Police Search for More Clues in Heather Teague Case
Published: Dec. 17, 2004 at 10:05 PM CST|Updated: Dec. 26, 2004 at 10:54 PM CST
Reporter: Shannon Samson
Web Producer: Amber Griswold
There is a new development in a story we've been reporting exclusively on Newswatch.
Detectives executed a search warrant in an Evansville home last week that may have implications in the nine year old Heather Teague missing persons case.
Last Wednesday, Detective Scott Thomas from the Medina, Ohio Police Department joined Evansville Police in the execution of a search warrant at a home on Sorenson Avenue on the city's west side. It's where the fiancee of Chris Below is living.
Investigators were looking for a lock box containing material that connects Below to some cases of missing or murdered women, including Heather Teague.
Thirty-nine-year-old western Kentucky native, Christopher Below, is currently serving time in prison after confessing to the 1991 murder of his former lover, Kathern Fetzer in Medina, Ohio. He never told authorities where to find her body.
In the search warrant affidavit for Below's fiancee's home, detectives say they believe Below is possibly involved in the 1995 disappearance and assumed murder of Heather Teague.
They say Below was living in the Henderson area at the time and abruptly moved away right after Teague disappeared. They say Below had been living near the original suspect in the case, Marty Dill, who committed suicide before police could question him.
The only witness in the case, Tim Walthall, maintains to this day that it was Marty Dill he saw through a telescope, drag Teague off the beach at gunpoint.
But detectives say in the affidavit that Walthall has identified Below in three different photographic line-ups as the person he possibly saw on the beach that day. The document also mentions evidence relating to Below's shoe size and his distinctive posture.
Besides the Teague case, investigators searched for evidence linking below to the unsolved murder of Andrea Hendrix-Steinert, a 28-year-old Evansville woman with a history of prostitution. She was found nude and strangled in a Gibson County ditch in 1997.
The affidavit also mentions a missing persons case in Hilton Head, South Carolina. Earlier this month, Newswatch confirmed that it's the case of Kristina Porco, a teenager who made a phone call from a supermarket pay phone in 1986 and was never seen again.
And now, Piqua, Ohio Detectives say they're trying to connect Below to the missing persons case of Shaylene Farrell. The 18-year-old disappeared in 1994, after leaving the house to run an errand. Her car was found in the parking lot of a supermarket where she worked.
Detectives find it interesting that the victims all resemble each other and are in the same age group. They say they can place Below at some of the crime scenes and speculate his travels as a truck driver may have put him at the others.
Chris Below's sisters were the ones who had told detectives they had seen him with a lock box full of information about missing females. Investigators say it's common for kidnappers or mass murderers to keep such things to serve as trophies. The search warrant executed last week did not turn up a lock box, but investigators were able to find evidence they say is helping them build a case against Below.
Of all those women, Andrea Hendrix is the only one whose body has been found. Detectives only think Below was involved in this case because Hendrix looks like the other victims. Luckily, there is DNA evidence that will either rule him out or implicate him. It will be tested soon.
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gray/DUPFYAH55VGJTJR34Q3JKWTGEQ.png)
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gray/Q5SB3EMOIZFPNHKJBBC6HR2OPM.png)
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gray/YEWBPGX2YFEDTCUZLGGYZTGTYU.png)
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gray/EX6NR2NT3RCYPHYFXL3MPHLTLY.jpg)
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gray/Z5ZG77ZZHRHTFNGPVA5PWHIM6Y.png)