GARY, Ind., Oct. 22 (UPI) -- A judge postponed a hearing for a suspected serial killer in Gary, Ind., when Darren Deon Vann refused to speak in court Wednesday.
Vann, 43, of Gary is to return to court next week. Judge Kathleen Sullivan held him in contempt of court, and warned his lawyer that he will be jailed "for the rest of his life until he participates in the hearing."
Police arrested Vann on Saturday and charged him with killing Afrika Hardy, 19, whose body was found Friday in a Motel 6 in Hammond, Ind. On Wednesday, prosecutors also charged Vann with the murder of Anith Jones, 35, one of six women whose bodies were found over the weekend in abandoned houses in Gary.
Investigators believe the women were killed in the past two years. Vann allegedly admitted killing Hardy and the six other women, and told police he had been killing for 20 years.
Police in Gary have continued to search for more bodies, using a cadaver dog to examine abandoned houses. Police departments across the country have been going over old cases, and in the Chicago area police were also going through abandoned houses.
Vann was sentenced to five years for rape in Texas in 2009. Five years earlier, he was arrested in Gary for allegedly threatening to kill himself and his then girlfriend using gasoline.
Ruth Taylor, that girlfriend's mother, told the Chicago Sun-Times she knew there was something "off" about Vann.
"She finally broke down and said the man was keeping her hostage. When he left the house, he would lock her in the closet, tie her up," Taylor said. "I told him if he didn't get out of town, I was going kill him."
Lori Townsend, Hardy's mother, said she was concerned about all the victims. Hardy had been living with her mother in Aurora, Colo., but moved to Gary shortly before her death.
"They're not forgotten, because they're not nobodies. They're somebody," she told WLS-TV. "They're somebody's daughter, somebody's mother, somebody's sister."
