Laurel Jean Mitchell

UPDATE: Earlier this Wednesday morning, Indiana State Police Detective Kevin Smith said he is once again looking for members of a youth musical group that performed in North Webster on the night of Aug. 6, 1975.

While the detective had been given the name of a group known as “Celebrate the Son” and spent about a week searching for members of that group, this morning he said he made contact with an individual who was a member of the “Celebrate the Son” youth singing group.

In an email to StaceyPageOnline.com, Detective Smith said, “It is clear to me that they are not the group of young people from the Delphi area who stopped at the North Webster Fire Department that night. None of the members of Celebrate the Son are from the Delphi area.”

Detective Smith is once again looking for the names of the individuals from Delphi, Ind., who would have been between the ages of approximately 16 and 20 years old when they performed at the Cokesbury Inn in August 1975. Anyone with knowledge of that group or any of its members are urged to call 260-403-2841.
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From Tuesday: Indiana State Police Detective Kevin Smith is continuing his investigation into the 1975 murder of Laurel Jean Mitchell and yesterday said, “Whoever did it told somebody. We know that’s what people who kill people do, they talk about it.”

Detective Smith has delved into the cold case murder in a renewed effort to see Mitchell’s killer finally be brought to justice.

In an interview with StaceyPageOnline.com, Smith explained, “Someone knows who did this. We see this all the time. We’re sure a man did this and his wife or girlfriend knows. They threaten them with the same thing to make sure they don’t talk.”

Over the last two weeks, while re-interviewing potential witnesses about the Aug. 6, 1975, murder, he received new information about a youth singing group that performed at the Cokesbury Inn at Epworth Forest in North Webster where Mitchell was working the last time she was seen alive.

Smith utilized media all over Indiana to first learn the name of the singing group and second to have its members identified. Today, he says the four members of a group known as “Celebrate the Son” have been identified and he is the process of contacting each one. “I left a note on one woman’s door,” he said. “This thing has been all over the media. I’ve heard from a lot of people, but not one of them has contacted me. I really need to talk to them.”

Smith has determined through other interviews that the group of singers were all from the Delphi, Ind., area and would have been leaving the inn at about the same time Mitchell was leaving her job there. It’s believed the singers were all in one vehicle and stopped at the North Webster fire station at approximately 10:30 p.m. the night of Aug. 6, 1975. “I just want to talk to them to see if they saw anything,” he explained.

Mitchell was 17 years old when, according to police information gathered from a series of interviews, she was last seen at 10 p.m. on Aug. 6, 1975. Her routine was that she would walk westbound on Epworth Forest Drive to Adventureland, a one time thriving amusement park. On that night, though, she never arrived. The next day, her body was found in the Elkhart River in rural Noble County. Mitchell had been sexually assaulted and killed less than 20 miles from her home.