Missing woman's body found buried in Indiana garage; 3 people arrested
11/12/2019 11:36 am PST
via WXIN:
EVANSVILLE, Ind. (WXIN) -- Police arrested three people accused of hiding a woman's body for more than a year inside an Evansville garage.
Investigators found the body after receiving a tip. They said the suspects had tried to conceal the body, which had been in the home for an “extended amount of time,” according to WEHT.
Police arrested 32-year-old Angela Paul on charges of murder, obstruction of justice, abuse of a corpse and failure to report a dead body. Fifty-six-year-old Gary Anderson and 55-year-old Joan Paul were arrested on charges of obstruction of justice, abuse of a corpse and failure to report a dead body.
The body was found in a detached garage at a home in the 1000 block of N. 3rd Avenue. Police were dispatched to the location for a welfare check just before 10:30 p.m. Sunday. According to court documents, a man being questioned in an unrelated case tipped them off, telling them a body was buried in the garage and naming Angela Paul as the suspect.
Police believe the victim, whose name has not yet been released, came to Evansville from Virginia in September 2018. She'd met Angela Paul at a shelter. The woman's family didn't hear from her for months and filed a missing-persons report in July 2019. Evansville police investigated but leads were thin, according to court documents. The woman had only been in Evansville for three weeks before she disappeared.
The case remained open until detectives searched the garage at the N. 3rd Avenue home on Monday, Nov. 11. They found a body wrapped in a plastic tarp that had been buried underneath a dirt portion of the garage floor.
The deceased is mentally challenged and “soiled her clothes often, which infuriated Angela Paul,” according to court documents. Gary Anderson told police the woman had been “naked in the corner of the kitchen” for three days before she was killed. Angela Paul kept her there, Anderson told police, because the woman was soiling the floor. Anderson also stated that Angela Paul “had been hitting and punching” the woman for weeks. Anderson said the woman had bruises and other marks all over her body.
Police discovered that Angela Paul had been getting the woman's disability checks on a monthly basis but stopped that immediately after the woman's death, court documents said.
