Man who dismembered woman sent back to prison

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -- An Indiana man who served 25 years behind bars for killing and dismembering a woman was ordered back to prison Tuesday when his parole was revoked by officials who were alarmed because he got into a car occupied only by a female driver.

The Indiana Parole Board ordered Robert Evan Lee to return to prison until 2029 to finish the remainder of his 60-year sentence for the 1986 slaying of 31-year-old Ellen Marks, of Bloomington, whose head and hands were never found. Officials said they would review his case in one year.

Lee, 57, obtained early release in September by earning good-time credit and completing two vocational degrees and two college degrees behind bars. He said he tried to settle in three communities but moved because of public outcry. He had been living at a state work-release center in South Bend for about a month when he was charged with violating parole and returned to custody.

The bearded and gray-haired Lee, who appeared by video from the state prison in Westville while the board met in Indianapolis, told officials he had meant no harm but understood why people were concerned when he got into a car with a woman who stopped to ask directions to the work-release center.

"All I know is, she was somebody who was asking for directions, who was asking for help," Lee said. He said he thought it would be simpler to show the woman the way to the center than to try to explain the route.

But parole officials said Lee had been prohibited from hitchhiking and they were concerned about his motivations. They were even more disturbed after Lee told them the route passed through a heavily wooded area.

"When he said `forest,' I was done," board member Octavia Snulligen said.

Lee said he has struggled since his release to find work and a place to live.

"But due to publicity, almost every door was being shut in my face," he said, his voice cracking.
 
Department of Correction spokesmen said the agency placed him in the work-release center in October while officials tried to find him a place to live. His attempts to settle in Bloomington, Jennings County and Indianapolis were met with public protest.

"I don't know what else to do," Lee said. "I don't want nothing to go wrong with my situation. I don't want to do anything to anybody. I'm just trying to find a way to survive, to make it, and that's a hard thing to do after 26 years."

Board vice chairman Randy Gentry told Lee he had to expect scrutiny, given what he was sent to prison for.

"You know there's people out there that are watching every move you make," Gentry said.

Lee was 31 when he stabbed Marks, a reclusive former Indiana University graduate student who lived in a shack made of packing crates and volunteered at a local soup kitchen. Police said in court documents that he cut her body in pieces and stuffed them into trash bags. Body parts were found buried on a wooded lot half a block from the boarding house where Lee lived at the time.

The crime closely matched a one-page description of how to kill and mutilate a woman that Lee had written in tiny print in a spiral-bound notebook.