Convicted murderer charged in girl’s death

A convicted child murderer paroled in March from a Kansas prison faces a murder charge in the death of a 16-year-old northern Indiana girl, whose body was found a day after the two left a restaurant where they worked, a prosecutor said Thursday.

Investigators found the body of Stephanie Wagner in a northwestern Cass County field Wednesday night. The suspect in her death, Danny R. Rouse, 51, a dishwasher at the restaurant where Wagner was a waitress, told them where to look and confessed to killing her, police said. An autopsy was scheduled for today.

Rouse, who was living in Monterey, Ind., with his brother’s family, was arrested and held without bond at the Cass County Jail pending a hearing today.

Police said Rouse and Wagner left the Indian Head Restaurant in Winamac about 10:30 p.m. Tuesday. Her mother reported her missing about six hours later, and the Cass County Sheriff’s Department issued an Amber Alert on Wednesday stating that she was last seen with Rouse.

Police took Rouse in for questioning Wednesday after he arrived for work. He eventually told Cass County deputies that he had been driving along a highway Tuesday night when he had car trouble and pulled over. When Wagner stopped to help, Rouse told police, “a feeling came over him,” Cass County Sheriff’s Detective Tom Wallace said.

Wagner’s body was found Wednesday night less than a mile from where police discovered her abandoned car in her hometown of Royal Center, about 50 miles southwest of South Bend.

Wallace testified at a probable-cause hearing Thursday that Rouse admitted strangling Wagner and then stabbing her. Police have not recovered the knife they believe Rouse used.

Kansas Parole Board administrator Colene Fischli said Rouse was paroled to Indiana on March 21 from Kansas, where he served 26 years for the 1979 murder of a 5-year-old boy.