Killings put focus on abandoned buildings.

• Author: Callahan, Rick
• Position: News

Byline: Rick Callahan and Michael Tarm

GARY, Ind. -- The two-bedroom home in Gary's Bungalow Heights area went up in the Roaring '20s, when the Indiana steel town was thriving and filled with prosperous subdivisions. By the time Anith Jones' body was found in its basement Saturday, the building was one of thousands of dilapidated, abandoned houses serving as havens for crime in cities like Detroit and Chicago that have battled neighborhoods in decline.

Police say Darren Vann, a 43-year-old former Marine, has confessed to killing Jones and six other women. All but one of the victims were found in abandoned homes in Gary, including two whose bodies were placed in a vacant dwelling next door to where Jones was found.

Vann, a convicted sex offender, is charged in the strangulation deaths of the 35-year-old Jones, whose body was found beneath a pile of tires and teddy bears, and 19-year-old Afrikka Hardy, who was found in a Hammond motel. He is scheduled to appear in court Wednesday in those cases, and authorities say more charges are expected once more causes of death and identities are determined.

Officials say the estimated 10,000 abandoned dwellings in Gary serve as magnets for drug dealers, squatters and others seeking cover for criminal acts. It's unclear how long the victims' bodies went unnoticed in the deteriorating, weed-encircled homes. At least one woman, Teaira Batey, was reported missing in late January, and investigators say some of the unidentified remains are badly decomposed.

Cpl. Gabrielle King, a spokeswoman for Gary police, said the vacant structures ''serve as a free-for-all.''

''You may be able to get away with different types of crimes, for a season anyway, because it's abandoned, it's not being cared for -- anything can happen there,'' she said.

Abandoned buildings make it harder for a community to spot criminal activity on the streets, because the residents who once provided police with tips or discouraged criminal activity with their very presence are gone, said Patricia Fron, author of a study that found about 2,600 crimes were committed in the more than 15,000 vacant or abandoned buildings in Chicago in 2012.

At least one-fifth of Gary's homes are abandoned, and a survey that is now 75 percent complete has found about 8,000 vacant homes so far, said Joe Van Dyk, director of Gary's...