GRANT COUNTY, Ind. (WTHR) - The Madison County sheriff confirms a woman's body found Tuesday in Grant County is connected to a recent homicide investigation near Anderson.
Police arrested 38-year-old Daniel Jones. The sheriff said Jones led investigators to that body in southern Grant County near County Roads 1100 South and 400 West.
Jones' arrest is connected to the discovery of the body of David Lamar Phillips II at a nature preserve off of Rangeline Road in Anderson.
Three people were also arrested and charged with murder in connection with Phillips' death:
- Brittney Vontress, 30
- Jordan Zirkle, 30
- Taylor Wheeler, 23
Police say Phillips' body appears to have been in the area for several days.
"I only seen one of them get shot. The other one I heard, I did not see with my own eyes,” Jordan Zirkle said in a jail interview.
Zirkle said he was at an Anderson house about a week and a half ago when a man he barely knew fired three times, striking a woman. Zirkle said he thinks the wounds were to the back of the head.
An autopsy will determine whether her body was the one just found near Fairmount in Grant County. An autopsy Wednesday should confirm the identity of the victim.
Days before she was killed, Zirkle says a man the victim knew, David Phillips, was murdered at a nature preserve in Madison County.
"And they put one in his head, and I didn't see the second shot, but he said he got him a second time."
As for why they were they killed, Zirkle wasn't clear.
"I honestly can't answer that one hundred percent," he said.
The four are all facing preliminary charges in the killings. Zirkle says he didn't shoot either of the victims. But if he witnessed the shooting of the first victim, why would he still be hanging out with the alleged gunman who shoots a second victim days later?
"I never left,” says Zirkle. “He said if I left I was a liability and I was dead."
Mellinger says his department first heard about two people being murdered less than a week ago.
“Our investigators took information from the prosecutor’s office,” he said.
Mellinger a tipster helped police track down the bodies and develop a list of suspects leading to the arrests.
"There's some type of remorse there but obviously not enough to report it, which is concerning, but that's the world we live in," Mellinger said.