Indiana State Police in Colorado to interview ‘person of interest’ in Delphi murders investigation
UPDATE: 3:59 p.m. Friday: The Carroll County sheriff tells 24-Hour News 8’s Tim McNicholas that Indiana State Police detectives are in Colorado to interview Daniel Nations.UPDATE, 10:52 a.m. Friday: Johnson County now has another warrant out for Nations, bringing his total to four active warrants in Indiana.
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Indiana State Police are now calling a man arrested in Colorado a person of interest in the high profile murder investigations of two Delphi teens.
Daniel Nations, 31, had three active warrants for his arrest in three different Indiana counties as of Thursday night.
Court documents show Nations has active warrants out of Marion, Bartholomew and Johnson counties, ranging from drug-related charges to public indecency.
Documents show over the past two years Nations lived in Indianapolis, Martinsville and Greenwood. At some point, Nations called one neighborhood on the south side of Indianapolis home.
“Always confrontational, no matter what it is,” said Nations’ former landlord, who didn’t want to be identified on camera.
The landlord said Nations lived in a back house near the intersection of Regent and Cole streets for about six months.
“I didn’t feel comfortable with him living back there, never knew what he was up to,” he said.
He described Nations as a bad tenant who didn’t pay rent on time and didn’t follow the rules. He said Nations went against their agreement and moved his wife and daughter into the small space that was only livable for one person.
“I had to tell him, ‘You know, this is the way it is, man. If you don’t like the rules, you don’t have to live here,’” he said. “It was like that every month, trying to collect rent, you know. ‘Oh, I only have half’; ‘Oh, I don’t have it,’ or, you know, ‘It’s just too much, just too much.’”
He said he evicted Nations and took him to court for the months of unpaid rent.
“He even said, ‘You know, Indiana has no Southern hospitality,’” he said. “But I also told him, ‘Southern hospitality is a given, not something you could take advantage of.’ Well he didn’t like that.”
According to court documents, Nations was a registered sex offender and registered his last known address as a motel in Greenwood.
Documents show he lived at that motel from April until May of 2017. Investigators returned to the motel to check on him when they couldn’t get a hold of him, but they were told he checked out on May 12.
“I was at work, and I was listening to the radio, and I heard the news came on, and they mentioned his name and told more of the story of what’s going on, and yeah, all my hair on my back and everywhere just stood up, just gave me the chills like it was a ghost,” Nations’ former landlord said.
The Johnson County Prosecutor’s Office filed a new charge against Nations on Wednesday for failure to register as a sex offender after he moved.
24-Hour News 8 checked with the prosecutor and clerk’s offices for an update on the charge and learned the prosecutor’s office requested a warrant for Nations’ arrest.
At this time, the prosecutor’s office is still waiting for a judge to sign off on the order for the warrant.
