Published: October 15, 2007 11:31 pm         

Sheriff confident Scott Javins case will be resolved

TERRE HAUTE — Vigo County Sheriff Jon Marvel says he is confident the Scott Javins case will be resolved – but for the most part, police still are keeping quiet about details.

“Now the criminal investigation begins, and it may be solved tomorrow and it may be solved five years from now,” Marvel said during an interview Monday, but it will be solved, he said.

The Sheriff’s Department, the Terre Haute Police Department and Indiana State Police, all working together, quickly shifted their focus from a missing-person case to a homicide investigation Friday after Javins’ missing vehicle was recovered from the Wabash River, just south of Fairbanks Park.

Javins, 20 when he went missing, disappeared in the early morning hours of May 24, 2002. Other than a phone conversation with his mother that morning around 2, Javins was not heard from again. No trace of his 2002 Honda Civic Si was ever found, until a recent tip led police to the river.

After recovering the car, forensic anthropologist Dr. Stephen Nawrocki on Saturday encountered Javins’ remains in the vehicle; a skull and mandible matched Javins’ dental records.

Now, the bones are in Indianapolis, where Nawrocki will reassemble them and begin searching for clues as to Javins’ fate. The process could take weeks, according to police.

“It’s extremely difficult right now because there was no tissue, just bones,” Marvel said. “But … obviously if there’s a hole in the skull or if there are two or three broken ribs from a bullet – I mean, had Scott had too much to drink that night? Could he have gotten disoriented? Driven off into the river?

“We have a lot of things we have to look at,” he said.

Besides studying the remains for evidence, Marvel said investigators will be taking a good look at the car, as well as reinterviewing some of the last people known to have seen Javins alive, including those who were at the gathering at a residence near 22nd Street and First Avenue the night he disappeared.

“This will be the third or fourth time [to interview those people],” Marvel said, “but now that we have the car and it was found this close, it sheds maybe a different light on how we should look at the investigation.”

Police will not comment on particular theories, nor will they say whether they have any suspects in the case. They also will not elaborate on whether there was a connection between finding Javins’ car and finding two other vehicles submerged in the river just three weeks earlier, within 100 yards of the spot where Javins’ car was found.

Don Kyle, a local fisherman, claims to have led police to the area after swimming around and feeling several cars, he said. Kyle took photographs of two of the vehicles as they were recovered by police – a van and a compact car.

Kyle says he contacted Merv Javins, Scott Javins’ father, on Friday after learning that police had discovered Scott Javins’ car near the same area.

“I told [Merv Javins] they must not have drug that river very well looking for your son because I got in there and found two vehicles,” Kyle said during an interview Monday.

“The State Police divers were all in this area right there where Scott Javins’ car was, not 80 yards from where I was,” he added.

Kyle said he thinks police had an idea Javins’ car was there the same day, or that they came back later and found it.

“I was the one that got them looking in this spot,” he said. “I didn’t find it, but I did put them in the place where it was at.”

Terre Haute city police declined to comment on any possible connection.

After a news conference Friday in which police announced that the vehicle recovered did belong to Scott Javins, Merv Javins said he was angry that he was not informed before members of the media learned it was Scott’s car.

Merv Javins received a voicemail message on his cell phone around 5:50 p.m. Friday, just after the news conference ended, from Prosecutor Terry Modesitt, saying the car did appear to belong to Scott Javins.

Marvel on Monday said, “I apologize that it turned out that way … I didn’t talk to him personally, but was told that he knew, that [the family] had been informed.”

Marvel, who said he would like to see the focus get back to the criminal investigation, said, “Mr. Javins has been taking his anger out on me and this department for years … let him be mad at me. I feel so sorry for him, but he’s just misdirected his anger all these years at the wrong person, at law enforcement.”

Deb Kelly can be reached at (812) 231-4254 or deb.mckee@tribstar.com.