Authorities in Barren County plan to discuss the next steps to take in the case of a convicted murderer who confessed this week to the 1998 killing of a Bowling Green woman.

David M. Bell, 35, admitted to the killing of 42-year-old Nancy Daddysman in a four-hour interview with investigators led by Barren County Sheriff Chris Eaton.

Bell, an inmate in the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, Ind., is serving a 63-year sentence for murder in the 2005 killing of Claire Ellis of Anderson, Ind.

He’s also a suspect in an Arkansas case, officials said.

“If he did some of the things he claimed to do, he’d be one of the most prolific serial killers,” Eaton said. “Being a small county sheriff, you’d never think of dealing with a person of this magnitude. Some of the things he’s done and said, you’re not dealing with an average Joe.”

Eaton said his office was put in touch with Bell through letters that had been sent to the prison indicating that Bell had made statements about killing Daddysman, who lived at 1050 Shive Lane and worked at several nursing homes in Bowling Green and Glasgow.

Daddysman was last seen Sept. 4, 1998, at the parking lot outside Waffle House on Three Springs Road, trying to find a ride to Indiana to meet a friend.

She was reported missing a week later by relatives who had not heard from her.

Her body, partially wrapped in a piece of upholstery fabric just outside a cave off Iron Mountain Road near Park City, was discovered Sept. 21, 2000, by two boys. Dental records were necessary to identify Daddysman and the state medical examiner’s office determined she died from a stab wound.

Eaton said Bell was able to identify Daddysman in a picture taken of her a few months before her disappearance and a picture of the tarp that police say Bell used to cover Daddysman’s body.

“Midway through the interview with me, he was giving us some background, talking about stuff he had done over the years and he started opening up more about the Daddysman incident,” Eaton said. “He told us that he picked up a lady hitchhiking in Bowling Green on her way to Indiana and struck her in the head with a pipe.”

Bell said he later pulled his truck onto an isolated road and saw that Daddysman was regaining consciousness, at which point he allegedly choked and then stabbed her, Eaton said.

“We’re 99.9 percent sure this is the guy that did this, but we want to make sure it’s not a hoax,” Eaton said. “Only a person that would have committed this crime would have known some of the gory details.”

Bell, a Monticello native who was living there at the time of Daddysman’s death, could also face charges in the murder of an Arkansas woman, and Eaton said Bell allegedly admitted to killing a woman in that state and leading police to a truck containing a pair of the woman’s underwear.

“He said he had thoughts of killing and raping women at a young age and eating their flesh,” Eaton said. “He would get high on drugs and that would enhance his desires, and he would ride through the countryside and look for women to prey on.”

Bell reportedly told the sheriff that he was high on cocaine when he picked up Daddysman, and at one point during the interview claimed to have killed his mother, who Eaton said died in 1991 from a reported brain aneurysm.

Baffling case

The details of the Barren County case with which Bell was familiar and the similarities to Ellis’ murder have authorities believing the case has been solved.

News accounts of the case in Indiana reported that investigators believed Bell attempted to rape Ellis and hit her with a wrench when she resisted. After burying her body, he fled to Arkansas, but later surrendered to police and led them to where the body was buried.

The Bowling Green Police Department originally investigated the Daddysman case until her body was discovered in Barren County, at which point the sheriff’s office there took the lead.

Barney Jones was the Barren County sheriff at the time and Eaton was a deputy in the department.

Law enforcement in Barren County were baffled by the case as very few leads surfaced in the months following the identification of Daddysman’s remains.

The case was profiled in a 2001 episode of the TV show “Unsolved Mysteries,” but no new information resulted from the episode’s broadcast.

Stephanie Meredith, Daddysman’s stepsister, said the family feared the worst after not hearing from Daddysman in the days following her disappearance.

“I hate to say it, but I just had the feeling she was dead,” said Meredith, 32, who lives in Hart County. “If she was somewhere, she always let me or my mom know. When we found out she was missing, we just knew something was wrong.”

Daddysman has five children, and much of her immediate family lives in Massachusetts, Meredith said, though the two were close and Meredith thought of her as more than a stepsister.

Meredith said she sold her first car, a Chevrolet Citation, to Daddysman.

“Whenever we could, we were always together,” Meredith said. “When she wasn’t in Kentucky, one of her sons lived with me, my mom and stepdad.”

Next steps

Barren County Commonwealth’s Attorney Karen Davis said she has received verbal updates about Bell’s interview from Eaton during the week.

The conditions of Bell’s sentence in Indiana leave him ineligible for parole until 2037, and with the potential for another murder charge against him for the Arkansas killing, extraditing Bell to and prosecuting him in Barren County may be a complicated process.

Davis said investigators are still in the process of corroborating statements that Bell made with regard to other crimes he’s claimed to have committed.

“Whatever we’re asked to do by the sheriff’s office and by federal authorities, if they’re going to become involved, and however all the evidence bears out, we’ll have to see what’s the best step to take at that time,” Davis said. “We’ll want to transport (Bell), but obviously we want to do right by Mrs. Daddysman and her family, so we’ll have to sit down and make sure we do this correctly.”

Eaton said he will soon be giving paperwork about the investigation to Davis’ office for review, but added that with multiple jurisdictions interested in Bell as a suspect, it is uncertain when the case against Bell may be heard in court.

Meredith has been in touch with the sheriff’s office through the years during the investigation, and said she hopes Bell feels “just a little bit of regret.”

“I want him to go in front of a judge and pay for what he did in front of a court, but knowing he did it gives us some closure,” Meredith said.