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Hannah Wilson slaying suspect has long history of violence

Robert King and Ryan Sabalow
robert
The body of Hannah Wilson, 22, a senior at Indiana University, was found on April 24, 2015, in Brown County. Daniel Messel, 49, has been arrested in the slaying.

BLOOMINGTON — Daniel Messel once hit his own grandmother so hard he broke a bone in her face.

He hit, slapped, bit and pulled the hair of a girlfriend.

One time, when a woman stepped in the middle of a fight Messel was having with her husband, Messel knocked the woman to the ground, then began punching her in the face. Unsatisfied, he went outside and found a wooden 2-by-4. He then beat her over the head.

Each of those times, Messel was arrested, charged and convicted with a crime.

Now, the 49-year-old print shop worker stands accused in the brutal murder of 22-year-old Indiana University student Hannah Wilson, a woman who died from blows to her head. Police say they found blood and hair on the dashboard of Messel's silver Kia Sportage. They tied him to the case when they found his cell phone near Wilson's body.

For Messel, a conviction on the allegations would add murder as a cap to decades of violent behavior — frequently against women — that stretches back into the 1980s and landed Messel in county jail and state prison.

But whether Messel is guilty of killing Wilson is for the court to decide. He has declined, through jail officials, to be interviewed.

That said, The Star's examination of court records, police reports and published news accounts provides some insight into the man now accused of killing Wilson.

Messel had posted a notice with the online dating website http://www.sugardaddyforme.com where he said he was a "Bloomington male looking for that special IU coed." He was seeking someone between 18 and 40. He listed his income as between $100,000 and $200,000. He described himself as "cuddly."

His reality was much different.

Rather than a high-income sugar daddy, Messel made $15.50 an hour — roughly $32,000 a year — in the Fine Print print shop. He'd previously filed for bankruptcy and, according to what he told a judge in an initial hearing in the Wilson case, he had less than $100 in his bank account. He lived in a mobile home with his adoptive father.

As for his "cuddly" disposition, his criminal record also paints another picture.

From 1985 to 1995, a period encapsulating his 20s, Messel had more than half a dozen brushes with the law for violent offenses. During that time, he was in and out of the Monroe County jail for short stints. Eventually, he spent three years behind bars in state prison.

He was charged with battery in 1985, after being accused of hitting a man in the face with a miniature baseball bat, according to court records. The outcome of the case is unclear.

He was charged twice in in 1986 with crimes such as confinement and battery involving a teenage girlfriend. Between plea agreements and a witness declining to testify, he was convicted of resisting law enforcement.

With another teenage girlfriend in 1991, he was twice charged with battery, including one incident where he "hit, slapped, bit and pulled hair." He pleaded guilty to a single battery charge and was sentenced to a year in jail.

In a 1994 incident, Messel was charged with criminal recklessness and leaving the scene of an accident after being accused of chasing two men with a car and crashing his car in the effort. He eventually pleaded guilty to leaving the scene.

In the fight with the couple where he pulled out the 2-by-4, the woman seemed to take the worst of it, suffering a severed artery in her head and a broken nose. That incident resulted, in 1996, in an eight-year state prison sentence. Messel served approximately three years.

While at the Correctional Industrial Facility in Madison County, Messel underwent drug treatment and anger management classes. He earned an associate degree in general studies from Ball State. He had a 3.57 grade point average.

He also shared with prison officials the source of some of his anger. His parents, Paul and Charlotte Brown, divorced when he was very young. His mother remarried Gerald Messel, who became Daniel's adoptive father when the boy was only 3. After that, Daniel's relationship with his mother deteriorated and he found the period to be very difficult. He wound up living with his adoptive father.

This is one of three memorials set up near where the body of Hannah Wilson, 22, was found. The location is near Lake Lemon in Brown County.

Messel was released from prison in 1999 and, it appears from his Monroe County records, he has mostly managed to stay out of trouble. However, in 2006, according to a Monroe County Sheriff's report, Messel followed a man out of a female friend's apartment and attacked him. The report says he punched the man and kicked him in the face and ribs, grabbing the man's hair and slamming his head into the ground. Originally charged with battery resulting in bodily injury, he wound up pleading guilty to disorderly conduct.

By 2007, Messel found work, through a temp agency with Fine Print, a Bloomington print shop. Owner Joe Wray said Messel was a good employee who caused no problems.

Aside from his work, one of Messel's other pastimes was trivia. Last month, he participated in a televised trivia competition at the Monroe County Public Library. His team finished fourth out of 31.

More frequently, Messel played trivia at Yogi's Bar and Grill in Bloomington. It was what he was doing on the night that Hannah Wilson disappeared.

A manager at the bar, Joana Glasscott, said more than 100 people were playing trivia that night. Messel, she said, appeared to servers as just another customer, someone who didn't stand out from the crowd.

Normally, his adoptive father later told police, Messel returned home after trivia nights by midnight. But on that night, Messel never came home.

The next morning, 15 miles away in Brown County, a woman found a body lying in a weedy patch just off a lonely country road. It was Hannah Wilson. Nearby, police said, was a cell phone. It belonged to Daniel Messel.

Call Robert King at (317) 444-6089. Follow him on Twitter at @Rbtking.