Man Sentenced for 1993 Killing of Carmen Van Huss
INDIANAPOLIS — 33 years after the 1993 murder of 19-year-old Carmen Van Huss, Dana Jermaine Shepherd was sentenced to 45 years in the Indiana Department of Correction Friday morning.
“While no passage of time can ever heal the unimaginable loss Carmen’s family has endured, we are grateful to secure a Murder conviction more than 30 years after this heinous crime,” Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears said. “Our hope is that this resolution brings a measure of justice and peace to her loved ones, after three decades of waiting for answers.”
According to the probable cause affidavit, Shepherd is expected to serve roughly half of that term, or 22.5 years. The breakthough in this cold case came through the relentless work of investigators who used modern genetic genealogy to link Shepherd to DNA evidence found at the scene, specifically seminal fluid and blood-stained paper bag left in Van Huss’ kitchen.
In March 1993, Van Huss was discovered by her father in her apartment on North Harcourt Road, near West 79th Street and Ditch Road, after she failed to show up for work at Pizza Hut. She had been raped and stabbed 61 times during a violent struggle. For years, the case remained a mystery despite the exclusion of over 40 potential suspects. It wasn’t until 2023 that a tip from a genealogy database pointed toward the Shepherd family. Investigators realized Shepherd had lived just 30 seconds away from Van Huss in the same apartment complex at the time of the killing.
Shepherd, who was living in Missouri and working as a university custodian when he was arrested in 2024, pleaded guilty in January, finally providing the answers the Van Huss family sought for three decades.
