Menu
Officials identify remains found at Indiana farm in 1983 as Chicago teen slain by late serial killer Larry Eyler
From Staff, Wire Reports
KENTLAND Human remains found buried in 1983 at an abandoned Indiana farm have been identified as those of a Chicago teenager who was a victim of the late serial killer Larry Eyler, authorities said Tuesday.
The remains, which were found near the remains of three young men Eyler also killed, are those of Keith Lavell Bibbs, who was 16 when he died, according to the Newton County Coroner’s Office and the DNA Doe Project.
Eyler, formerly of Greencastle and one-time local liquor store clerk during his reign of terror, confessed to at least 20 killings before dying in 1994 at an Illinois prison, where he was on death row for the 1984 murder of 15-year-old Danny Bridges of Chicago.
In 1990, Eyler, who was born in Crawforsdsville and went to school for a time at South Putnam, confessed to killing a Black male in July 1983 at a Newton County farm and described that male as being in his late teens or early 20s, said Pam Lauritzen, spokesman for the DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit that works to identify cold case victims.
Bibbs, who was a Chicago resident, would have been 16 at the time of his death, she said.
The Newton County Coroner’s Office worked with the DNA Doe Project, Indiana State Police and the Identify Indiana Initiative to identify Bibbs nearly 40 years after his remains were discovered.
He is the last to be positively identified of the four victims found buried in shallow graves in October 1983 at the abandoned farm in Lake Village, about 60 miles southeast of Chicago. All four had been drugged and murdered by Eyler, according to his confessions.
Newton County Coroner Scott McCord said he was working on paperwork needed to get Bibbs’ remains sent to his relatives for burial. He said the family is requesting privacy while they grieve.
“Everything’s done except for getting him back home,” he told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “It’s been a long road getting all those kids identified.”
The DNA Doe Project said in a news release that Bibbs’ DNA was “highly degraded” and investigators spent more than two years repeatedly trying to create “a workable DNA profile” to compare to databases used for forensic cases. In January, the nonprofit said a team of investigative genetic genealogists had finally made progress unraveling Bibbs’ “complex family tree,” leading to his identification.
Two of Eyler's four victims found buried at the farm were identified early in the investigation as Michael Bauer and John Bartlett. In April 2021, the coroner’s office announced that authorities had identified a third victim as John Ingram Brandenburg Jr. of Chicago, leaving only Bibbs' body unidentified at that time.
In December 2021, authorities announced that the body of another of Eyler’s victims found at a different site in rural northwestern Indiana had been identified as 19-year-old William Joseph Lewis of Peru, Indiana.
Lewis' body was also found in October 1983, but in a Jasper County field, about 70 miles (112 kilometers) southeast of Chicago. He was last seen alive in 1982 by his family at a friend’s funeral in Houston, Texas, officials said.
In December 2021, authorities announced that the body of another of Eyler’s victims found at a different site in rural northwestern Indiana had been identified as 19-year-old William Joseph Lewis of Peru, Indiana.
Lewis' body was also found in October 1983, but in a Jasper County field, about 70 miles (112 kilometers) southeast of Chicago. He was last seen alive in 1982 by his family at a friend’s funeral in Houston, Texas, officials said
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.
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.
Other 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).