WARRICK OFFICIALS SAY SLAIN TEEN HAD SIGNED ON AS DRUG INFORMANT

A Boonville, Ind., teen-ager who was found dead early Tuesday night had
signed as a police narcotics informant less than three months before her
death. Police do not know whether that agreement had anything to do with
Amanda VanScyoc's death, Warrick County Sheriff Bruce Hargrave said.
VanScyoc's body was found in rural Anderson Township by a pair of local men
sighting their guns for deer hunting. Preliminary autopsy results released
Thursday morning indicated that VanScyoc was strangled to death.

"We had, in fact, signed her as an informant to do narcotics work with my
narcotics officer," Hargrave said. "(But) it is our opinion at this point
that her signing as an informant is not relevant to her homicide. I
emphasize 'at this time,' because anything could happen (this) morning."

VanScyoc signed on as an informant while in jail on auto theft charges in
the last few months, Hargrave said. Before her arrest, she had called
police on more than one occasion to offer information on criminal activity,
but none of that information ever led to an arrest, said Hargrave.

At the time of her death, none of her work as an official informant had led
to an arrest, either, Hargrave said. Investigators had set up some work for
her to do, all of which had fallen through, and Hargrave said he didn't
expect that she would prove a useful informant at any point in the near future.

"We knew that she was telling a lot of people that she had signed as an
informant, which generally ruins that person for any kind of undercover
work," he said. "People who are conducting illegal ventures generally don't
want to associate with someone who is telling everyone they are an
informant. They're not completely stupid."

As of Thursday night, police had no solid leads in their attempts to find
VanScyoc's killer, Hargrave said. Two investigators from the Warrick County
Sheriff's Department and one from the Indiana State Police are working full
time on the case.

"We're following up leads, but we don't have anything we're hanging our hat
on," Hargrave said. "We've gotten a few calls, and that's what we're going
to be following, but I don't know that we've gotten anything that we're
saying, 'This is the one that's going to break the case.'"

Despite some of her recent run-ins with police, VanScyoc's stepfather, John
Warner, said she was on the road to turning her life around when she was
killed. She still was going out a lot, often to a recreational center in
Boonville with fiance, Trent Cook of Evansville, but her attitude had changed.

"She'd been doing real good," Warner said. "She'd been home by curfew every
night, she had a job lined up (at Schnucks) and she had another job
interview set up."

It was when she was heading off to that second interview at Wal-Mart that
family members saw VanScyoc for the last time, Warner said. Her mother,
Linda Warner, woke her before leaving for work to make sure she made the
interview. Then, when Linda Warner called home from work to make sure
VanScyoc had gone to the interview, no one answered.

"She's taken off before without saying anything, so we didn't call the
police," John Warner said. "It would have been a violation of her parole,
and we didn't want to get her (back into trouble)."

It wasn't until Linda Warner heard on the radio Tuesday morning that a body
had been found that their worst fears were confirmed.

"My wife heard it on the radio at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday, and she just had a bad
feeling," John Warner said. "She knew it was (VanScyoc), so she called me
at work and got me home and called the sheriff."