INDIANAPOLIS — Indy police are investigating two separate deaths along Mitthoeffer Road within days of one another. Both people killed were women and their bodies were found only a few hundred yards apart.
Last Saturday morning, officers with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department were called to the 2200 block of N Mitthoeffer Rd. just between I-70 and 21st St. for a report of a dead body.
Upon arrival, in the parking lot of a dentist’s office at 2236 North Mitthoefer Road, IMPD discovered the body of Shannon Lassere, 58, stabbed to death.
An employee of a nearby business told FOX59/CBS4 she was driving to work around 9 a.m. Saturday when she spotted Lassere’s body lying in a parking lot just off of Mitthoeffer.
“She had left the house about ten thirty, eleven, Friday night,” said the victim’s son, Justin Smith. “I had a bad feeling in the morning. Got ahold of my sister and the rest of my siblings and then we got the news.”
Shannon and her family had moved from Seattle to the East Side three years ago.
“Funny. Beautiful. She was handicapped. She was deaf. The most amazing woman ever,” said Smith as he stood watching police work a second homicide scene just a half block away from where his mother’s body was found days before. “There’s been another woman. There’s been another case very similar to my mother’s. So, somebody’s out here, somebody’s out here doing something.”
”Sickening that somebody would do that to another person,” said Greg Hopkins. Hopkins said he and his wife Lorena lived in the area for more than 30 years and two killings so close to each other shocked him. They were doing laundry Thursday afternoon between where both scenes where when we talked to them.
Homicide detectives weren’t away from the area for long.
The body of a second woman, later identified as 52-year-old Marianne Weis, was discovered behind a nearby strip mall Thursday morning when police got another call to the 2100 block of N Mitthoeffer Rd.
Weis’ body was found between a Dollar General and a laundromat near the back of an apartment complex. Yellow evidence markers were plentiful as IMPD worked a large scene.
”We did have somewhat of a smaller scene but we’ve expanded that,” said IMPD Public Information Officer William Young.
More than six hours later, investigators remained on the scene looking for clues.
Lorena Hopkins said she saw the area when there were just a few cops there, and what the officers were focused on.
”All of a sudden, I saw feet up in the air and said, ‘Oh no, not a body,'” Lorena said.
With both women being found so close and IMPD saying both were found with “trauma” some think there could be a connection.
”It has to make you wonder,” said Greg Hopkins. “Has to make you wonder until the police find out for sure or otherwise.”
In an interview Thursday afternoon, Young said detectives don’t believe the two deaths are connected but that could change as the investigation goes on. Police do want anyone who saw anything suspicious in this area recently to give them a call.
”This is a heavily traveled area,” Young said. “You could have seen something, any suspicious vehicles, anything that didn’t sit well with you.”
While IMPD won’t say if the two cases are connected, Justin Smith will.
”I feel like there is somebody out here doing something. It’s not a coincidence. Something’s wrong.”
The crime scenes lie in the middle of IMPD’s East District Beat 62 where there have been eight homicides since the start of 2023.
All across the East District, from 46th Street on the north, down Post Road on the west to Washington Street on the south, IMPD has investigated 26 homicides since the start of last year.
Three have been solved.
”There’s a lot of intimidation out there, people who have information have to be protected,” said Rev. James Jackson of Fervent Prayer Church. ”It is disheartening though. It really works on you to see it happen as regularly as it’s happening.”
Jackson, who flirted with running in last year’s mayoral race, said he’s seen community anti-violence programs and community policing work at curbing eastside violence in the past.
”It is disheartening though. It really works on you to see it happen as regularly as it’s happening,” he said. ”We’re seeing these things happening every other day, every other week I’m getting an alert on my phone that someone has been killed or something like this has happened.”
Near 21st and Mitthoefer, it has happened twice in six days.
”It was just so callous the way they took her. She didn’t deserve it. She wouldn’t have prompted it,” said Smith. “That reaction from whoever did that. You didn’t have to do that.
“There’s somebody weird and evil walking around out here doing something.”