Madeline Buckley

madeline.buckley@indystar.com

Police and prosecutors spent hundreds of hours investigating and building the murder case against Daniel Messel, the Bloomington man who beat to death Indiana University senior Hannah Wilson.

In the end, though, it was Wilson who solved the case.

The 22-year-old Fishers woman struggled fiercely with her attacker, causing him to leave behind the key to the case: his cellphone.

"She fought him off, and now he's off the street," said Jeff Wilson, Hannah's father.

Brown County Prosecutor Ted Adams credited Wilson for ensuring that a trail of evidence was left behind. Messel's cellphone was nestled in the grass near her feet. From there, investigators followed the trail to his home, where they found him carrying a garbage bag of bloody clothes. His Kia Sportage was spattered with blood.

A jury late Wednesday afternoon found Messel guilty of murder and of being a habitual offender after listening to testimony for seven days. The 12 jurors deliberated for nearly five hours.

Brown Circuit Judge Judith Stewart will sentence Messel on Sept. 22. He faces up to 65 years in prison on the murder conviction and up to 20 years on the habitual offender enhancement.

Wilson's mother, sister and father, as well as friends and other family members, watched excruciating testimony. They viewed images of Wilson's bruised head, her dark hair matted with blood. They watched as prosecutors held up the gray shirt Wilson wore that night, also stained a dark red.

"I needed to be here for Hannah," said her mother, Robin Wilson, with tears brimming in her eyes. "She had no voice anymore."

Wilson's family hugged and wiped away tears after the jury came back with the verdict. Messel sat in his chair, stone-faced and silent.

Wilson's friends testified in court, one by one describing a bubbly, vivacious girl who loved texting her friends and was full of hope for the future. On April 23, 2015, Wilson walked to her Bloomington home with her roommate, ecstatic that she felt she had just passed a final exam she needed to graduate.

Hannah Wilson trial: A night of celebration gone horribly wrong

That night, she partied with friends to celebrate the end of final exams and the Little 500 bike races, an event known for parties at the Bloomington campus.

But about 8:30 the next morning, Wilson was found brutally beaten to death in an isolated field in rural Brown County. The evidence, prosecutors argued, clearly pointed to Messel, the 50-year-old print shop employee who lived with his father in a trailer. Messel and Wilson had never met before.

How Wilson fell into Messel's grasp remained a mystery throughout the trial. Two friends testified that they put the woman in a taxi outside Kilroy's Sports Bar around 12:45 a.m. April 24 because they believed she was too intoxicated to enter the bar. The cab driver told the jury he watched her weave between cars and step onto the sidewalk near her Bloomington home.

A roommate heard the front door open around 1 a.m., but she did not hear it close. It was ajar in the morning when the roommates discovered Wilson was missing. Her cellphone and purse sat in her bedroom.

Defense attorney Dorie Maryan argued throughout the case that police quickly zoned in on Messel as a suspect but failed to investigate other possibilities. She pointed to a cigarette butt at the scene that police didn't test for DNA, as well as an unknown DNA profile detected when testing grass with blood at the crime scene.

"Too many questions remain," Maryan said Wednesday in closing arguments. "So, for that reason, you must find Mr. Messel not guilty."

Yet prosecutors urged the jury not to be distracted by what they called the defense's "red herrings." They said the evidence was clear: Wilson's blood and hair were found in Messel's car and on his clothes.

"Are there unknowns … yeah, there are things we are never going to know," Adams told the jury. "That is not reasonable doubt."

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

The killing rattled the state's flagship university just before graduation. It brought back dark memories of the disappearance of Lauren Spierer, who vanished after partying with friends in 2011.

"Though the memory of Hannah's tragic loss will remain with us forever, we are grateful that justice has been served with this verdict and hope that Hannah's family and loved ones can finally find some degree of closure," Indiana University said in a statement.

Police, prosecutors and Wilson's family said the verdict was crucial for public safety. Prosecutors sought the sentence enhancement based on Messel's past convictions for battery. They tried to show a pattern of what they indicated was violent and predatory behavior.

Another Indiana University student on Tuesday told Stewart, the judge, that she thinks Messel persuaded her to get into his car in 2012 and attacked her. She jumped out of the moving car.

The woman, though, said she couldn't identify Messel. Instead, she testified that she had a physical, gut reaction when she saw his picture in the paper.

So Stewart ruled that the jury couldn't hear her testimony.

Although the jury never heard the other student’s story, the message from prosecutors was clear: This man is dangerous.

"I needed him off the streets," Robin Wilson said.

Read IndyStar's full coverage of the trial:

Day 1: Jurors learn details of Hannah Wilson's brutal slaying

Day 2: Hannah Wilson murder weapon may have been flashlight

Day 3: A day of difficult images in Hannah Wilson murder trial

Day 4: In Hannah Wilson murder trial, an SUV with blood and an untested cigarette

Day 5: Prosecutors: Hannah Wilson murder suspect has violent past

Day 6:IU student: 'this was the same person who tried to attack me'

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