Suspected serial killer silent at Indiana court hearing

Credit: Reuters/Lake County Sheriff's Department/Handout

Darren Vann, 43, of Gary, Indiana, is shown in this Lake County Sheriff's Department photo released on October 21, 2014.

Vann was arrested on Saturday and has been charged in the murder of 19-year-old Afrikka Hardy, whose body was found a day earlier, in a motel in Hammond, in northwest Indiana.

Over the weekend, Vann - a 43-year-old convicted sex offender who served five years in prison in Texas and was released in 2013 - led police to six bodies of women in abandoned houses in Gary, which is about 10 miles east of Hammond. Police expected Vann to be charged soon in six additional murders.

Vann, wearing black and gray prison stripes, appeared with a court-appointed attorney at the brief hearing in Lake County Superior Court, Criminal Division 4.

Judge Kathleen Ann Sullivan asked Vann multiple times if he understood that this was an initial hearing where he would be advised of his rights, but he refused to answer.

'Are you choosing not to speak?' she asked. Vann did not answer. She said he would have another chance to talk at a hearing next week.

The judge also granted the public defender's request for a gag order on everyone involved in the case.

Indiana police have been using a dog trained to hunt for cadavers to search more than 120 vacant structures in Gary, an economically depressed city about 25 miles southeast of Chicago that is dotted with thousands of abandoned buildings.

A one-time steel-manufacturing powerhouse, Gary has lost over half its population since the 1960s.

(Writing by Fiona Ortiz; Editing by Leslie Adler)