The episode opens with three back-to-back pre-roll sponsor reads. Oregon Lottery promotes its Discover State Parks Scratch-Its, tying lottery gameplay to parks funding. Shopify is introduced through a testimonial from a bike apparel founder, framing the platform as accessible to non-technical business owners. Thumbtack positions itself as the antidote to unreliable word-of-mouth home contractor recommendations, emphasizing its vetted pro listings and user reviews.

Ashley opens by explaining the episode's unusual format: originally recorded for the Crime Junkie Fan Club in January 2026 when the case was still unfolding, it's now being released to the broader audience with major updates added at the end. The hosts introduce the setting — Turtle Creek Apartments, a gated complex on Indianapolis's northwest side with 262 units — and the night in question: March 23, 1993, around 1 AM. What follows is a damning portrait of collective inaction: neighbors clearly hear a young woman screaming 'get off me,' recognize these as genuine cries of terror, and still, not one person calls 911 or knocks on a door. The only action taken is a noise complaint. Ashley frames the entire story with its central tragedy — for decades, people who should have helped Carmen both in life and in death turned their backs on her.

The morning after the attack, Carmen's friend Missy had tried to check on her after a no-call, no-show at work — but got lost on the way to the apartment. She called Carmen's dad James to ask him to go instead. When James arrived, he was first greeted by a handwritten note from apartment management scolding his daughter for being too loud the night before — a note that still chills in hindsight. ^{[1] — Ashley Flowers "When Carmen's dad James arrived to check on her, he first saw a handwritten note from building management scolding his daughter for being t…" 04:45 Play} He opened the unlocked studio door to find Carmen dead on the floor beside her bed, the apartment in chaos: overturned table, scattered clothing, blood splattered on walls and smeared in the kitchen. He couldn't bring himself to take another step inside. Instead, he ran to a neighbor's apartment to use their phone to call 911. The cruel irony of neighbors ignoring her screams and the complex filing a noise complaint rather than calling police hangs over the entire scene.

Sergeant David Wilkes takes charge when Marion County Sheriff's detectives respond, and lab techs begin processing what is clearly a scene of extreme violence. Carmen suffered 60 stab wounds to her head, face, body, and genitalia — with several penetrating her skull. ^{[1] — Ashley Flowers "60 stab wounds: Carmen suffered 60 stab wounds to her head, face, body, and genitalia, with wounds to her head penetrating her skull." 06:57 Play} The murder weapon, widely reported by media as a screwdriver or pocket knife, was never recovered; investigators only say wounds were consistent with something small and pointed. The absence of forced entry and the presence of fast food cups and beer suggest the night may have started friendly. Latent fingerprint smudges are found but match no one in the system, and with DNA testing barely available in 1993, most of the physical evidence is collected but not sent to a lab. The investigation is left with promising leads but no definitive answers.

Carmen Van Huss's life is painted with complexity and tenderness by her sister Pam Francis. Sent at age 3 to live with her aunt Gertie Schott's family in Indiana — so she could remain close to her father — Carmen grew up the youngest of 8 Schott children, but always straddled worlds: the structured, Catholic Schott household and her biological father James's looser, substance-affected lifestyle. She idolized James and mimicked his habits to feel close to him. At 14 or 15, her biological mother re-entered the picture, adding a third household to navigate. The result was a teenager who desperately wanted acceptance from everyone — friends, boyfriends, all of it. She never finished high school, but earned her GED and, by the time of her death, was thriving: she had a stable job at Pizza Hut, a boyfriend she loved, and was taking classes at the Herron School of Art and Design. According to Pam, things were finally working. The tragedy is that investigators, seeing her circle of friends and lifestyle, initially treated her case as a consequence of choices she made.

Carmen's last known movements are reconstructed through family accounts and call logs. That Monday evening she drove her father James and his young son to visit her grandmother in the hospital, dropping them home around 9:30 PM before heading back to her apartment. Call records show she was on the phone with Rob in Arizona at 9:49 PM for 32 minutes — she mentioned running into an old friend that night, but said she didn't remember his name. The mysterious food found in her apartment (possibly Subway, possibly enough for three) raises the question of whether she went out again before midnight. The laundry room — where she likely needed to wash her Pizza Hut uniform — becomes a tantalizing unknown: investigators apparently never checked whether the laundry got done or whether Carmen encountered someone there. What is known is that at 11 PM, neighbors heard her walk upstairs with a man. ^{[1] — Ashley Flowers "On March 23, 1993, Carmen Van Huss screamed 'get off me' for 30 straight minutes in her Indianapolis apartment. Every neighbor heard her. N…" 01:40 Play} Whether that man was still there at 1 AM when she screamed — or whether a different person entered later — is never definitively resolved.

With no forensic hits, investigators lean on Carmen's relationship history. Rob, her current boyfriend, was in Arizona with family since March 19 and called her from a calling card multiple times — including hours before her death — putting him firmly in the clear. The next ex, Josh, was looked at hard despite having only a tenuous motive (jealousy over Rob) and a solid alibi. The most colorful suspect was Peter: the year before the murder, Carmen had him arrested for stealing her car, and when she retrieved it, she found gift bags meant for another woman — and promptly took the Beastie Boys concert tickets for herself. Peter had reportedly threatened revenge. But a Social Security office representative in San Francisco confirmed Peter was over 2,000 miles away on the day of the murder. Friend after friend, ex after ex, each is interviewed and cleared. The case goes cold.

Twenty years after Carmen's murder, the case gets its most unlikely champion. Sergeant Bill Carter — whose career arc ran from state revenue agent to domestic violence officer to nuisance abatement — had stumbled into cold case work by helping a detective access a memorial Facebook page for a different victim: Amy Weidner. He got hooked, read the whole file, digitized it, spoke to the family, and solved it in his spare time despite a note in the file declaring 'all that could be done was done.' ^{[1] — Ashley Flowers "Bill Carter started his law enforcement career as a state revenue agent, moved through domestic violence and nuisance abatement, and stumbl…" 22:20 Play} He got no accolades, no official transfer to cold cases. He went back to nuisance abatement. Then an IMPD officer who'd gone to high school with Carmen approached him: please look at this one too. Carter dives in, digitizes Carmen's file, and reaches the same conclusion investigators had in 1993 — the killer likely knew Carmen. But now it's 2013, and DNA technology has changed everything.

Carter assists cold case investigators in finally sending Carmen's evidence to a forensic lab in 2013 — and the results are extraordinary. A partial male profile from semen and a full profile from blood on a white paper bag both match, and the full profile is suitable for CODIS. No hits come back, but the process systematically eliminates suspects already in the system and begins the methodical work of voluntary and covert DNA collection from anyone in Carmen's orbit. By the end of 2013, at least 40 men have been cleared, including Rob, Josh, Peter, and the neighbor across the hall. The search widens: Carter appeals to media, tracks down the car repair shop, investigates police runs on the night of the murder — and finds a man with similar stab wounds who still doesn't match. Then in 2015, a $1,600 city-funded DNA test ^{[1] — Ashley Flowers "After years of waiting, the city funded a $1,600 DNA test — and got back a result identifying their killer as a European female. The lab ha…" 30:55 Play} comes back with the stunning result that their killer is a European female. The lab was sent Carmen's own DNA profile. The error is explained by human error, but the damage is done: when Carter asks for a retest, he's flatly denied.

Ashley delivers a mid-roll sponsor read for Ollie, a dog food company offering human-grade, chef-developed recipes with gut-friendly ingredients. She references her own dog Maggie and promotes a 70% discount with code CRIMEJUNKIE at ollie.com/crimejunkie.

Blocked from institutional funding, Carter invents his own solution: a GoFundMe. His logic is impeccable — if IMPD had crowdfunded surgery for a police horse with skin cancer, surely they could crowdfund a DNA test for a murder victim. He raises $1,200 in 7 hours, more than the $996 test would cost, with plans to donate the surplus to Crime Stoppers. IMPD's response is swift and brutal: ^{[1] — Ashley Flowers "When the city refused to pay for a DNA retest after sending the wrong sample, Carter raised $1,200 in 7 hours via GoFundMe. IMPD made him r…" 30:50 Play} return the money, stand down from Carmen's case, and accept a 10-day suspension — the first discipline of his career, from a man who had taken exactly 4 hours of sick time in his entire tenure. Ashley and Britt's outrage is palpable. Carmen's family calls him the only person to ever make progress on the case. A public petition quickly gathers over 500 signatures, and within days IMPD walks back the removal — but still won't fund the test, and Carter must now tread carefully to protect his job.

Ashley reads aloud the cringe-worthy cold email she sent to Sergeant Carter on October 17, 2017 — signing herself as a Crime Stoppers board member, which she describes as the only thing she had going for her at the time. Carter, to his credit, met her for lunch. At that point he couldn't do much; the water was still politically hot. But that conversation — hearing exactly what testing needed to be done and how close the case was to cracking — planted the idea that became Season of Justice, the nonprofit Ashley eventually founded to fund precisely this kind of advanced DNA testing for stalled cold cases. ^{[1] — Ashley Flowers "In October 2017, Ashley Flowers cold-emailed Sergeant Bill Carter calling herself a 'board member at Crime Stoppers' — her only credential …" 36:42 Play} It's a small but pivotal moment in the episode's larger arc: a podcaster and a detective, sharing a meal, laying the groundwork for what would eventually become Carmen's Law.

While Carter was navigating departmental politics, IMPD quietly sent Carmen's DNA to Parabon NanoLabs in 2018 for a genetic genealogy snapshot. By 2019 they learn the suspect is a Black man — a meaningful narrowing of the field. Carter, now a lieutenant with no genealogical training, begins building family trees from the distant DNA matches Parabon provides; one tree alone has 2,800 people. Progress is painfully slow, working fourth-generation connections. Then Season of Justice steps in with a grant covering 15 hours of genealogical research and a database upload fee. ^{[1] — Ashley Flowers "A great-niece once removed of the suspect uploaded her DNA to 23andMe. That upload, caught by Parabon NanoLabs on June 2, 2023, gave Captai…" 39:40 Play} That modest investment pays off on June 2, 2023, when Parabon contacts Carter — now a captain — with what he would call the magic hit: a great-niece once removed of the suspect had uploaded her DNA to 23andMe, providing the closest genetic proximity yet to their unknown killer.

IMPD analyst Mira Patel takes the 23andMe match and begins tracing the family tree through open-source databases, eventually concluding that Carmen's attacker is likely related to two brothers with the surname Sheppard. Carter checks the resident list he obtained years earlier — both brothers are on it. He and Mira visit Turtle Creek Apartments and find it takes just 30 seconds to walk from the Sheppard unit to Carmen's, through a common area that includes the laundry room. ^{[1] — Ashley Flowers "When analyst Mira Patel traced DNA relatives to two brothers named Sheppard, Captain Carter checked his apartment complex resident list — a…" 41:15 Play} The picture snaps into focus: Carmen, doing her laundry late at night before work, likely encountered Dana Sheppard in that hallway. Friends and family confirm the only link between Carmen and the Sheppards was their shared building. The investigation finally has a direction — and soon, a name. Carter presents his findings to the IMPD Cold Case Unit in February 2024 and recommends serving a DNA warrant on Dana Sheppard first, simply because he was living closer, in Missouri.

On February 15, 2024, with a Boone County judge's warrant in hand, police find Dana Sheppard on the University of Missouri campus where he works as a custodian. Officers tell him they need to eliminate him as a suspect in an 'assault case.' He reads the warrant while visibly shaking and tells them he has not done anything 'for a long time' — then keeps asking if the warrant is from Missouri. ^{[1] — Ashley Flowers "On February 15, 2024, police served Dana Sheppard a warrant on the University of Missouri campus. He was visibly shaking as he read it and …" 42:10 Play} The remark lands like a confession in retrospect. Four months later, the lab confirms it: Dana Sheppard's DNA matches the crime scene evidence from Carmen Van Huss's apartment in 1993. On August 30, 2024, 31 years after Carmen's death, Dana is arrested in Missouri on charges of murder and rape with deadly force. At the press conference announcing the charges, Carmen's brother Jimmy Van Huss takes the microphone.

Jimmy Van Huss steps up to a microphone at the IMPD press conference and delivers a statement that is both grateful and heartbroken. He thanks Bill Carter and Mira by name, acknowledging everyone who worked the case for years. He mourns all the milestones Carmen never reached — college graduation, a wedding, a full adult life — noting that the family was just coming back together when she was taken. He speaks about what his father endured finding her, and closes with a forward-looking call: he hopes other cold cases with viable DNA will get the same genealogy treatment and produce the same outcomes. ^{[1] — Jimmy Van Huss "Carmen's younger brother Jimmy was a freshman in high school when she was murdered. At the press conference announcing Dana Sheppard's arre…" 44:05 Play} It's a quiet, dignified statement from a man who was just a teenager when his sister was murdered, and who waited more than three decades to speak these words.

With Dana Sheppard extradited to Indianapolis and trial approaching, Ashley fills in his background. He was the youngest of 10 Sheppard children, several of whom also lived at Turtle Creek Apartments in separate units. His DNA had never matched any other case in CODIS, and Carter found no other unsolved cases he could be connected to. His prior record was mostly nonviolent; the exception was a 1996 battery conviction against a woman he'd had a child with — found guilty, released with time served. After moving out of Indiana, he married, had more children, had grandchildren, and became a university custodian. Nicole Kagan spoke to his mother Jesse and sisters Denise and Yvette: all expressed shock, said they'd never seen Dana act violently, and said they'd never heard of Carmen. Denise, who also lived in the complex at the time, said she heard nothing unusual that night. The family continues talking to Dana in jail but avoids discussing the case.

Ashley returns with the first of two major updates. Less than a week before jury selection was set to begin, Dana Sheppard stunned everyone by taking a plea deal. On January 23, 2026, in a courtroom where reporter Nicole Kagan was present, Sheppard pleaded guilty to one count of murder and was sentenced to 45 years in the Indiana Department of Corrections. ^{[1] — Ashley Flowers "On January 23, 2026, Dana Sheppard pleaded guilty to one count of murder and was sentenced to 45 years. The rape charge and a second murder…" 50:10 Play} The presiding judge called Carmen's case the worst he had seen. The second murder charge and the rape with a deadly weapon charge were both dropped as part of the deal. By agreeing, Sheppard accepted legal responsibility but will never have to take the stand — meaning Carmen's family may never know exactly what happened on the night of March 23, 1993. Carmen's sister Pam Francis issued a statement: while the plea was not their first choice, she is grateful that after 33 years, the man responsible is finally being held accountable — and that he did not escape justice.

The episode closes on its most hopeful note. Pam Francis, who turned personal grief into political action, succeeded in shepherding Carmen's Law through the Indiana legislature. The bill passed unanimously in the state senate and was signed into law by the governor, establishing a formal statewide process for private funding of advanced DNA testing in criminal cases unsolved for 5 years or more. ^{[1] — Ashley Flowers "Carmen's Law passed unanimously: Carmen's Law, championed by Carmen's sister Pam Francis, was passed unanimously by the Indiana State Senat…" 52:40 Play} It is exactly the kind of structural change that could have helped Carmen's case decades earlier — and that now extends the same possibility of justice to every other Indiana family waiting for answers. Ashley reminds listeners that full source material and updates are available at crimejunkie.com, and to follow @crimejunkiepodcast on Instagram for case developments.

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