Diana Penner

diana.penner@indystar.com

This entry in the Indianapolis Star's occasional series highlighting some of the area's unsolved crimes originally ran May 14, 2013. Longtime Star reporter Diana Penner recounts details of the crime, the victim and where the case stands with hopes of generating new information.

The crime:

On March 22, 1993 -- a Monday -- 19-year-old Carmen Hope Van Huss spent the evening with family visiting an ailing grandmother at Community South Hospital.

They left about 10 p.m. She gave a ride to her father and her youngest brother, who had turned 3 a few months earlier, dropping them off at their Southside home about 10:30 p.m. Her father asked her to stay the evening, but she said she had to get home to wash her Pizza Hut uniform -- she was a waitress and had to work the next day.

About 11 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. neighbors heard her walk up the hall to her apartment in what was then the Turtle Creek North Apartments in the 8200 block of Harcourt Road, just south of St. Vincent Hospital. She was with a man; the two were talking and laughing, neighbors said later.

Between 1 a.m. and 1:30 a.m., March 23, neighbors heard a loud commotion from the apartment. One heard Van Huss yell, "Get off me! Get off me!" About 1:30 a.m., there were hurried footsteps leaving the apartment.

No one called police, but someone complained to the apartment complex management, which left a hand-written note on Van Huss' door the next morning, chiding her for the noise and telling her to be more considerate of her neighbors.

On March 24, Missy Hennings, who had shared a two-bedroom apartment with Van Huss and two other young women for several months, stopped by the Pizza Hut where she had previously worked to see if she could work some waitress shifts. She asked about Van Huss but managers told Hennings that Van Huss had missed a couple of days of work and didn't answer her phone.

They looked up Van Huss' emergency contact on her employment application and decided to reach out to her father, James Van Huss Sr. He went to his daughter's apartment, found the scolding note on her door and inside, a horrific scene.

Carmen Van Huss had been raped and stabbed brutally, many times.

The victim and her family:

Her parents divorced when she was young, and Carmen was raised by an aunt and uncle. She attended Lawrence Central High School but dropped out before graduating; she received her GED diploma, however.

In high school, she created a portfolio of artwork that her brother James Jr., has kept all these years. They show she was experimenting with pencil sketches of bodies, bold portraits of stylish women and bright colors and contrasting themes -- flowers amid barbed wire, for instance.

At the time of her death, she had been a waitress for about eight months at a Pizza Hut at 86th Street and Westfield Boulevard. She also had worked at a Waffle House. In her obituary, the family asked that memorial donations be made to the Humane Society of Indianapolis. She loved animals and had brought home many stray cats as a kid; her step-mother, Sherry Eaton, recalled that she wanted to be a veterinarian.

James Van Huss Sr. died in a car crash in 2002 at the age of 49. At his daughter's funeral, Van Huss received a call from the hospital: His mother, the grandmother Carmen visited the last night she was alive, had died.

James Van Huss Jr. was 15 when his sister was killed. Growing up, he saw her mostly on weekends, but in the few years before she died, the two had gotten to know each other and were developing a brother-sister relationship, he said.

"At the time this happened, me and her were starting to get really close," he said. His sister's murder took a huge toll on their father, he said. "After that, you could tell there was something empty in him," he said.

The detective:

Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department Detective Sgt. William Carter recently revived the case, partly because new technology is allowing for re-analysis of evidence collected at the time of the crime. Carter said he is hopeful the reexamination will identify a suspect.

At the time of the crime, Van Huss' boyfriend was out of state; an ex-boyfriend suspected by friends also was traveling and not in Indianapolis. In addition, physical evidence left at the scene rules the men out as the person who raped Van Huss.

Carter said there are several indications Van Huss knew her killer -- the banter and laughter neighbors heard when the two arrived at the apartment and evidence in the apartment that Van Huss and the man had shared a late-night fast food dinner and some bottles of beer.

Carter thinks that the man likely was in Van Huss' circle of friends or acquaintances, but that for some reason he was not suspected. The detective hopes anyone who knew Van Huss might think back to that time to reflect on men she knew. Police did look into other men with whom Van Huss had been intimate, but they checked out, so the killer might have been someone who was a platonic acquaintance or in a secondary circle of friends, Carter suggested.

If you know something:

Call Carter or Detective David Ellison at (317) 327-3426.

Contact Star reporter Diana Penner at (317) 444-6249, by email at diana.penner@indystar.com com or on Twitter, @dianapenner.