The Lake County prosecuting attorney’s office charged two men Tuesday with burying a mentally disabled man in a soybean field after he died while in their company in June 2001.
Officials allege that Ronald Alan Hasse, 53, of Cedar Lake, and Jeffrey Allen Haugh, 23, of Knoxville, Tenn., moved a body and failed to notify authorities of the death of Michael Denvit, 25, of Merrillville. The maximum penalty is three years in prison.
A tip directed authorities to Hasse last July, and he led detectives to the body on a farm owned by his father.
Haugh and Hasse were shooting pool with Denvit in a Merrillville tavern when they invited him home, Haugh told Lake County Police Department Detective Shaw Spurlock. They continued drinking there, but the next morning Denvit was dead, according to that account.
Hasse, who previously spent four years in prison on a drug conviction, refused to call 911 because he “wouldn’t get a fair shake,” Haugh allegedly told Spurlock. So they wrapped up the body and drove it to the farm, where Hasse buried it, Haugh allegedly told police.
