Brown County Prosecutor Ted Adams publicly voiced an opinion last week that Bloomington police had acknowledged as a possibility years ago: that the disappearance of Indiana University student Lauren Spierer in June 2011 could be related to a recent murder case.

Adams prosecuted a man for the murder of another IU student, Hannah Wilson, whose body was found in Brown County in April 2015. The man convicted, Daniel Messel of Bloomington, is serving an 80-year prison sentence.

Messel has not been charged with any crime related to Spierer’s disappearance. Police have investigated several other people in connection with that case.

In 2015, the Bloomington Police Department said in a news release that “Messel’s arrest has provided BPD detectives with an avenue of investigation into Lauren Spierer’s disappearance that will be diligently pursued. … In fact, that investigation has already begun.”

Adams is not involved with the Spierer case and never has been, and he has no formal training as a police investigator, he said in a written statement last week. But based on his intense study of Messel, he said he believes the pattern of Messel’s actions show a possible connection to the Spierer case.

Wilson disappeared from the IU campus April 23, 2015, after a night of drinking with friends. Spierer disappeared from the IU campus June 3, 2011, after a night of drinking with friends.

“My opinion is simple: (Spierer’s) disappearance and vulnerability is consistent with the zone of danger of Daniel Messel, a convicted murderer, a man who was found to have plucked a young student from that same zone of danger and intentionally killing her,” Adams wrote.

“I would remind everybody that the law enforcement officials at the Bloomington Police Department have all the information and they are the professionals.”

While he was waiting to be tried for Wilson’s murder, Messel sought and received a protective order against an inmate who had written to Brown Circuit Court, claiming that he had information linking Messel to Spierer’s disappearance and to the murder of another IU student in 2000. Judge Judith Stewart struck the letter from the case record for being “scandalous” and “impertinent.”

Messel’s attorney also had asked to move his client’s case out of Brown County because of these allegations. But that request was denied after a test jury was questioned and no widespread “tainting” of the jury pool was found.

Messel currently is awaiting trial for a 2012 rape case in Monroe County.