Jurors learn details of Hannah Wilson's brutal slaying

NASHVILLE, Ind. — The first clue that something was amiss in the Bloomington home was the door, swung wide open that Friday morning. The second clue: Indiana University senior Hannah Wilson's phone was on her bed, which looked as if it hadn't been slept in, her roommates testified.

This was the phone of a college student, the phone Wilson was rarely seen without, her friends said. They grew worried.

• Day two coverage of Hannah Wilson's murder trial (Aug. 3, 2016)

It was the day of the Little 500, a weekend of undergraduate bike races known for parties. Students, including one of Hannah's roommates, competed in the races that afternoon, before she knew anything was wrong. Meanwhile, Wilson's friends and police began to piece together the events of the previous night.

The 22-year-old woman from Fishers was found around 8:30 a.m. Friday, April 24, 2015, beaten to death in an isolated rural area of Brown County.

That morning, it was another cellphone that raised questions for police.

Nestled below Wilson's Converse-clad feet was a cellphone that police say belonged to 50-year-old Daniel Messel. The evidence against Messel mounted, prosecutors say, after investigators showed up at his father's home and found him with a bag of bloody clothes.

Messel is charged with murder in Wilson's death. A jury began hearing testimony Tuesday after three days of jury selection during which Brown Circuit Judge Judith A. Stewart worked to find jurors untainted by the intense pretrial publicity.

Messel and Wilson didn't know each other before that night, her friends testified. Somehow, their paths crossed as Thursday, April 23, became Friday, April 24. Prosecutors and the defense agree on that.

Here's where they disagree: The end result of the encounter, prosecutors allege, was Hannah's brutal murder.

"Dan and Ms. Wilson did encounter each other in the early morning hours of April 24," Messel's defense attorney, Dorie Maryan, told the jury. "But the fact of that encounter does not put a weapon in Daniel Messel’s hands."

In her opening statements, Maryan argued that investigators quickly arrested their first suspect. They zoned in on Messel and ignored other possible suspects.

In rural Brown County, Hannah Wilson case prompts a rare murder trial

Brown County Prosecutor Ted Adams in his opening remarks laid out what he said was an arsenal of "circumstantial evidence" that pointed to Messel. The man's cellphone was found near Wilson's feet, he said. Her blood was in his car. Adams said Messel carried a bag of his clothes — spotted with Wilson's blood — when he was arrested.

"She was two weeks from graduation. She was a psych major, bubbly, fun," Adams said of Wilson. "She was a fun person with fun friends."

Adams began reconstructing the timeline of Wilson's last hours. Yet there are mysteries, he said, we likely will never uncover.

Motive. Prosecutors don't have to provide one when trying a case, he said. And the jury won't hear one during this trial.

Here's what jurors did hear about Wilson's last night, as recounted by her friends:

• She thought she had done well on an exam and was thrilled at the end of the school day Thursday. "She was pretty excited because she had done well on it," roommate Allison Eschbach said.
• Wilson drank with two friends at her Bloomington house before leaving in an Uber between 8:30 and 9:30 p.m.
• She went to the Hilton Garden Inn, where some friends who had graduated the previous year were staying. They drank more at the hotel.
• The group went to Kilroy's Sports Bar, but two of Wilson's friends decided she was too intoxicated to enter the bar and placed her in an E2 taxi to return home.

Prosecutors said in opening statements that the cab driver who took Wilson home testified that she didn't want to go home. Her phone records show she made one last call around 1:05 a.m. to a friend who reported he was at a loud bar and couldn't hear her. Hannah's roommate testified that she heard the front door open around 1 a.m. and never close.

These were the last moments anyone could account for Wilson.

Meanwhile, prosecutors said, Messel was playing trivia at Yogi's, a bar just blocks from Wilson's home. He was at the bar until about 11:30 p.m. Thursday, Adams said.

After that, Adams told the jury, surveillance video captured Messel's Kia Sportage driving behind the taxi that carried Wilson home from Kilroy's.

But Maryan, Messel's attorney, asked the jury to keep an open mind. She said there was a cigarette butt and stray hairs on and near Wilson's body that police didn't test for DNA or fingerprints. Maryan asked the men who were with Wilson in her last hours whether police asked them for DNA samples. They said police had not. Maryan said police didn't interview a man Wilson was dating until about a month after her death.

The courtroom was full of family and friends Tuesday. Wilson's mother testified, choking up while telling the court that Wilson was her first-born daughter. She had a job lined up in Fishers to coach cheerleading before she planned to go to graduate school.

Wilson was bubbly and fun, her friends said.

Eschbach smiled when asked on the stand what her friend was like. "She was the person everyone fell in love with right away."

Call IndyStar reporter Madeline Buckley at (317) 444-6083. Follow her on Twitter: @Mabuckley88.

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