Ian Shelden was convicted of murder, obstruction of justice and auto theft after a case that remained unresolved for years.

MUNCIE, Ind. — An Indiana man has been sentenced to 69 years in prison for killing a former roommate in 2016 and moving the man’s remains to Tennessee, closing a criminal case that began as a missing-person investigation and did not produce murder charges until nearly six years later.

Ian James Shelden, 46, received the sentence Aug. 5 after a Delaware County jury found him guilty April 30 of murder, obstruction of justice and auto theft in the death of 55-year-old Mark Trent. The trial began April 27. Prosecutors said Shelden killed Trent inside Trent’s Muncie home, concealed what happened and eventually transported his remains across state lines. The case turned years later when investigators located Shelden in Tennessee, questioned him about Trent’s disappearance and recovered remains that were identified as Trent’s. The sentencing brought the Indiana prosecution to its latest major conclusion almost a decade after Trent disappeared.

The sentence followed a prosecution that had taken shape in February 2022, when Delaware County Prosecuting Attorney Eric Hoffman filed murder and related charges against Shelden. The original charging information included two murder counts based on different legal theories involving the same death, along with obstruction of justice, auto theft, fraud and theft. Prosecutors emphasized at the time that the two murder counts did not represent two victims. Shelden was then being held in Tennessee on an abuse-of-a-corpse charge while Indiana authorities prepared to return him to Delaware County. A jury ultimately convicted him in 2026 of murder, obstruction of justice and auto theft.

Trent’s disappearance had initially presented investigators with far less certainty. His family became concerned in March 2016 after they had gone about a month without seeing him. When family members and police went to his home on March 31, many of Trent’s possessions remained there, along with his two dogs, but his Dodge Ram pickup was gone. Ian Shelden and his wife, Tracy Shelden, who had stayed with Trent for a period, were also gone. Neighbors told investigators that the couple appeared to have left suddenly. A social media account associated with Trent had also posted a message suggesting he was withdrawing from other people, but the circumstances at the house left his family with questions about where he had gone.

Investigators soon found another sign that Trent’s disappearance was not simply a matter of someone starting over somewhere else. Money was being withdrawn from his bank accounts even though surveillance images showed Trent was not the person making the transactions. According to court records summarized in reporting on the case, withdrawals were recorded between March and August 2016 in Indiana, Tennessee, Florida and Michigan. That financial activity gave police a trail to follow, but it did not immediately reveal what had happened to Trent. Authorities still lacked his remains and, for years, did not have enough evidence to establish a homicide case.

The investigation gained new momentum in October 2021 when Trent’s niece contacted authorities and said she believed Ian and Tracy Shelden might know something about her uncle’s disappearance. Investigators located the couple in Tennessee and interviewed Tracy Shelden first. She told police that she and her husband had lived with Trent before a falling out. She also described returning to Trent’s home with Ian Shelden after they had moved out. According to the probable cause account, Ian told her to wait in the vehicle while he went inside. She later saw him driving Trent’s truck. Tracy Shelden also identified her husband as the person investigators had seen in surveillance images using Trent’s bank account.

When investigators questioned Ian Shelden, his explanations changed. At one point, according to the affidavit, he claimed Trent had died from a drug overdose during a trip to Tennessee and said he had panicked and tried to hide the body. He took investigators to a place where he said he had left the remains, but they did not find Trent there. Authorities continued questioning him. The changing account became important because investigators were no longer trying only to determine whether Shelden had information about a missing man; they were testing his statements against the physical and financial evidence already gathered during the previous years.

In a later interview, Shelden gave investigators a substantially different account. He said he and Trent had been at Trent’s Muncie residence and had used crack cocaine. Shelden alleged that an encounter between the men became confrontational and said he struck Trent multiple times with a long, heavy tent stake. Prosecutors later treated those statements as admissions to the killing. Shelden also described steps he said he took afterward to conceal what had happened inside the residence. The affidavit said he removed and replaced a portion of carpet, washed himself and his clothing, and took Trent’s property. Those details came from Shelden’s statements to investigators and were later incorporated into the criminal case against him.

Shelden told investigators that he used Trent’s debit card while buying a large plastic storage tote at a Walmart in Muncie and then placed Trent’s body in the tote. He also took Trent’s vehicle, according to the court record. Shelden said he and Tracy Shelden traveled toward Tennessee in separate vehicles the next day. Once in Tennessee, he said, he tried unsuccessfully to burn Trent’s remains and later left them below a steep mountain overhang. Investigators avoided having to rely solely on that account because Shelden eventually directed them to another location where human bones were recovered. The description of the disposal formed part of the obstruction case and helped connect a long-running Indiana disappearance investigation to evidence found in Tennessee.

The recovered bones provided the physical evidence that had been missing from the case. A forensic anthropologist identified the remains as Trent’s, and WRTV reported from the probable cause affidavit that the medical examiner determined Trent died from blunt-force injuries to the head. The death was treated as a homicide. That finding was consistent with the later account Shelden gave investigators about striking Trent. The recovery also transformed the investigation: authorities now had Trent’s remains, a medical determination concerning his death, Shelden’s statements and years of records involving Trent’s missing vehicle and bank activity. Indiana prosecutors filed the murder case in February 2022.

The prosecution then moved through the courts for several years before reaching trial in April 2026. Jurors found Shelden guilty of murder, obstruction of justice and auto theft on April 30. The verdict separated the final adjudicated offenses from the broader group of allegations that had appeared in the 2022 charging documents. At sentencing in August, Delaware County Prosecuting Attorney Eric Hoffman credited prosecutors, investigators, detectives and a victim advocate who worked on the case. He also said the passage of time had not stopped authorities from continuing to pursue the investigation. His office had described the prosecution as one in which Shelden’s efforts to conceal the killing delayed, but did not ultimately prevent, a criminal case.

The 69-year sentence marks the principal current development in a case that began with a family trying to determine why Trent had abruptly disappeared. The record shows the investigation moved through several distinct stages: an unexplained absence in 2016, suspicious financial activity, a renewed push after a family tip in 2021, interviews that produced conflicting accounts, the recovery and identification of Trent’s remains, formal murder charges in 2022 and a jury verdict four years later. Shelden is now serving the sentence imposed after his convictions. No later material development in the case was identified in the sources reviewed for this report.

Author note: Last updated September 20, 2026.