Indy Police Seek DNA From Serial-Slayings Suspect

INDIANAPOLIS -- Indianapolis police are going to Tennessee Thursday to interview a trucker accused of killing women in four states, hoping to learn whether he committed more central Indiana killings than those to which authorities said he confessed, 6News' Jack Rinehart reported.

Indianapolis police want to talk to and draw a DNA sample from Bruce Mendenhall, who police said confessed last month to killing six women -- including two in Indiana -- this year.

"It would not be too far of a stretch to say there's probably women who are missing and may have been subject to his hands, yet we have not found those victims," Indianapolis Deputy Police Chief Scott Robinette said Wednesday.

Mendenhall, of Albion, Ill., was arrested last month in Nashville, Tenn., in connection with the death of a Tennessee woman whose body was found at a Nashville truck stop two weeks earlier, police said.

Police said Mendenhall was charged in that death and confessed to killing five other women -- one in Indianapolis; one in Lake Station, Ind.; one in Suwanee, Ga.; one in Birmingham, Ala.; and another Tennessee woman.

The body of the woman Mendenhall allegedly claimed to have killed in Indianapolis -- a woman from Clayton, Ind. -- has not been found. Police in Lake Station said they were checking Mendenhall's alleged claim that he killed a woman whose body was found at a truck stop there in February.

Indianapolis police said they have no reason to believe Mendenhall was lying about the Indianapolis slaying. Police mounted an extensive search in the area Mendenhall told authorities they would find the victim's body.

Authorities also they're investigating Mendenhall in the 2004 death of Buffie Rae Brawley, who was a friend of the Clayton woman.

The body of Brawley, 27, was found in March 2004 at a former truck stop along Interstate 74 near Pittsboro. An autopsy determined she died of asphyxiation.

Hendricks County police on Thursday named John R. Williams, 31, as a suspect in Brawley's slaying. Williams, who is incarcerated in Mississippi after a murder conviction, was questioned by Hendricks County officials earlier this week. Investigators said Williams has also been implicated in a series of truck stop prostitute killings.

Mendenhall spent 20 years as a trucker. At least some of the women Mendenhall is accused of killing were prostitutes, police said.

Indianapolis police have asked the FBI to help them track Mendenhall's trips through the Indianapolis area to see whether there is a correlation between those trips and the disappearances of prostitutes.

"We're going to look over the last 20 years of any missing prostitutes who essentially worked the truck stops," Robinette said.