papers, Messel finally drove off with the victim's phone and other items, leaving her alive. But he'd allegedly left his DNA under her fingernails. It would be four years, though, before that DNA was identified.
Then last August, four years later, that law student read about Messel's murder trial and how similar the attack on Hannah Wilson was to her sexual assault and beating. She called police and experts connected Messel to both cases with DNA.
The similarities between Hannah's case and the law student's ordeal do not shock Robin Wilson.
"Somebody who is a serial criminal, they do things as creatures of habit because they've done things in the past and they've gotten away with it. So it does not surprise me at all," she said.
She hopes the new charges against Messel may embolden other victims to come forward so charges can be brought in their unsolved cases.
"That they may feel confident that somebody will listen to them. And they had perhaps not had the courage to come forward," Wilson said.
She said that may bring at least some meaning to Hannah's meaningless death.
