In Court: New Haven man killed homeless woman, police say

NEW HAVEN, Ind. ---There’s little online documenting the life of Dawn Vera Kovach. 

Her death, yes.

Nor is there anything to indicate why she took to living in the woods on Wayne Haven Drive in New Haven.

Jonathon Mattix

But Tuesday, the first day of a murder trial for Jonathon Mattix, Kovach's sometimes estranged family came for one of their own.

Details of her death are gruesome.

“She was missing her eyes and her left cheek was sunken in,” wrote Allen County Deputy Coroner Investigator Jeffrey McCracken in a probable cause affidavit submitted two days after she was found. As a medicolegal death investigator, he also identified three holes in her lower neck area.

Off Wayne Haven Drive in New Haven. Bushes provide privacy for those who live in the woods; a footpath leads to a meadow.

This week, Jonathon Mattix, 38, faces a jury, in Allen Superior Court, charged with the murder of the 54-year-old victim. Kovach was found full of bullet holes inside her tent on Jan. 23, her body frozen from the single digit temperatures.

On Jan. 22, Mattix was arrested at his mother’s New Haven mobile home by the Allen County Sheriff’s Warrants Division after the department received an email from the Van Wert (Ohio) Police Department that Mattix had a warrant out for his arrest, court documents said. The warrant was unrelated to the homicide, Chief Deputy Prosecutor Tom Chaille said in court Tuesday.

Later, after forensic testing, the .38 caliber gun Mattix had on his person at the time of the arrest proved to be the same gun used to kill Kovach, Chaille said.

The email warned law enforcement that Mattix was armed and dangerous and “claimed to have murdered a homeless woman recently.”

Then a New Haven resident called the New Haven department to say Mattix “had bragged about having shot a lady and drug her body off the railroad tracks near Broadway Street in New Haven,” an almost impossible task to pull off without being seen. The distance is at least a couple of miles.

Police searched the railroad tracks area and known homeless camps and found nothing, but New Haven police sergeant, Landon Sell, remembered a woman he knew who lived in the woods on Wayne Haven Drive.

It was there, in her tent, on Jan. 23, Sgt. Sell found Dawn. By this time, her body was stiff and “extremely cold,” McCracken said in court documents.

Mattix claimed he dragged his victim's body to the campsite,however, the distance is at least a couple of miles away. Is this claim even important to the case?

Police believe Mattix shot her on Jan. 3 and that her body lay in that tent until tips came in and Sgt. Sell went to look for her.

Then, yet another tip came in Jan. 25, this time from a man who lived with Mattix and his mother in a mobile home in the 6000 block of Moeller Road.

“I took care of that girl,” Mattix told him. Mattix complained to him that Kovach had stolen items from the trailer where they lived when he allowed Kovach to take a shower there, court documents said and in court testimony.

Mattix boasted to the boarder that he’d followed Kovach to her campsite after she’d been at the trailer and he “murdered” her with a .38 caliber gun he bought from a friend two weeks prior. As he spoke to this witness, he was playing with shell casings in his hands, the witness testified Tuesday. When police searched the trailer, police found a speed loader.

At first Mattix denied knowing Dawn, but, in ensuing police interviews admitted that he knew her and that he’d visited her in the tent. He claimed she’d tried to “make him her boyfriend.”

When she visited the family trailer, she’d stolen blocks that belonged to his daughter, hair spray, food and some “other stuff,” the accused said.

Mattix claimed he never hurt her, but finally admitted that the two got into a physical altercation and that she grabbed his gun. He was able to turn the gun around towards her and it went “pop.” He only fired one shot, he said and it was self defense, according to court documents.

After more questioning, Mattix said the gun probably went off two or three times. He couldn’t see because it was so dark and after that night, he never visited her again, court documents said.

But Mattix's girlfriend at the time, Sarah, testified Tuesday that yes, he did go back to that tent. He also told her what he'd done. It took her a while to tell Det. McCracken about the shooting death because she was scared, she testified.

Dawn's campsite "down by the river"was isolated from other homeless people, Sgt. Sell said in court testimony. The 2600 block of Wayne Haven Drive is a long block with pole barn industrial buildings on either side until the bend where there’s a wooded field, right now full of wild purple and white aster, golden rod, flea bane and fireweed.

A footpath leads from the road into the meadow and there’s some litter either thrown from a car window or left by others who live in the wild.

One employee at one of the industrial sites said he once saw Kovach walking toward the highway, State Road 930, that leads into New Haven.

But while it's a pleasant silent memorial to this homeless woman now, she died at the coldest time of the year.

Dr. Scott Wagner, a forensic pathologist who has testified at many of Allen County's murder trials, said her body was frozen solid and it was necessary to let it thaw. Mattix may have claimed he shot out her eyes, but Wagner said the four bullets entered the right side of her face, breaking through the chin and jawline and out through the neck.

With those type of injuries, she would not have been able to survive, Wagner said. "Gnawing carnivores" had chewed off part of her face, facts the jury members may never be able to unsee, as they were the only ones in the courtroom to view the autopsy photos.

Attorney Robert Scremin with the Allen County Public Defender’s officer is representing Mattix with help from Eric Simmons, public defender.

For the state, Chaille is the lead prosecutor, deputy prosecutor Nathan Conder, his second.

Mattix is charged with one count of murder.