Peru teen identified as 1982 victim of 'Highway Killer'

Dec. 3—RENSSELAER — Bill Lewis was hitchhiking home to Peru from Houston in November 1982 after attending a funeral.

But the 19-year-old who had played football at Peru High School never made it back to his hometown, and he was never seen again.

His disappearance remained a mystery for the next 38 years, leaving his family searching for answers.

"My dad said he just disappeared," said Lewis' nephew, Joshua Shuck, who hadn't even been born when his uncle disappeared. "He was there one day and then gone the next."

But last month, the family finally got those answers — and some closure — after a forensic genetic genealogy group was able to identify human remains discovered in a field in Jasper County in 1983 as Lewis.

Those remains were found by a farmer checking his fox traps. Detectives determined they belonged to a white male with shoulder-length, reddish-brown hair, who was the victim of a homicide. But despite the best efforts of investigators, he remained unidentified.

Jasper County Coroner Andy Boersma said during a press conference Thursday that he had spent 20 years trying to uncover the mystery of those remains.

Now, detectives have pieced together how Lewis' body ended up in rural Jasper County.

They say he was murdered by Larry Eyler, the infamous serial killer known as "The Interstate Killer" or "Highway Killer," who murdered 20 young men and boys in Indiana and Illinois.

In 1994, when Eyler had been convicted and imprisoned, he confessed to his attorney that he had killed a teenager after picking him up around the weekend of Nov. 20, 1982, along U.S. Route 41 in the Vincennes area.

Eyler said he drove the teen several hours north to Jasper County, where the body would later be discovered, but Eyler was unable to provide a name or relevant information about the identity of the victim.

Boersma said Eyler also confessed to drinking and using drugs with the teen before binding, gagging and murdering him.

But the breakthrough in the case came when Boersma hired Redgrave Research Forensic Services earlier this year to investigate the remains. The group was eventually able use DNA from the body to track down a potential candidate. A DNA test provided by Lewis' sister last month concluded they were siblings.

Shuck said that learning what happened to his uncle affected him, so he decided to track down Lewis' old classmates and friends to learn about the kind of man he was.

Shuck said he found out Lewis had played football at Peru but broke his left leg, leading him to withdraw from school. His friends said he was a quiet kid.

"It was kind of nice getting to know him from the other side," Shuck said during the press conference.

Lewis' remains are now set to return to Peru, where they will be buried by his father in the coming weeks.

Boersma said that after nearly 40 years and decades of investigation, it's good to bring some peace to Lewis' family.

"Hopefully, this will give this family a little bit of rest and comfort knowing that we can return their brother's remains and uncle's remains back to them to be placed in the cemetery at home in Peru," he said.

Carson Gerber can be reached at 765-854-6739, carson.gerber@kokomotribune.com or on Twitter @carsongerber1.