Chris Jones steps away from the doorway of an abandoned home, recoiling from a powerful stench. Inside the room, underneath two windows, are long black stains along the wall and floor where the decomposed body of Teairra Batey, 28, lay for almost a year before it was discovered on Sunday.
Police say she was a victim of Darren Deon Vann, 43, the man charged on Monday with one count of murder who has, they say, confessed to the killings of six other women, including Batey. They believe he may be responsible for the deaths of at least 20 other women missing in north-west Indiana.
Jones, a carpenter with the city of Gary, and his partner Lory Welch, are tasked with boarding up the five locations where Vann’s victims were discovered. Abandoned by their owners years ago, the homes are overrun with shoulder-length weeds and littered with the detritus of squatters: old mattresses, broken glass and liquor bottles. Jones doesn’t expect the fresh plywood over the doors and windows to stay for long: he points to vacant homes next door, now open to the elements, saying he boarded those up five years ago.
“Going to be an overtime kind of day,” he says.
For Gary, a city where more than 35% of residents live under the federal poverty level, the news of the serial killings is another blow. Hit hard by the loss of steel mill jobs, its population has fallen to 78,000 from more than twice that in the 1960s. The city has faced corruption and crime, but worse the legacy of nearly 10,000 blighted and abandoned homes the city cannot afford to knock down.
Tracy Cobb, 48, says the blight has made his neighborhood in Gary dangerous. “If you walk these streets at night, it’s nothing but an accident waiting to happen,” he says. “There’s always one bad apple on that tree.”
Cobb knew Batey, the young woman discovered on Sunday. He met her in December when they were both in a rehabilitation facility for drugs and alcohol in nearby Merrillville. “She talked about getting her life together. She was a real down to earth lady who was struggling,” he says. The next month, she was reported missing and never seen again.
With little help from the authorities, their families looked for them over these last several months, not knowing that their bodies were barely hidden, simply discarded in abandoned homes. Despite the smell given off by the bodies, and the ease with which the homes can be accessed, Jones says they were easy to miss because of the magnitude of the blight problem. In his eight years on the job as Gary’s chief of board-up – that is his real job title – Jones says he secures between 40 and 50 homes a month and purchases plywood in bulk, 300 sheets at a time. But it’s never enough. “This is a dangerous job,” he says.
Jesse Washington, 72, who operates an auto shop three blocks from where the body of Anith Jones, 35, of Merrillville, was found on Saturday, says that blight has made it impossible for people to sell their homes to move somewhere better. So many just walk away, leaving their homes to rot, and the problem grows. The home where Jones was discovered, for example, is one of five that lies empty on a block of 10. Behind the house is a mud path for an alley, surrounded by a forest of weeds. “It’s a worry,” Washington says. “Especially after this weekend. And especially when you have people living next door.”
Jones went missing 8 October. Her sister Yolanda Nowell told a local newspaper she was “a kind, loving woman” and “everybody’s favorite aunt”.
Vann was arrested for murder, murder in the perpetration of a robbery, and robbery resulting in serious bodily injury, for the death of Afrikka Hardy, 19, at a Motel 6 in nearby Hammond. Lake County prosecutors say Hardy, who was strangled to death with a cord, was was found in a bathtub on Friday. They say she met Vann via Backpage.com where he responded to her ad for prostitution. Vann is said to have confessed to the killing on Saturday. During his interrogation, he told police of the six other victims and led them to their bodies.
The other victims are Christine Williams, 36, of Gary, and three unidentified females. Police say it is likely additional charges against Vann are pending upon further investigation. Vann is a registered sex offender in Texas and in 2004 was convicted of misdemeanor residential entry in Indiana. Lake County prosecutor Bernard Carter said on Tuesday he is reviewing the case to determine if he can pursue the death penalty against Vann.
“There is no reason for urgency. He’s being held on the one murder. He’s not going anywhere,” he told reporters.
Lori Townsend, Hardy’s mother, posted on Facebook on Tuesday: “I cry, in my private moments, when I’m looking at my Baby’s pictures. I start to giggle and laugh when I remember something silly she did. I’m trying not to cry.”
Vann is currently in Lake County Jail in Crown Point. A hearing is set for 9am on Wednesday.
