Another Eyler victim identified after nearly 40 years

Monday, December 6, 2021
William Joseph “Bill” Lewis shown in undated photo shared by family, and in forensic pathologists’ creation of how “John Doe” might have looked.
Courtesy photos

The human carnage he wrought didn’t die with serial killer Larry Eyler in 1994.

The horror came to life again last week when the body of a 19-year-old Peru, Ind., man was identified -- nearly 40 years after he died at the hands of Eyler, who grew up in Greencastle and worked as a liquor store clerk locally even as he drugged and killed the majority of his admitted 22 young male victims over the period Oct. 23, 1982-Aug. 19, 1984.

On Friday, Jasper County Coroner Andrew Boersma announced that remains found near Rensselaer in October 1983 are those of William Joseph “Bill” Lewis. A forensics company in Massachusetts made the identification.

Larry Eyler

As a convicted serial killer, Eyler made a Death Row confession in 1994, telling his attorney that he had killed 22 men, including Lewis. Eyler offered a description of his victim but not a name. Lewis came to be known as “Jasper County John Doe” after his remains were discovered 38 years ago.

“At the time, of course, as we all know, there was no such thing as DNA,” said Boersma, who inherited the cold case when he became coroner more than 20 years ago.

Then, last January, a student intern at Redgrave Research Forensics Services, a genealogical forensics company, volunteered to help try and solve the nearly 40-year mystery.

“I’ve been entrusted with this case from three sheriffs ago and have dug at it for 20-some years,” Boersma said.

The results of DNA taken from Lewis’s remains were uploaded to a genealogical website, where researchers found matches eventually leading to Lewis relatives.

Eyler said he had picked Lewis up on U.S. 41 near Vincennes, where the young man was hitchhiking home from a funeral in Texas, on Nov. 20, 1982, following the script that became his modus operandi along highways in Indiana and Illinois.

Information was disclosed that Eyler said he offered Lewis alcohol and Placidyl, a sleeping pill, as they drove north. By the time they reached Jasper County, Lewis was reportedly “semiconscious.”

It was a scene played out by Eyler two dozen or more times after initially trying out his method by drugging a young Greencastle man from a downtown arcade and dumping his near-lifeless body behind Varsity Lanes bowling alley. That victim lived and was not sexually assaulted but charges were dropped after Eyler’s initial arrest.

About a year after Eyler admittedly killed Lewis, a Rensselaer man discovered what he believed to be human remains while setting fox traps in a field. He notified authorities, who discovered 30 bone fragments scattered across the property.

At the time the coroner’s office determined the victim was a white male between the ages of 18-26 years old, with shoulder-length reddish brown hair. Several pieces of dental evidence, including caps and fillings, were identified in the victim’s mouth, and the man appeared to have previously broken his left femur. Clothes were collected from the area, along with a Zippo lighter with the name “Arlene” engraved on the side.

Although the preponderance of Eyler’s victims were young, gay males, that was not the case with Lewis, Jasper County Coroner Boersma told the Banner Graphic.

“He wasn’t a homosexual,” Boersma said. “He had a girlfriend. He was carrying a lighter his girlfriend bought for him and put her name on it.

“If he was gay, why would he be carrying his high school girlfriend’s name in his pocket?”

Despite all of the clues identified by the coroner in 1983, the victim’s description didn’t match any known missing persons reports and no one stepped forward to identify him.

Eyler, who was born in Crawforsdsville and went to school for a time at South Putnam, was sentenced to death for the murder of Chicago teenager Danny Bridges, whose remains he was seen disposing of in a dumpster near his Chicago apartment in 1984. Eyler died of AIDS-related complications in prison on March 6, 1994.

Two days after his death, Eyler’s attorney, Kathleen Zellner, announced that her client had confessed to 22 killings, including the unknown victim that would become Lewis.

Imprisoned in Pontiac, Ill., Eyler confessed that he had killed the then-John Doe along with 20 other young men and boys. Eyler stated that he had picked up the young man around the weekend of Nov. 20, 1982 but was unable to provide a name or relevant information about the identity of the victim. Authorities concluded he was responsible for the man’s death based on the confession. The details of his confession led to law enforcement producing the first forensic sketch of Jasper County John Doe.

In the years after the discovery of Lewis’ remains, local first responders raised money for a “John Doe” gravestone at Sayler Makeever Cemetery in Rensselaer.

It was noted that Lewis’ remains will now be moved to be buried next to his father at Peru.

Authorities believe the Eyler killing spree began with the March 22, 1982 death of Jay Reynolds, who was found stabbed to death on the outskirts of Lexington, Ky.

Nine months later the scene shifted to the north side of Indianapolis, where on Oct. 3, Delvoyd Baker, 14, was found strangled with his body dumped along the roadside.

Steven Crockett, 19, was a victim on Oct. 23, 1982, stabbed 32 times with four wounds in the head, discarded outside Lowell, Ind. The killings moved into Illinois with Robert Foley left in a field northwest of Joliet on Nov. 6, 1982. 

On Christmas Day 1982, 25-year-old John Johnson’s body was discovered in Lake County in a field outside Belshaw, Ind.

Three days later, the murder spree moved into Putnam County as the body of 21-year-old John Lee Roach was discovered by hunters in a wooded area southeast of Putnamville, near the State Road 243 exit of Interstate 70.

But that wasn’t the only body found that day. Less than 50 miles northwest of where Roach was discovered with his pants pulled down around his ankles (in what would become a signature aspect of the Eyler killings), the brutally slashed body of Steven Agan, 23, Terre Haute, was found in Vermillion County.

The late Jack Hanlon, former longtime Putnamville Indiana State Police detective, described Agan’s body as “field dressed” in the manner a hunter would cut up a deer that had been shot and killed.

The connection of the Roach and Agan murders, along with a May 9, 1983 discovery of the body of Daniel Scott McNeive, 21, Indianapolis, refocused the investigation on west-central Indiana. McNieve’s body was found in a field along State Road 39 just off I-70 near the Hendricks-Morgan county line.

Just about a year after the Roach-Agan discoveries, authorities found two more bodies in a field along the north side of U.S. 40 (west of Belleville and east of Cox’s Plant Farm) on Dec. 7, 1983. Only one of those victims has been identified, Richard Wayne, 21, Indianapolis.

Known victims of serial killer Larry Eyler

• Aug. 3. 1978, Terre Haute: Craig Long, 19 (attempted, non-fatally stabbed in the chest).

• March 22, 1982, Lexington, Ky.: Jay Reynolds, 31 (stabbed).

• Oct. 3, 1982, Indianapolis: Delvoyd Baker, 14 (strangled).

• Oct. 23, 1982, Yellowhead Township, Ill.: Steven M. Crockett, 19 (fatally stabbed 32 times).

• Nov. 4, 1982, Crown Point,: Craig Townsend, 21 (attempted, but survived; drugged, tortured and beaten).

• Nov. 6, 1982, Joliet, Ill. (found): Robert Foley.

• Dec. 25, 1982, Belshaw, Ind. (found): John Johnson, 25.

• Dec. 28, 1982, Newport, Ind. (found): Steven Agan, 23.

• Dec. 28, 1982, Putnamville (found) John Lee Roach, 21.

• Dec. 30, 1982, Highland Park, Ill.: David M. Block, 22.

• Jan. 24, 1983, Lake Forest, Ill.: Ervin Dwayne Gibson, 16.

• March 4, 1983, Danville, Ill. (found): Edgar Underkofler, 27.

• April 8,1983, Lake Forest, Ill. (found): Gustavo Herrera, 28.

• May 9, 1983 (found): Cook, Ill.: Jimmy T. Roberts, 18.

• May 9, 1983 (found): Belleville: Daniel Scott McNeive, 21.

• May 18, 1983, Effingham, Ill.: Richard Bruce, 25.

• May 23, 1983: Newton County: John Ingram Bradenburg, 19 (stabbed; his body was identified in April 2021).

• July 7, 1983, Ford, Ill. (found): An unidentified man.

• Aug. 8, 1983, Lake Forest, Ill. (found): Ralph Calise, 28 (stabbed 17 times).

• Oct. 4, 1983, Kenosha, Wis. (found): Derrick Hansen, 18 (sexually assaulted and dismembered).

• Oct. 15, 1983, Rensselear (found): An unidentified man. ID’d recently as William Joseph “Bill” Lewis, 19, Peru.

• Oct. 19, 1983, Lake Village, Ill. (found): Michael Bouer, 22, John Barlett, 19, and “Adam Doe”(pseudonym), 15-18.

• Dec. 7, 1983, Clayton, Hendricks County (found): Unnamed man and Richard Wayne, 21, Indianapolis.

• Aug. 21, 1984, Chicago (found): Daniel “Danny” Bridges, 15 (killed by unknown causes, dismembered post-mortem).

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  • Thank you for a great article, Eric

    -- Posted by Nit on Mon, Dec 6, 2021, at 4:43 PM
  • The coroner is either ignorant or naive to say the Lewis victim could not be gay because he carried a lighter with his high school girlfriend's name on it.

    -- Posted by Ben Dover on Tue, Dec 7, 2021, at 8:11 AM
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