Beginning today and in the weeks following, we ll share information about many of the state s 438 unsolved homicides. It is our hope that by sharing these stories with a broad audience, justice will come for some of these victims. Victims like Brown University graduate Adam Lack, who was murdered on the night of July 13, 2008, in Nora Springs, his family s second casualty in their fight for clean water. And real estate agent Dorothy Miller who, on Aug. 18, 1969, was raped and stabbed while showing an unoccupied house in Burlington.
Each week for the next year, Iowa news organizations will explore cold cases — those that law enforcement no longer has any clues on which to follow up. A case can go cold for weeks, months or even years after the death. And it can be reopened if new evidence is introduced. There is no statute of limitations on murder.
Michelle Marie Martinko
At 4 a.m. Thursday, Dec. 20, 1979, police found Michelle Marie Martinko, her face and chest stabbed repeatedly, in her family s tan 1972 Buick in Cedar Rapids Westdale Mall parking lot. Wounds on the teen s hands showed she fought her killer, but the medical examiner s office said Martinko was fully clothed and had not been sexually assaulted or robbed. Based on the number of stab wounds, particularly to her face, police considered the homicide personal in nature. On June 19, 1980, police released a composite sketch, developed based on descriptions provided by two witnesses. The sketch indicated a white male in his late teens or early 20s, 165-175 pounds, about 6 feet tall.
Using new technology, the Cedar Rapids Police Department was able to procure the suspect s DNA in 2006. In December 2013, police received information that led investigators to a possible suspect. However, the suspect s DNA did not match that of Martinko s killer. Nonetheless, the information provided was credible, and investigators encourage the source to contact police.
Police Officer John Stephens, 32, and Paul Rayer, 51, were shot and killed Tuesday, Dec. 5, 1967, during a robbery of Club 64, an upscale steakhouse about a half-mile east of Council Bluffs city limits where Stephens moonlighted as a plain-clothes security guard. Robbery appeared to be the motive. Stephens was to accompany Rayer, the restaurant s manager, to the Council Bluffs Savings Bank about 2 a.m. after the business closed and daily receipts were counted. Both men s bodies, each shot multiple times, were found in the restaurant s office about five hours later when a club employee arrived for regular cleanup work.
Evidence indicated there were two shooters in what police called a gangland-style slaying. About $1,500 was missing. There were no witnesses, and officers found no signs of forced entry. It was believed both men were shot to prevent their identification of the robbers, and authorities theorized Stephens may have recognized the gunmen.
Scott M. Tompkins
Scott M. Tompkins, 23, was shot Nov. 29, 1995, while stopped to fix his windshield wipers at the intersection of Park Avenue and Harrison Street in Muscatine. Tompkins was found wounded at 9:43 p.m. only blocks from the Hardee s restaurant where he worked as the assistant manager. His co-workers described him as a nice young man without an enemy in the world. Investigators said the homicide was not related to Tompkins job. Tompkins mother stated her son wasn t happy with the increased gang presence in Muscatine and that he was stalked prior to his murder.
In February 2010, Muscatine police said they hoped new technology would provide the key to charging someone with Tompkins murder.
Martha Marty Erickson
On the evening of Nov. 21, 1995, Martha Erickson, 47, was murdered while on her way to a dance. Her body was discovered the following day in Avon Lake s shallow water. She had been beaten and stabbed. Police say the body offered few clues due to time spent in the water, and that they couldn t even say for sure whether Erickson had been sexually assaulted. Erickson enjoyed helping people fight their demons and often attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings even though she wasn t an alcoholic. After Erickson s death, it was discovered she was an acquaintance of two other murdered women: Susan Kersten, whose severely burned body had been found two months earlier near Iowa City; and Donna Lee Marshall, who was found shot in the head in her home in Bon Aire Mobile Home Lodge in Iowa City in January 1996. But the investigation into the acquaintance of all three women yielded nothing substantial.
Roberta Bobbi Crawford
Roberta Bobbi Crawford was murdered inside her Hampton home sometime between late Tuesday night, Nov. 16, 1999, and early the next morning. An autopsy concluded the 53-year-old, who lived alone, died of blunt force trauma to the head. Someone had cut what they thought were the phone lines and then broken in, killing her in her bedroom. Burglary didn t seem to the motive, nor had she been sexually assaulted. Since the murder, the local and state investigators have tracked hundreds of leads, some across state lines, but still can t make sense of such a senseless crime. In June 2005, a private investigator from South Dakota said he believed Bobbi Crawford was killed by a serial killer the same one he believes killed Mason City television reporter Jodi Huisentruit. The detective said the suspect was a Newton native who then moved to Arizona, where he and another man allegedly beat a man to death.
Despite the leads, no one has ever been charged in Bobbi Crawford s homicide.
Mildred Adaline Clemenson
Mildred Millie Adaline Clemenson was found slain Nov. 11, 1998, inside her rural Kensett mobile home. An autopsy indicated Clemenson died from blunt force trauma to the head and had been dead for two days before family members reported her death to authorities, despite the fact she had a plane ticket to fly to Arizona on Nov. 10. On the day of her death, she d allegedly gone to the bank to cash in a large bond. Clemenson s only child, adopted daughter Marcia Patton, had moved her family into the main home and moved Clemenson into the mobile home next to the farmhouse the year prior to Clemenson s death. Clemenson had just recently become the executor of the estate for her late stepmother. Upon Clemenson s death, Patton immediately assumed the position as executor. Clemenson s death made her adopted daughter a millionaire, a family member told Iowa Cold Cases.
Doris Konecne, secretary for Union County Attorney Robert Rolfe, was found dead on the floor of her Creston apartment the morning of Oct. 28, 1973. Overturned and broken furniture as well as bruises around Konecne s neck indicated she had been strangled after a struggle. First to arrive at the crime scene were Union County Deputy Sheriff James Hildebrand and Marion Manley, acting chief of the Creston Police Department. With foul play evident, the two began taking crime scene photos. Shortly after, Rolfe and County Sheriff Don Loy arrived on the scene and conducted their own walk-through. Once they left the scene, Hildebrand and Manley re-entered the apartment, where they found the crime scene had been tampered with. Hildebrand and Manley asked for an autopsy, but Loy and Rolfe denied the request, claiming Konecne died from an accident while drinking alone. Konecne was rumored to be involved in an extramarital affair with both Rolfe and Loy. On the night of the death, Loy s 15-year-old daughter allegedly overheard an explosive argument between her parents and her father s secretary/mistress, Jule Sturzenegger, followed by a discussion among those three and Rolfe on how all of them would handle the unfortunate incident that had transpired.
Jorge Louie Gutierrez
Louie Gutierrez, of East Moline, Ill., was found wrapped in a sleeping bag in the bed of his maroon 1983 Chevrolet pickup in the early afternoon of Oct. 19, 2004. The truck, which was covered in Dallas Cowboys stickers, was parked along the Mississippi River in the 3400 block of South Concorde Street in Davenport. Gutierrez was believed to have been killed two days earlier, Oct. 17, 2004, as a result of blunt force trauma to the head. Because his body was left to make it look like he died in his sleep, coupled with other evidence in the case, his family believes the people responsible for his death must have known him. Family members also believe that more than one person is responsible for his death because he was a burly man, and it would take more than one person to carry him.
Willard Woodring and Richard Buchanan were found bound, gagged and shot to death in the kitchen of the Hawkeye Hotel, a well-known house of prostitution, in Keokuk on Sunday, Oct. 9, 1960. Police immediately launched a three-state search for a young couple who witnesses reported seeing leave the building shortly before the double slaying was reported. Witnesses described the man as about 25 years old with black hair and clad in a black leather jacket. The woman, about 22-23 years old, was described as having short red hair and wearing a lavender dress. They were thought to be driving a car with Illinois license plates. Police believe robbery was the motive for the crime, and the killer may have been an acquaintance of Woodring. There were few signs of a struggle in the room where Woodring and Buchanan were shot and, according to investigators, the murderers seemed to know what they were doing.
Corey Lee Wieneke
Corey Wieneke was found bludgeoned to death on the bedroom floor of his rural West Liberty home Tuesday, Oct. 13, 1992. The cause of death was blunt trauma to the body. A blood-stained aluminum softball bat found one mile from his home was confirmed to be the murder weapon. Wieneke was the late shift bartender at Wink s Tap, a downtown West Liberty tavern. Authorities believed Wieneke knew his killer and said there was no evidence to suggest it was a random killing. They believed the person responsible was not from West Liberty but possibly from Iowa City. Investigators also said they did not believe the murder was drug-related and that it could be connected to a relationship he had with a woman. Wieneke was returning home from Iowa City around 7 a.m. the day of the murder.
Maureen Brubaker Farley
The body of newly married Maureen Farley was found lying atop a junk car Sept. 24, 1971, by two boys hunting in a wooded ravine off Ely Road near Cedar Rapids southwest edge. The Linn County medical examiner ruled Farley had been dead between 48 and 96 hours and said her death was caused by a massive blow to the right side of her head. She was last seen alive one week earlier when she borrowed money for a pack of cigarettes, planning to repay the debt later that day after picking up her paycheck from Weida s Restaurant. Police officials believe Farley s death occurred at a place other than where her body was discovered and were interested in her actions from Sept. 17, the day she was last seen alive, to Sept. 22. Farley s body showed no indication of defense wounds, and her clothing was somewhat in disarray, but not torn. That, and the blunt trauma to the side of her head, point to a surprise attack.
Kimberly R. Loose, Craig Allen Petersen
Authorities said Kimberly Loose was thrown from the passenger seat of a car driven by Jeffery Daily. The Loose family was initially told Kim s death was a freak accident; the vehicle s passenger door had fallen open while traveling 20 mph over a speed bump in a parking lot and Kim had fallen from the vehicle, broken her neck and died. Also in the car was Daily s best friend, Craig Petersen. Daily, who wasn t injured, was charged only with operating a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol. Petersen disappeared two days later while walking across the Interstate 280 bridge south of Davenport. His body was found floating two miles west of Montpelier on the Mississippi River. No conclusive evidence ever proved whether Petersen had jumped, fallen or been pushed. Both Loose s and Petersen s deaths were considered suspicious and perhaps related, given the link with Daily. Yet in the years since they died, conflicting evidence, including police reports and autopsy photos that don t match what Loose s family was told, leaves loved ones wondering if they ll find closure.
Lisa Ann Vander Esch
Lisa Vander Esch was killed by a bullet to the head while playing with her 16-month-old son in her rural Ireton home s backyard. Her shooter s identity was never in question. Lisa s husband, Darwin Vander Esch a man well-trained in gun safety who d been hunting and trapping since age 5 told investigators his rifle accidentally discharged.
Not all investigators believed the accidental shooting story; evidence suggested her death may have been a murder. Investigation into the incident was likely hampered due to bitter infighting in the county. The county attorney never received reports from law enforcement, subsequent grand jury records disappeared from the county courthouse, and many questions remain unanswered in the case.
Brian Lee Schappert
Brian Lee Schappert, a 22-year-old Coe College senior, was killed in the early morning hours of Friday, Sept. 8, 1989, while working the midnight shift alone at a Cedar Rapids Kum & Go. Schappert s throat was slashed and he was stabbed numerous times in the back during a robbery at the 2743 Mount Vernon Road SE store. Schappert s body was found at 3:15 a.m. by a customer. Witnesses told police they saw a white male in his 20s, about 6 feet tall and 170 pounds, with shoulder-length, dark brown hair in the area shortly before Schappert s body was found. A witness also placed a van at the store near the time the murder occurred. Police checked on more than 400 vans registered in the area but admitted the driver could have been making a delivery. Two weeks before the murder, Schappert had been promoted to assistant manager and given the combination to the store s safe, his father said. His body was found near the open, emptied safe.
Jeffery Jo Jo Zolliecoffer
On Friday, Sept. 15, 1989, a child playing by the Cedar River discovered the body of Jeffery Jo Jo Zolliecoffer about a half-mile north of Waterloo s business district. Zolliecoffer had been shot three times, including a shotgun blast to the back of the head. His body had been wrapped in a quilted blanket, secured with copper wiring, and looped through two cement blocks. Waterloo police believe it took several days for his body to rise from the river. He was last seen alive Sept. 7 at Goodies II, a bar formerly located in the 100 block of Sumner Street. There were conflicting reports of whether Zolliecoffer left the bar on his own or was forced out by several men. Some family members believe the murder was drug-related, while other members said Zolliecoffer was against anyone who used drugs.
If you have information about Jeffery Jo Jo Zolliecoffer s death, please call the Waterloo Police Department at (319) 291-4340 or the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation at (515) 725-6010.
Earl Thelander
Earl Thelander got second- and third-degree burns over 80 percent of his body in an Aug. 28, 2007, explosion caused by copper thieves. Sometime overnight from Aug. 27 to Aug. 28, thieves broke into the vacant home at 20877 Gum Ave. near Onawa, which Earl and wife Hope had been renovating, and stole copper propane and water lines, causing the house to fill with gas. Earl discovered the break-in at 8:30 a.m. Aug. 28. He alerted authorities and opened windows to ventilate the house. After authorities wrapped up their initial investigation of the crime scene and the house was thought to be adequately ventilated, Earl returned and, smelling no gas, assumed it was safe to resume his work. When he plugged in a blower, the home exploded. Earl died from his injuries four days later. Crime scene evidence included tire tracks in the freshly mown lawn, suggesting the perpetrator(s) drove a small, lightweight pickup. However, no tire casts were made and no fingerprints taken because law enforcement officials had no officers trained in fingerprinting. If you have information about Jeffery Jo Jo Zolliecoffer s death, please call the Waterloo Police Department at (319) 291-4340 or the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation at (515) 725-6010.
John Brannan
The following is the first of a two-part report on the investigation into the death of Ronald Butler in 1977.
WATERLOO | The graphite eyes stare up from the aging sheet of paper tucked away in a thick, battered file folder at the Waterloo Police Department. A brief caption of the charcoal sketch fills in the details: WANTED, Suspicion of Murder: White male, 16 to 18 yrs., 5 6 to 5 10 , 125 to 140 lb. Blonde hair, shoulder length, slightly wavy. Witnesses said the eyes belong to the last person to be seen with 23-year-old Ronald Craig Butler before Butler was found dead in his locked bathroom with a single knife wound to his back in 1977.
Investigators said the eyes belong to John Dewey Brannan, a Kansas man who took his own life in 2006, three years after detectives questioned him about Butler s slaying. Brannan was never arrested or charged, but with their only suspect dead, Waterloo Police consider the cold case closed, said Capt. David Mohlis. The following account was gleaned from reports spanning 29 years filed by Waterloo investigators, court records and Courier archives.
The son of a local minister, Ronald Butler had been a budding music and theater instructor enrolled at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls. An Oct. 10, 1977, article in The Courier explained how Butler was going to be in charge of musical education — teaching theory, organizing ensembles and conducting lessons — at the Martin Luther King Center for Education and Vocational Training. Friends would later tell police about Butler s other side. He was known to pick up and proposition teens, and friends had warned him it was dangerous to pick up strangers. Court records show the activity got him into trouble.
In March 1973, he was accused of performing a sex act with a 12-year-old boy who inquired about the “Y” swim club Butler directed. The boy told police Butler showed him the facility, showered with him and suggested they play wrestle. Butler denied any sexual conduct, pleaded to an amended charge of making malicious threats to extort and was placed on three years of probation. Then in January 1974, a 15-year-old hitchhiker accused Butler of buying him beer at a bar and taking him to a Cedar Falls apartment for sex. The teen said he complied because he was afraid. A jury acquitted Butler following trial. On Oct. 18, 1977, Butler canceled a performance he was to give at a local nursing home, saying he wasn t feeling well.
A classmate from UNI who worked with Butler at the King center phoned Butler at the house he shared with his mother at 327 Sumner St. around 11 a.m. Butler had some papers the classmate needed for an acting class. The classmate would later tell police that during the call, he could hear someone in the background.
I asked Ron if somebody was there and he said, Yeah, somebody s here, the classmate wrote in a signed statement. He said Butler agreed to bring the papers by the center, and he appeared about 15 minutes later with the material. He was wearing a red trucker s cap the friend had never seen before. The classmate asked why he didn t see Butler s car parked at the house.
Ron said something like, It s parked on the side because people would talk if they saw I was with someone. I asked him who was with him and he said, Some 16-year-old high school kid, the classmate said in his written statement to police. Butler s mother, Havana, returned home shortly before 3 p.m. that day and found the bathroom door locked. She suspected something was amiss and tried to break open the door. Firefighters were called and removed the door. Inside, they found Ronald Butler, semi nude, on the floor in a pool of blood. There was a single stab wound to his back and a pornographic magazine on the floor.
Butler still had cash in his wallet, the home phone line had been cut, there were blood drops leading up to the bathroom and neighbors a block away reported seeing a slender white teen with shoulder-length blonde hair toss a knife under their porch. Havana identified it as a kitchen knife from her home and said it had been on a drying rack earlier that day. Investigators determined Butler and the teen had been seen together earlier the day of the slaying. They bought the magazine from a downtown store. They checked the cover and pages for fingerprints, confident any prints would be from the victim and the suspect because the magazine was sold in a sealed plastic wrapper. The likely scenario, according to detectives reports, was that Butler was engaged in sex in the kitchen area when he was stabbed from behind with a kitchen knife. He retreated to the bathroom and locked himself inside, and the suspect attempted to force his way into the bathroom before fleeing through the front door. The medical examiner said the knife had punctured Butler s heart, and he would have been dead in minutes.
An artist put together a composite sketch of the long-haired teen, and it was passed around town, printed in The Courier and aired on TV. While no one who saw the teen knew who he was, the sketch drew numerous tips. It was the 1970s, long hair was in, and almost every kid in high school looked like the drawing. The police department s file on the homicide is filled with hundreds of head shots of long-haired teens. Detectives checked truancy lists from area schools and chased countless sightings. An Iowa State Patrol trooper noticed someone matching the description walking through Aplington and took the guy s name.
Someone else thought the sketch looked like a guy they had seen in a locally produced movie. Officers watched the film and tracked down the director, who identified the actor as a man in his mid-20s and heavier. A newspaper reader thought the drawing looked like the rendering of an armed robbery suspect in California and sent that clipping to Waterloo police, who contacted Sacramento County sheriff s deputies. According to reports, some 400 people were investigated and ruled out through prints, photo lineups or alibis. Those closer to Butler underwent polygraph tests.
By December 1977, Brannan s name had come up. A police department juvenile officer said the artist s rending looked like him, and a detective found Brannan s father, who agreed with the similarity, according to reports. John Brannan, who was 15 at the time, had moved to Holts Summit, Mo., to live with his grandparents, and officers attempted to pick up the trail. They obtained a court order in Callaway County, Mo., to collect fingerprints and photos of Brannan, but Brannan apparently left that state, too. Records show police checked addresses in California. They later learned he had left California for a sister s home on Widby Island in Washington state. In 1979, police got wind that a relative of Brannan s had died in Fulton, Mo. They asked Missouri sheriff s deputies to be on the lookout for him in the event he attended the funeral.
In the years that passed, Waterloo police regularly asked the FBI to check prints from the scene against its database and the look for records and driver s licenses for Brannan.
A single possible suspect remains in our files, Capt. Darwin Dirksen with the Waterloo Police Department wrote in a 1983 request to the FBI.
The conclusion will appear in Monday’s Courier.
John Brannan
This is the second of a two-part report on the investigation into the death of Ronald Butler in 1977.
WATERLOO | When Officer Jeff Duggan received the 1977 Ronald Butler homicide case in 2002, he didn t think he d make much progress.
When I first got it, I did feel that the chances for solving it were probably pretty slim, because it had been well investigated back in 77, Duggan said. Butler, a 23-year-old University of Northern Iowa student, had been found dead in a locked bathroom in the Sumner Street home he shared with his mother Oct. 18, 1977. After ruling out some 400 people, police began to focus on John Brannan, a 15-year-old who moved to Missouri after the slaying and had never been questioned. He died in 2006 and was never arrested or charged in Butler’s death. Duggan noticed throughout the police reports Brannan s name had different spellings. It appeared as Brannon, Brennan and other variations.
I started playing with the spelling of the name John Brannan, our suspect, Duggan said.
Checking the different possible spellings, Duggan discovered a John Dewey Brannan. He also learned Brannan had been arrested for intoxicated driving in November 1991 in Burlington, Kan., and he asked the FBI to compare fingerprints from the Kansas arrest to prints on a pornographic magazine found at the murder scene. In January 2003, the FBI lab determined one latent print from a magazine page was identified as Brannan s. Kansas Bureau of Investigation agents determined Brannan was living in Melvern, Kan., and Duggan made arrangements with KBI officers to pay Brannan a visit. It would be the first time police had ever interviewed Brannan about Ronald Butler s death. They showed up unannounced on May 15, 2003.
I ll never forget it. It was like the breath came out of him. He just lost his breath, and you could tell that he knew. Twenty-six years later these law enforcement officials show up at your doorstep, and it was something he probably never ever thought would happen, Duggan said.
Brannan, who was in a wheelchair from a 1992 accident where he fell from a balcony and broke his neck, began breathing heavy and handed them a card explaining he had a medical issue. He then excused himself to get a glass of water from the kitchen. They went to a police station in Ottawa, Kan., to talk. Brannan said he had lived in Waterloo for about one or two months because of a job his father found. Duggan didn t tell him about the fingerprint, and when Duggan showed him photos of the Sumner Street house and Butler, Brannan said he had never been to the house and didn t know Butler.
As questioning continued and it started to become more intense, he asked for an attorney, which at that time ended that interview, Duggan said. Police searched his house and seized photos of Brannan from the 1980s and 1990s and took a fresh set of fingerprints. Waterloo police talked to Brannan s ex-wife about a month later. They had been married from 1981 to 1991, and she told police Brannan had once told her about an incident involving a stabbing.
She also said Brannan had called her a few weeks earlier — apparently after his police visit — and again recounted the Iowa incident to her. He told her they had been smoking pot, and the man got undressed. Brannan said he told the man no and started to walk out, but the man grabbed him from behind and he stabbed him. A few months later, in November 2003, employees at a water treatment plant about half a mile from Brannan s Kansas home noticed a plastic bag wedged under rocks. They looked inside and found a collection of photocopies of Courier newspaper articles about the Butler homicide. There was also an invoice in the bag for the copies that showed they were sent to a man who turned out to be a friend of Brannan. The friend told investigators Brannan told him about being questioned by police in May, and the friend was curious so he requested the newspaper clippings. He said Brannan had looked over the articles and returned them, but he denied Brannan had given any specific details about the crime. It wasn t clear how the clippings ended up under the rocks double bagged in plastic.
The investigation continued. Lab reports show authorities checked the red trucker cap found at Butler s home for hairs and the cut phone cord for DNA but found no evidence.
It was kind of in limbo, Duggan said. We wanted to make a good decision on this. While the investigation was continuing, Brannan s second wife left him in 2006, according to police reports. During the breakup, she noticed he appeared depressed and removed all of the firearms from the home. But Brannan had another friend buy him a single-shot .410 shotgun for $135 on April 12, 2006, telling him it was for an acquaintance who had broken his shotgun.
Three days later, friends called Osage County, Kan., sheriff s deputies after finding Brannan dead at his home. He was seated in his wheelchair with the shotgun propped up on his leg. A large note to his estranged wife on poster board in the living room bemoaned the breakup. Authorities determined he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The following week, Brannan s friend who had ordered the newspaper clippings, phoned Duggan. He said after the police visits in 2003, Brannan had told him the full story of what happened the day Butler died. In the account, Brannan said he had skipped school and was walking down the street when a man he didn t know — Butler — asked him if he wanted to smoke marijuana. They picked up Butler s check, went to a bank and then bought nudie books at a convenience store.
Back at Butler s house, they took pills and smoked weed. He said Butler grabbed him from behind and started kissing him. Brannan used a Buck knife in his pocket to stab Butler. Butler ran to the bathroom. Brannan said he persuaded Butler to remove the knife from the wound and slide it under the door. Brannan fled the house, taking a kitchen knife and hiding it under a porch, according to the account Brannan gave his friend. He said the murder weapon was tossed into the Cedar River.
I think there s truth in his story, but I also think there s probably some exaggeration, because some of it doesn t make sense — why he d grab the knife and throw it under the porch, Duggan said. But I think that line of events follows our theory of what happened. Duggan said he had kept developments in the case from Butler s mother because he didn t want to get her hopes up until he was able to make an arrest. With Brannan dead, Duggan told his mother what he found. She died in 2014.
Lance Lee DeWoody of North Liberty was shot in the head and neck at a picnic shelter on the north side of the University of Iowa s Oakdale campus in Coralville sometime between late Monday night,
Aug. 12, 1985, and early Tuesday morning. Oakdale campus employees found DeWoody s body shortly after sunrise Tuesday near the campus general hospital parking lot. His pickup was found parked about 70 yards away. His murder stumped authorities; family members said he didn t have any enemies, and officials ruled out robbery as a motive. No murder weapon was found at the crime scene. In a Cedar Rapids Gazette article dated March 22, 1992, it was reported that officials had a prime suspect but not enough evidence to make an arrest. The suspect apparently knew DeWoody and lived in the Iowa City area, though information wasn t released as to why investigators thought DeWoody died or how many times he was shot.
If you have information about Lance Lee DeWoody s death, please call the Coralville Police Department at (319) 248-1800 or the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation at (563) 284-9506.
Dennis Michael Clougherty
On Aug. 12, 1974, sometime between the hours of 10:30 p.m. and midnight, someone shot 23-year-old Dennis Clougherty five times in the chest and left his body along Union Road south of First Street in Cedar Falls. A Vietnam veteran preparing to begin his last year of graduate school at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Clougherty left Madison around 4 p.m. that day with plans to hitchhike to Wyoming to retrieve his motorcycle and then ride it back to Detroit. After getting rides from Dubuque to Independence to the intersection of U.S. Highways 20 and 63 in Waterloo, two men both in their early 20s and driving a brownish/gold 1962-1964 Chevrolet with a beige interior picked up Clougherty at the Kentucky Fried Chicken on Broadway Street around 10:30 p.m. Clougherty was never seen alive again and died about 30 to 45 minutes later. Officials don t consider robbery a motive, as Clougherty s billfold still contained $80 and his backpack s contents, found five miles south on Viking Road, were left undisturbed. If you have information about Dennis Michael Clougherty s death, please call the Cedar Falls Police Department at (319) 273-8612 or the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation at (319) 277-4601.
Connie Jo Choate Bodensteiner
On August 8, 1995, Connie Jo Choate Bodensteiner was found locked in a basement storage bin at a south-side Des Moines apartment complex. An autopsy showed the 24-year-old had been strangled. A maintenance worker discovered the body, which had a strap or belt around the neck. Bodensteiner s mother said her daughter had run into problems before she was killed. She had been arrested four times on prostitution charges and once on a drug-related charge. Bodensteiner and her husband, Michael Bodensteiner, had a stormy marriage and separated in 1992. Authorities initially explored a possible connection with Bodensteiner s murder and that of 37-year-old Angela Buck of Waterloo, whose body was found the day after Bodensteiner s. Both had records of prostitution and once worked for the same person. Officials later determined the two women s deaths were not connected.
If you have information about Connie Jo Choate Bodensteiner s death, please call the Des Moines Police Department at (515) 283-4864 or the Iowa Department of Criminal Investigation at (515) 725-6010.
AP PHOTO
JoAnn Zywicki sits by a photo of her daughter Tammy at her home in Ocala, Fla., in 2012. GRINNELL | Twenty-three years after Tammy Jo Zywicki’s death, her mother is trying to stay optimistic investigators will solve the case.
“It’s been hard,” said JoAnn Zywicki. “It’s been really up and down, and it never really goes away.”
The 21-year-old Grinnell College student was returning to school from Evanston, Ill., and should have arrived in Grinnell on Aug. 23, 1992. That day, her car a white Pontiac T1000 was found abandoned in Illinois. The next month, her body was found along Interstate 44 near Springfield, Mo. Zywicki was wrapped in a red blanket and her mouth was covered in duct tape. She had been sexually assaulted and stabbed seven times in a circle around her heart as well as once on her right arm.
JoAnn Zywicki said she’d been hopeful investigators were making progress in the case last fall after enlisting the help of the Philadelphia-based Vidocq Society, which is known for its interest in cold cases. JoAnn Zywicki said they turned up new leads that had long been overlooked. But now, she said, budget cuts are making it difficult for the investigation to progress, frustrating her just when she thought police might be able to finally close the case. ISP Master Sgt. Jeff Padilla refuted claims his budget had been cut and called the Zywicki case one of his department’s highest priorities.
“We have had absolutely every resource at our disposal in this investigation,” Padilla said, noting the Vidocq Society’s advice has led to possible new suspects.
Zywicki’s older brother, Todd, said what happened to his sister was so random and awful identifying her killer won’t shed new light on a motive.
“It’s not really a mystery as to why they did it: just because they’re an evil person,” he said. Before her abduction, Zywicki had been traveling back to college early to take preseason photos of college sports teams for Andy Hamilton, Grinnell s assistant sports information director at the time. When her body was found, her Canon 35mm camera and a unique wristwatch were gone.
“What’s amazing is no one really had an account of what happened and saw it,” Hamilton said. “And that’s kind of tragic.”
A 14-member task force made up of officials from multiple states and FBI investigators was created to investigate the case, but disbanded in February 1993 citing a lack of progress. One longtime suspect in the case was Lonnie Bierbrodt, a truck driver with a history of violent crime who came to authorities’ attention when an anonymous caller described someone matching his description seen with Tammy Jo Zywicki on the interstate as she struggled to fix her car. The caller said she later saw Bierbrodt s wife speaking about a watch her husband had given her that matched the description of Zywicki’s watch. He was questioned but never charged. He died in 2002.
Padilla said investigators could not rule out Bierbrodt as a suspect, but he believes Zywicki’s killer is still alive. And he’s excited by the current leads.
“We are treating this investigation as a brand new investigation,” Padilla said. “We are going over the entire case file which is voluminous with a fine-toothed comb.”
Despite the passage of time, support from friends, classmates and strangers has grown stronger. More than 1,000 people have signed a petition on Change.org requesting Illinois to release further information, and more than 400 people are members of a Facebook page called “Who Killed Tammy Zywicki.”
JoAnn Zywicki is encouraged by the support and said her daughter’s case has helped draw attention to other cold cases. Todd Zywicki said he’s often reminded of his sister’s absence in surprising ways. At 10 years old, Todd’s daughter has never known her aunt, but when the girl makes certain expressions, he s reminded of Tammy’s smile.
“It’s just kind of interesting to see the similarities between my daughter and Tammy,” he said.
COURIER FILE PHOTO
An 83-year-old woman was killed insider her apartment at Walnut Court Apartments in Waterloo in 1993. Gladys Held’s murder remains unsolved. WATERLOO | Two discoveries at apartment buildings a day apart marked the end of a particularly violent year in Waterloo.
In 1993, Waterloo police investigated nine slayings, with the deaths of Gladys Held and Jacob Biretz closing out the year. Decades later, it still isn t clear if their murders are related, but there are several similarities. Both retirees were killed in their homes, which were about three blocks apart.
Held, an 83-year-old former secretary and Rath Packing employee, had been hit with a phone and strangled in her third-floor apartment at Walnut Court senior housing. A neighbor found her in bed Dec. 9, 1993, after she failed to show up for church. Biretz, 87, a former auto body mechanic from Nashua, was found Dec. 10, 1993, on a couch by his landlady. He had been suffocated with a pillow. Weeks earlier, on the night before Thanksgiving, Biretz had been sprayed with Mace and beaten by a robber who broke into his apartment. At the time, police said it wasn t clear if the robbery and the homicide are related.
No arrests have been made in their deaths. Two other residents in Held s apartment building reported encountering an intruder on the night of the slaying. A woman on the first floor told police a man entered her apartment through an open door and demanded cash. He left when she told him she didn t have any, according to Courier archives. A second-floor resident said he saw someone reach through his door and flee when he asked who was there. Blood was collected from both scenes and entered into a law enforcement database for possible comparisons, police said.
Anyone with information on the case is asked to call the Waterloo Police Department at 291-4340 ext. 7 or Cedar Valley Crime Stoppers at (855) 300-8477. Tips also may be left at www.cvcrimestop.com, sent with TipSoft or by texting the word CEDAR plus the information to CRIMES (274637).
COURIER FILE PHOTO
Terence Dwayne Currington, a 20-year-old Waterloo native, was shot to death while sitting in his car along Adams Street in August 2003. WATERLOO | August marks 12 years since Terence Dwayne Currington was shot while sitting his car. Currington, a 20-year-old Waterloo native, had stopped in the 400 block of Adams Street — just six blocks from his home — about 11:30 p.m. Aug. 7, 2003, to talk to friends, who walked up to his vehicle.
According to witnesses, another vehicle pulled up alongside his car. There was yelling, enough to prompt neighbors to call police, and someone started shooting. Bullets struck Currington in his left arm, chest and abdomen.
His car rolled forward, jumped the curb and came to a rest after bumping into a tree. Friends tried to help Currington from his vehicle, but he was dead at the scene. To this day, no one has been held responsible for his slaying. His mother passed away in June. Friends and relatives said Currington had been involved in ongoing problems with others. His car s front and back windshields were broken out a few weeks earlier, possibly in a dispute over money, and then he was involved in a fight only days before his death.
Relatives said Currington was related to Martavious Deshaun Robinson, 20, who was killed in September 2002. Robinson, of Waterloo, and Calvin Maurice Rash, 28, of Chicago, were shot as they left a house in the 400 block of Thompson Avenue. No arrests have been made in their slayings. Anyone with information on the case is asked to call the Waterloo Police Department at 291-4340 ext. 7 or Cedar Valley Crime Stoppers at (855) 300-8477. Tips also may be left at www.cvcrimestop.com, sent with TipSoft or by texting the word CEDAR plus the information to CRIMES (274637).
BRIAN POWERS / Des Moines Register
A photo of 18-year-old Julia Benning, who is one of three cold cases in Waverly from the 1970s.
One in a series.
CLARSKVILLE | Julia Benning lived on a farm near Clarksville, but she wanted to experience the wider world. She had pen pals in Michigan and Scotland and shared with them her righteous rants about small-minded prejudices against black people, Indians and young women who spoke their mind and didn t conform in dress or behavior.
Her family didn t know where this came from but accepted it. The oldest of five daughters of Lowell and JoAnn Benning, Julia had been the picture of a good farm girl, following her father around to do chores as a youngster, growing into a beautiful 4-foot-11-inch tall young woman who sang in the Plainfield High School choir, played in the band and performed for the speech team. But with no money to attend college, Julia went to nearby Waverly to find a job after high school. She loved the music of the era bands like the Eagles. When the family took a rare trip to California in 1974, she begged to stop in Winslow, Ariz., because the Eagles sang about standing on a corner there. They did, and she sang.
Lighten up while you still can / don t even try to understand / Just find a place to make your stand / and take it easy.
She wanted to work at a radio station, but the managers said she needed more experience and education. She settled for trying to find a job at a bowling alley, but they already had stacks of job applicants. That s when Julia, 18, walked into the Sir Lounge in Waverly and was hired on the spot as a cocktail waitress. That it was a strip club pained her religious parents. This was a girl more likely to go to church camp than a party, one who had experienced only a couple of dates in high school, despite her good looks and free spirit.
Julia wrote in her diary: Everyone at school, home and everywhere else was duly shocked and amazed to think good ol Julie was working in a strip joint, as they inelegantly termed the Sir, which is really a fairly classy, plushly carpeted, dark-paneled club with a nice atmosphere. The dancers are pretty decent people, not the ten dollar whores most of the men think they are. It was a strange experience watching a chick strip and dance completely nude, but after the initial novelty, it soon became old hat and didn t bother me a bit. On Nov. 28, 1975, the day after spending Thanksgiving with her parents, Julia was seen walking to work. Then she disappeared. Nearly 40 years later, her parents and sister Carol Kean sat in the dining room of the same rural farmhouse where Julia grew up — and where her own father did too. It was like a time warp. The carpet is still candy-striped, popular in the 1970s. Julia s drawings are splayed across the dining room table of fashionable rock stars and stylish women s dress of the era.
Her father stood in the doorway, well into his 70s now, and his voice cracked. There was no way he could talk about it again. He only whispered, I gave her her first ice cream, before exiting to the farm shed, where his daughter s 70s-era platform shoes hang above his work bench.
Disappearance
JoAnn Benning said she tried to talk her daughter out of working at the club, but the young woman they more commonly called Julie said she wanted to be an independent woman and promised she would never be a stripper. She made pottery and chokers out of bear claws, feathers and beads, and sewed the dress she wore that last day on the way to work. They didn t know it then, but Julia had been writing to pen pals the month before, saying she d grown up fast working at the bar and had already learned not to trust anybody.
A sleazy guy offered me $1,500 to go to bed with him and I turned him down. I saw the money and knew he had it, but the idea of it bummed me out. I just didn t think I could live with myself later. Deep down, her letters show, she was concerned people didn t accept her, and she wanted to save money to fix the lazy eye she had since childhood. She wrote that she was depressed and had a feeling some drastic change was about to occur in her life.
Julia loved Thanksgiving, her favorite holiday. After stuffing themselves around the family table, she got up the next day and said she had to go to work. Her mother begged her to call in sick, but she left anyway.
She looked back and waved at me, and I had a strange feeling, JoAnn Benning said. It was the last time I saw her. The bar staff called her the next day to say Julia hadn t shown up for work on Friday. They waited a day before going to police. The family searched in fields and buildings in the area. They contacted television stations to get the word out. Nothing.
I looked in culverts. By then I knew she was gone. It was a matter of finding her. I just had a feeling, said JoAnn Benning, whose own mother had died when she was an infant. JoAnn had Julia at 19, and they were deeply connected because she felt they matured together.
We just stayed here at home all winter. Just to be here. Five months passed, and a black car pulled into the driveway. Sister Carol, who was only 12 at the time, was in her bedroom and heard the words black fingernail polish the color Julia wore and ID the body.
Her naked body was found by a county maintenance worker in nearby rural Butler County. She had been strangled, and her body was stuffed in a culvert, washing out with March rains. A homicide investigation ensued.
I couldn t feel anything, Carol Kean said. My other sister cried on the floor. But for years, I didn t think about it. Then one day this past spring, she started thinking about it again because of a man she met with in a park who claimed to know what happened and who did it. She hasn t been able to stop thinking about it every day since.
‘Waverly stranglings’
After a few months, state investigators disappeared. After a few years, the Bennings quit checking in with local cops. The case had gone cold. The Bennings were upset, too, about the damage to their daughter s reputation. It was as if because she worked in a strip club, she got what she deserved — despite her diary entries that she was a waitress there only to save money for college and their insistence she never stripped. They felt guilt about not providing her the money, and still do. But they followed the ethic learned hard on the farm to pick yourself up by the bootstraps, go to work, be strong. Carol Kean even went to school the day after her sister was found.
In the months following the murder, questions arose. Her case was similar to that of Valerie Kossowsky, 14, whose strangled body was found in 1971 on a creek bank off a gravel road near Waverly. Six months after Julia s body was found, 20-year-old Wartburg College sophomore Lisa Peak s nude body was found in a ditch north of Waverly. She had also been strangled. The three unsolved cases became known as the Waverly stranglings. Bremer County Sheriff s Department detective David MacDonald believes they may be connected.
We do believe the possibility exists that there is still a suspect out there somewhere, which is one of the reasons the case remains open, he said.
Lisa Peak s body was exhumed in 2010, and other tips have been pursued through the years. But no charges have ever been issued in the three cases. Authorities say the stranglings have become urban legend among young people in the area. But in the 1970s, the disappearances of young women who were later found dead was all too common, said Susan Chehak, who authored the website and book What Happened to Paula? about the murder of Paula Oberbroeckling, 18, of Cedar Rapids in 1970. She said the sexual and cultural revolution around civil and gender rights made it a particularly dangerous time to be a girl of 18 or older. The rules had been removed, but safety nets weren t in place.
A lead?
The Bennings had tucked away Julia s lock of hair, snipped from her so her mother could always have a piece of her lovely daughter, and a hair pin JoAnn found while scouring the ground one day where Julia s body was found. Her mother used to suffer thinking of the act of dying and whether Julia felt physical pain. Now she just regrets that her daughter never got to experience life.
I wish she could have had a horse, JoAnn Benning said. Recently, the sorrow was channeled into a new lead. A man from a nearby small town told Carol Kean he was at the Sir Lounge the night of the murder and named the people responsible.
He said he had first told authorities what he saw in the months after it happened. Then after his own daughter s death, he was determined to tell it again, and contacted Jody Ewing of the website Iowa Cold Cases. He later met with Kean, and both women believe his story.
I m not going to get anything out of this. I have no reason to lie, said the man, who spoke with the Register only on the condition he wouldn t be named because he said he s been threatened by the men he saw with Julia that night. This is what he says happened, while acknowledging that he is a former felon who had been drinking that night: He was at the Sir Lounge when he saw Julia taking money at the door, although authorities reported at the time she was last seen walking to work. A struggle ensued in the hallway. Men blocked his vision of it when he tried to look back there.
A short time later in the parking lot, he saw what appeared to be Julia slumped in the passenger side of the pickup. When the pickup door was opened, he saw a man he knew with his hand near her throat, trying to cover the dome light with his other hand. What he thinks were the victim s clothes were later planted in his garage by the man he suspects or his associates. He says he threw them away, not yet knowing Julia was missing. Waverly Police Capt. Jason Leonard said he s taken information from the man, and police have looked into every new lead. But there hasn t been any new information in the past two years, he said.
Every day since she met with the man who says he witnessed the slaying, Kean said she s been on a mission. She wants to repair her sister s reputation and shame the man who was in that pickup. She is researching, drawing up theories and tracking down the locations of people there at the time.
It consumes me. For the first time in 40 years, I have a name, she said. To imagine this beautiful girl, nude and stuffed in a culvert covered in mud and leaves, the indignity of it. The man who did this is walking free, and I can t live with that. The family still notices one less plate on the Thanksgiving table every year.
I hate Thanksgiving now because that was her favorite holiday, JoAnn said. She d say, I d walk all night to be there. Left to console her is a short story Julia wrote for one of her high school classes. In it, a dying girl told her weeping mother on her death bed that she was going to heaven, and I will be waiting for you.
DES MOINES | Roughly a third of homicides in the U.S. go unsolved. In the Midwest, it s even less likely a killer will be caught: A little more than half 52 percent are identified, according to FBI data referred to as clearance rates. Criminologists and forensic death consultants such as Jim Adcock estimate more than 200,000 homicides have gone unsolved in the United States since 1980.
And the longer a case goes unsolved the colder it becomes the harder it is to crack. Advances in forensics and social media have helped identify some killers, but the bitter truth for victims families is that the national clearance rate has remained relatively static for more than 20 years. Why?
It s a tough question to answer, Adcock said, noting the number of murders in the U.S. has dropped from around 25,000 in 1993 to 13,000 today. We have half as many homicides. Why aren t we solving more?
Adcock, a longtime law enforcement instructor and author of several cold case books, says the answer is tied to a complex web of issues. Among the hurdles to finding justice, he said: too little money for law enforcement investigations, witnesses fear of the killers and public apathy. There s also something called the white woman syndrome, a term used by social scientists to explain the short-lived news coverage and lack of public interest when murder victims are members of minority groups.
If you are blonde and blue-eyed, you re most likely to get more attention from the news media, Adcock said. And if you re a prostitute or homeless, you re also less likely to get attention from the news media and even potentially from the police. These are what I call devalued victims. From 2009 to 2011, Iowa had a special cold case unit that was part of the Iowa Department of Public Safety. But its two agents and a criminologist were reassigned after a federal grant, which pumped $500,000 into the program, ended.
The state continues to follow up on leads in the roughly 160 cold cases that are part of the Iowa Division of Crim