← Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore
Jodi Huisentruit: The Morning News Anchor Who Vanished Before Broadcast
01:11:01
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- [00:00]
Morgan Absher
I'm Dr. Haruni Bhat, host of Hidden History. Every Monday I go where history gets uncomfortable. Banished civilizations, doomsday prophecies and events that
- [00:09]
Kaylin Moore
science still can't fully explain.
- [00:11]
Morgan Absher
Listen to and follow Hidden History available now. Wherever you get your podcasts, This is Crime House. News vans flood the street, cameras roll, reporters go live. But the the town's most recognizable face isn't on the air because she's that day's big story.
- [00:36]
Kaylin Moore
27 year old Jody Husentrute was a rising star in local news. She wanted to be the next Barbara Walters. But on June 27, 1995, Jodi left her apartment just before dawn to head to work, only to vanish without a trace and become the lead story herself.
- [01:06]
Morgan Absher
Hi. Welcome to Clues, where we sneak past the crime scene tape to explore the key evidence behind some of the most gripping true crime cases.
- [01:11]
Kaylin Moore
I'm Kaylin Moore and I'll be the one digging deeper into the timelines, the backstories and the court files released on these cases.
- [01:17]
Morgan Absher
And I'm your Internet sleuth, Morgan Absher. I'm the one who's diving into anything I can find online to find those lesser known details and pull out the threads that just are not adding up. And don't forget to share your thoughts on social want ad free listening and early access. Subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts and make sure to go back and listen to all of our previous episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Now let's get into Jodi Husentruit's case and the clues that defined it. Hey, before we jump back into the show, let's take a quick break. But not just any break. This is a refreshing break with Snapple. We all know about Snapple's iconic Real facts, so let's take a minute to go over some of my favorites. Snapple Real fact 964 it is illegal in the United Kingdom to handle salmon in suspicious circumstances. Snapple Real fact 1013 it is illegal to sing off key in North Carolina. Snapple real fact 2033Americans consume 150 million hot dogs on July 4th. Snapple real fact 705. Every ton of recycled paper saves about 17 trees. So grab a Snapple, take a second and enjoy the moment. Because let's be honest, this might be the most refreshing part of your day. Snapple, make your break more interesting. All right, now let's get back to Clues. This episode is brought to you by Groons. I am really, really prioritizing my health and I know that I wasn't getting enough vitamins and nutrients. And that is where Groons came in. Groons are a convenient, comprehensive formul in one delicious daily pack of gummy bears. This isn't a multivitamin, a greens gummy or a prebiotic. It's all of those things and then some at a fraction of the price. And bonus, it tastes great. I have a pack of greens in my purse pretty much constantly now. It's my little sweet treat, my snack that also makes sure I'm getting the nutrients I need. It's this perfect solution to have a daily pack of gummies because you can't fit the amount of nutrients Groons does into just one gummy. And my favorite part, they are vegan, nut free, gluten free, dairy free. They don't have artificial special colors or flavors, but they do have 20 plus vitamins and minerals and 60 ingredients that are nutrient dense whole foods. They even have a low or sugar free option. Groons has 6 grams of prebiotic fiber. That's more than 2 cups of broccoli. And you may even be eligible for reimbursement with HSA. FSA and Groon's ingredients are backed by over 35,000 research publications. If you're ready to try it for yourself, save up to 52% off with code cluze at groons. CO that's clues CO. This one is gonna be a twisty one today.
- [04:03]
Kaylin Moore
Really twisty. Before we dive in, can I read you a comment from last week?
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Morgan Absher
Yes. Oh my gosh. I'm really excited for this.
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Kaylin Moore
We always get such good comments. But I wanted to highlight Ellie Ray.
- [04:13]
Morgan Absher
This came from Spotify, who reached out
- [04:15]
Kaylin Moore
to us on Spotify. Yeah, Ellie wrote. Hi, Morgan and Kaylin. I just wanted to tell you something. So I'm a teacher and I teach a class called Crime Scene Investigation. This podcast has become homework for the students and they absolutely love it. They actually look forward to it. It's so nice to have a view from the cases from a mostly strict evidence only deep dive. It's hard to find really. My class wishes you both the best in hopes to hear more from y' all in the future.
- [04:39]
Morgan Absher
I love it.
- [04:40]
Kaylin Moore
So I wanted to shout out that class. That's really exciting to hear.
- [04:43]
Morgan Absher
We would also love a personal, like maybe crash course. So if you could message us on Instagram, that'd be great. But that is so, so, so cool. And there's gonna be a lot of, I feel like subtle crime scene stuff that comes up today in this episode. Yeah, really, really interesting case. We're about to get into. And I want to start it off by I don't want to give too much of a spoiler, so I'm not gonna divulge too much, but I want you guys to comment if you want this. So I reached out to a friend of mine from college. Her name is Morgan Wolf. She is now a news reporter, an anchor at a station in Minnesota called Care Levin. You're going to hear it mentioned in today's case. But Morgan is super connected to Caroline Low, who helped on this case. She also had a pretty big impact on the case of Jacob Wetterling.
- [05:35]
Kaylin Moore
Oh, wow.
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Morgan Absher
And we've been toying whether or not we present that case to you guys and get into it. So.
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Kaylin Moore
And that one's from your neck of the woods, Minnesota.
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Morgan Absher
Yeah. So you know our case today, Jodi, she has a connection to Minnesota. She's from Minnesota. So we'll get into it again. I'm trying not to spoil too much for you guys, but I've got two little pieces of homework for you guys. One, if you get through this case and you hear all about this and you would like us to interview Caroline Lowe, let us know. I've got connections thanks to my friend Morgan Wolf. And if you want us to present on Jacob Wetterlane and you want us to dive into that case again, let us know. It's one that is a bit of a heavy one and we just want to make sure that you, the listeners, want to get into it.
- [06:20]
Kaylin Moore
Yeah, absolutely. And with that, we're going to start getting into this week's case. And just a quick reminder, if you're watching this episode on YouTube, you're going to see some maps, photos, videos that will help you visualize the case. And if you're listening, you can go follow us on Luz podcast on Instagram. Everyone should follow us there. Anyways, we post a lot of behind the scenes about the episodes, but we're going to post the same stuff there as well.
- [06:42]
Morgan Absher
And just a warning before we begin, this episode does contain discussions of murder, kidnapping, stalking, sexual assault and suicide. Please, please listen with care.
- [06:53]
Kaylin Moore
So this case starts 3am on Tuesday, June 27, 1995, in Mason City, Iowa. Most people at the time are sound asleep, but not the morning news crew at KIMT tv. Down at the local station, they're hard at work, rushing to Prepare for the 6am Broadcast. And as they write scripts and they light the set, they're all glancing at the door because they're waiting for one person to arrive. And that's their anchor, 27 year old Jody Husentrut. It's pretty common for her to oversleep and be a little bit late for her 3am call time, but they always work around it. Jodi lives close, after all. She's just a five minute drive from the station. She can get there super fast. But by 4am this day, Jody still hasn't arrived. So one of the show's producer, Amy Coons, calls Jody lately about once a week, Amy's been having to wake Jody up once she's an hour late for her shift. And when Amy calls Jody that morning, she answers the phone. Jody says, I'm so sorry, I'll be in right away. But then another hour ticks by and there's no sign of her. So at 5am, Amy calls again and this time Jody doesn't pick up. It's 1995, so some of you might remember, but Amy's calling a landline, not a cell phone. Cell phones didn't really exist at that time, which means it's possible that Jody has already left her place and is on her way to the studio, hoping she'll show up any minute because again, she's only five minutes away. Amy goes back to prepping the 6am Broadcast, but as the time gets closer and closer to going live, it becomes clear that Jody is not coming. By this point, Amy's getting worried. Jody might run late a lot, but she cares about her career way too much to just blow off an entire broadcast. So Amy starts kind of getting the sense that something might be wrong. But at the moment, she's focused on one thing and that's getting someone behind the anchor desk. They have a show to put on. So when Jody doesn't arrive, she spends the next hour filling in for her. And as soon as she's done at 7am, Amy gets the next order of business. She asks a co worker to call the police and request a welfare check at Jody's apartment. So at 7:13am, a station manager makes that call. The first patrol car arrives just three minutes later. At 7.16am, they go up to her apartment and they realize that it's empty. But then they look in the parking lot and they see that Jody's red 1991 Mazda Miata with a black convertible top is sitting there. And right next to it there's a couple of items that are really concerning to them. There's a red high heeled shoe, there's a hairdryer, and there's a slightly bent car key. There's also drag marks on the wet asphalt nearby, everything. And that's when the police realize that there's probably only one explanation as to what happened. Jody left her apartment, tried to get into her car that morning, but while doing so, she was kidnapped. But before we get into where the investigation led, let's just take it back a little bit and talk about who Jody was. So Jody was born on June 5, 1968, in Long Prairie, Minnesota. She was the youngest of three girls. Jody's father, Maurice, was a World War II veteran who now worked for Kraft Foods. Her mother, Imagin, had left her job at a local telephone company to be a full time moment. Now Long Prairie is a tiny town.
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Morgan Absher
Tiny town, tiny town.
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Kaylin Moore
There were fewer than 2,500 residents when Jodi was born, and the population is still under 4,000 people to this day. It's the type of place where everyone knows everyone. And Jody always felt like she was destined for bigger things. She idolized Pat Miles, the only female anchor on the Twin Cities news, which is what Jodi grew up watching.
- [10:39]
Morgan Absher
Yeah. And if you're unfamiliar with Minnesota, the Twin Cities refers to Minneapolis and St. Paul, both really big cities in Minnesota. And St. Paul is actually the capital, but they're kind of meshed if you live there. Like, they're very distinct. But Twin Cities is what we refer to them to just be succinct, maybe
- [10:59]
Kaylin Moore
because Pat looked like Jody. They were both blondes. They both had bright blue eyes and short feathered haircuts. And from a young age, Jody dreamed of one day anchoring the Twin City news, just like Pat. And then she wanted to become a national news anchor. She had huge ambitions and basically wanted to be Barbara Walters.
- [11:19]
Morgan Absher
Yeah. A lot of her friends talk about the fact that, like, Jody wanted to be famous and she worked so hard. And her friends joke that, like, she wanted it known how hard she was working at all times. And, like, they had funny little nicknames, and Jody wanted them to call her Focus because she was focusing so much on work and becoming famous. And she was also really especially focused on trying to lose her Minnesotan accent.
- [11:48]
Kaylin Moore
Oh, yeah.
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Morgan Absher
So she could make it on the big news.
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Kaylin Moore
I heard that she was practicing not having an accent so that she could,
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Morgan Absher
I know, like, make it bigger. Watching clips of her on the news was. It was just like. It was so cute. Cause I heard my accent in her and I try to hide mine, too. It comes out sometimes. But, yeah, she was working really hard.
- [12:08]
Kaylin Moore
And, you know, she knew that the path to all of that success was not going to be Easy. She had not really a lot of connections to lean on. She's from a very, very small town and she wouldn't even have her dad for support or career advice because he sadly passed away of cancer in 1982 when Jody was just 14 years old. To have a shot at her dream job, she was going to need to have undeniable talent. And so that started with her education. Jody was a star student in high school, a student council member, member of the two time state championship winning golf team, co captain of the basketball team, and a varsity softball player. So talk about focus. Very, very determined in all of those things. She was also kind of considered the class clown. She pulled a lot of pranks while she was in school, but once she headed off to college, she stayed laser focused on her goals. She majored in mass communications at St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, Minnesota where she co anchored the campus snooze. She was such a perfectionist that she kept her co anchor in the editing room for hours, making sure every detail was right. Another tie in that we have to the Jacob Wetterling case is Jody actually interviewed Patty Wetterling for her college news show. That's Jacob Wetterling's mother. Jacob being the kid that was kidnapped in 1989. Jody was just 21 years old at the time. This was a very moving experience for Jodi, which is a little bit ominous when you think about where the story goes. In 1991, 23 year old Jody got her first real shot at working in TV. She landed a local reporting gig in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. And the next year she briefly returned to Minnesota for an anchor and reporter job in Alexandria, which was just 30 miles from her hometown. It was close enough that her family could watch her on their local stations. But Jody wasn't close to home for very long because the very next year in 1993, she gets this offer that she just can't refuse. It's a two year contract to anchor the morning news in Mason city, Iowa. Finally, 25 year old Jody would have her very own hour on the daily morning news. No co anchor, just her. The only thing was Jodi didn't necessarily see a long term future in Mason City for herself. She still wanted to become an anchor in the Twin Cities, which was about two hours away, before eventually going on to much bigger ambitions, you know, becoming the next Barbara Walters. So with her Mason City contract set to expire in 1995, she started the year interviewing with a Twin city station called Care11. But the hiring process was really slow. Meanwhile, she kept doing everything she could to make her own show the best it could be. Even if our girl did sleep through her alarm a lot of times. We've all been there.
- [14:48]
Morgan Absher
We've all been there.
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Kaylin Moore
We've all been there. And even though she was eager to leave Mason City, Jody always made time for her local fans. It didn't matter if she was in the middle of eating dinner at a restaurant or checking out at a grocery store. She always made time for the people that wanted to talk to her.
- [15:03]
Morgan Absher
Yeah, I saw a clip of her station manager kind of talking about grocery shopping for her, and it would take her two hours to grocery shop because people would recognize her and want to chat and say hi.
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Kaylin Moore
I mean, local news. You are celebrities in those communities.
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Morgan Absher
Yes, I remember.
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Kaylin Moore
I don't know if any Hartford County, Connecticut listeners are out there, but I remember watching Scott Haney in the mornings. He was the meteorologist. And like, who is it for you?
- [15:29]
Morgan Absher
Yeah. Dennis Anderson, Duluth, Minnesota. I mean, and when you think anchorman, that was Dennis, like, he has the iconic mustache now. For me, I try to watch literally care 11 when I go home because my college friend is on it.
- [15:44]
Kaylin Moore
Yeah, that's so wild. I know. Anyone listening, like, let us know who, like, your local celebrity news anchors were, because every. Everyone has it. And for this community, that was Jody. She also had the look. You would see her out in a crowd, and she just looked like a celebrity, basically. So I can totally see how it would take forever for her to even go to the grocery store.
- [16:03]
Morgan Absher
Yeah, two hours. And I hate grocery shopping, guys.
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Kaylin Moore
I know. And Jody's big sister Joanne actually thought that Jody was too friendly, and it was becoming a little bit of a problem because she did have a lot of fans. And, you know, her sister talked about how Jody was known to get these creepy calls sometimes from viewers who were a little bit too obsessed with her. Even back in the day, people were still having parasocial relationships with the people on tv. And Jodi really just thought it was part of the job. She liked having fans. She was like, you know what? Sometimes people are gonna feel a little too close for comfort, but, you know, it's just part of it. And for any other young single woman living alone, it might have been pretty scary. I would have been totally freaked out. But Jodi, you know, she was laser focused on what she wanted, and she didn't want to just always be thinking about the worst case scenario. She was a very glass half full type of person. She had even joined the optimists club. Which was a community service organization for positive thinkers, which is probably my favorite fact about her.
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Morgan Absher
That's so cool.
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Kaylin Moore
She really committed herself to their philosophy, which was, quote, think only of the best, work only for the best, and expectations only the best. Even when she was having a bad day, she tried to reset herself with gratitude. Her producer, Amy, remembers her sometimes standing up at her desk during the work day just to shout I love life. So Jodi definitely understood how lucky she was and how good she had it and how good her life was. She was respected at her job, beloved by her friends and family, and on track to achieve all of the goals that she was setting for herself. That was until June 27, 1995 when someone took her.
- [17:52]
Morgan Absher
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- [17:59]
Kaylin Moore
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- [18:17]
Morgan Absher
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- [18:34]
Kaylin Moore
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- [18:46]
Morgan Absher
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- [18:51]
Kaylin Moore
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- [19:01]
Morgan Absher
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- [19:29]
Kaylin Moore
I love home cooking. I love cooking a meal. I just don't have any time anymore. Between hosting two shows, having a newborn baby, I just really have no time. Which is why I love hellofresh, because now I can basically make a home cooked meal with a fraction of the time. I'm on their website now looking what I want to make next and I'm seeing creamy lemon garlic shrimp linguine, something I'm very truly never going to make for myself. But with Hellofresh, I can actually have these delicious meals.
- [19:54]
Morgan Absher
It's a table.
- [19:55]
Kaylin Moore
I feel like I made it myself.
- [19:56]
Morgan Absher
If you want to try it for yourself, go to hellofresh.com clues10fm now to get 10 free meals plus a free NutriBullet Ultra plus two in one compact kitchen system. A 189.99 value on your third box. Free meals applied as a discount on the first box. New subscribers only. Varies by plan Disclaimer must order the third box by May 31, 2026. So police arrive at Jody's apartment at 7:16am on June 27, 1995 to find Jody missing. And they knew, I mean from the get go, they needed to process this crime scene quickly because again, Jody's a local celebrity. It's not going to be long before locals show up and start asking questions before reporters and cameras get there. So they lock the scene down pretty quickly. And as you mentioned, police had already discovered our first clue, the parking lot crime scene. I mean, as you mentioned, Kaylin, they had already discovered three big clues. The hairdryer, the bent car key, and the one red high heeled shoe. But when detectives started looking closer at the scene itself, they really honed in on the car. There was another sign of struggle that they noticed besides that asphalt. Right. Which as you guys are watching on YouTube, you'll see a picture of the drag mark, but it's clear as if someone's heel had been dragged across. And it, it almost was like torn up in a pattern. They also noticed that the driver's side mirror was bent backwards. Have you ever ran into your car mirror?
- [21:32]
Kaylin Moore
Oh, Morgan, of course.
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Morgan Absher
Or hit a pole in a parking garage.
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Kaylin Moore
Yeah, I've hit a few poles in my day. But also I like it's almost too. It made me think of someone trying to grab onto it and pulling it
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Morgan Absher
back, pulling just something for leverage. So they noticed that that was bent backwards. And the more they dug around the scene, they also noticed a few other items on the ground. As well. They found earrings belonging to Jody, a can of hairspray, some paperwork related to her job, and they expanded their search across the whole parking lot there. I mean, there's signs of struggle on the ground. What else is there? And so crime scene analysis at the time was dust everything, collect any prints you can. And so they did that, and they actually were able to find a partial palm print on a light pole near Jody's car. But there's no way to know if it was related to the abduction or not. But they're gathering anything they can. And I will say this has been a point of contention in this case for years. I'm gonna give it. We're gonna give it a mark here, and it's gonna come up quite a bit, I think. But there was a lot of misinformation spread about this palm print. First it was on her car, next it was in her car.
- [22:45]
Kaylin Moore
Yeah.
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Morgan Absher
Then it was a bloody palm print. All of this determined to be false. This was found on a light pole near her car.
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Kaylin Moore
I mean, it could have been from
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Morgan Absher
a service worker, you know, so I'm going to. I'm going to show you a picture. I don't know if you've seen this.
- [22:59]
Kaylin Moore
Yeah, show me.
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Morgan Absher
If you're watching, you will see this again on Instagram if not. But this is the light pole, and this is her car.
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Kaylin Moore
Yeah. So it is. It's probably 12ft away from her car. It really. I mean, it could have been someone that grabbed onto it while they were walking. There's just a million reasons.
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Morgan Absher
There's a million. Yeah.
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Kaylin Moore
Someone like four other cars in the shot, too. So, like, it's clearly somewhat of a high traffic area that people walk through.
- [23:24]
Morgan Absher
Yeah. It's kind of like you almost look like you pass through this whole parking lot to get to the front door of the building.
- [23:29]
Kaylin Moore
Yeah.
- [23:29]
Morgan Absher
And the light pole is kind of on your way.
- [23:31]
Kaylin Moore
Yeah.
- [23:31]
Morgan Absher
If you were trying to fix your shoe, you might balance up against it.
- [23:34]
Kaylin Moore
Yeah.
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Morgan Absher
Carrying groceries. It's a kind of a high traffic area. So again, we don't know who this came from. Investigators also found a single strand of hair. Police have never revealed more about it or where it was even discovered, though. And at this point, they don't have a search warrant for the inside of Jody's vehicle. So investigators end up towing Jody's Mazda to a police lot until they could get a warrant to then search inside of the vehicle. By the time police were done collecting evidence, news cameras were already on the scene. I mean, we knew pretty quickly that this was going to go this way. And Jody's producer, Amy, the one who had stepped in for her that morning, was the first person to report on her disappearance during the noon broadcast that day. And soon TV stations all over the country were picking up Jody's story, all while a team of investigators were inside Jody's apartment looking for more clues. So something I think is really interesting on this case is police can actually enter a residence without a warrant under very specific, exigent circumstances. Basically, if something unusual is going on that justifies an exception in the fourth Amendment rules, or if there's a medical emergency happening inside, someone's yelling for help, they don't need a warrant, they can go in. So they did. They went into Jody's apartment. Which brings us to our second clue. Jody's apartment scene itself. Most of the details we have come from a video that was actually taken by a CBS reporter a couple of weeks later. But sources didn't really think that much had changed about the scene since police had investigated it. There were work related documents still on the kitchen table next to an open can of Pepsi. Most of her rooms are cluttered, but like, relatively tidy, especially her living room that has a nice couch, tv, VCR setup. But what investigators don't see is a sign of a struggle, which points investigators to think it's just an isolated incident that just occurred in the parking lot. But something that wasn't shown in the CBS video that investigators noted is that there was a toilet seat in the bathroom that was left up. It had police wondering if maybe she had a male visitor the night before, or maybe there was a male visitor in that apartment the morning she vanished. Unfortunately, back in 1995, DNA testing was still in its infancy. Like I've heard one of the police chiefs from Mason City talk about it. And it was basically not really used in Mason City at this time. And their main priority was fingerprinting, which they dusted everything outside of the car all over her apartment. But this is something I found really, really interesting in this case. So while they did preserve a few items, hoping to test them for DNA later, fingerprinting dust and the chemicals within it harbor bacteria. So a lot of that tiny, like trace DNA, like trace DNA that you could have gotten from the palm print can be destroyed by the fingerprinting dust.
- [26:44]
Kaylin Moore
Mm, yeah. Wow.
- [26:46]
Morgan Absher
It like kills the DNA.
- [26:48]
Kaylin Moore
I do not know that. And they probably, they also probably weren't, even when it was invented, they weren't thinking, no DNA.
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Morgan Absher
They're dusting everything, lifting prints, lifting all of this stuff, I mean, they have Jody's purse. They could potentially have trace DNA on it, but they've just dusted everything. Now, investigators do say they do have some items that they hope to send off to DNA testing, but not public if they've done that yet.
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Kaylin Moore
There's a lot that they're keeping close to the vest, which, you know, we'll talk about as the case goes on, but a lot of gaps.
- [27:26]
Morgan Absher
Yeah. And this next clue that they tried to keep is going to be a botched mark for sure. That brings us to clue number three, which is Jody's journal. Now it's getting a botched mark because this journal was leaked to papers thanks to one of the police chief's wife. She found it in their house as they were moving and decided, oh, well, I don't need this, but the paper might want it botched.
- [27:54]
Kaylin Moore
My worst nightmare, my personal journals being leaked.
- [27:57]
Morgan Absher
Jody had apparently started journaling back in January 1994, about a year and a half before she disappeared. And she was really trying to do this to promote her success. She was kind of following motivational speaker Tony Robbins, and journaling was a part of her homework. So we have her three last entries. They were made on June 11th, 13th, and 25th. They were over the two weeks before her disappearance. And they all mentioned the same person, a man named John Van cise. On the 11th, Jody wrote that John threw her an amazing birthday party at a lounge in Clear Lake, Iowa. She mentioned a keg, a huge cake, people dancing on tables. On June 13, she wrote about attending a concert with John. She also talked about buying herself a new Mazda Miata, which it turned out to be that car in the parking lot. And then there was a final entry. On June 25, just two days before she disappeared, Jody described a weekend trip with John to Iowa City, where she partied on his boat and got water skiing tips from his son, who was 21 at the time. So John was obviously very involved in Jody's life. But investigators weren't sure in what capacity. Who's John?
- [29:16]
Kaylin Moore
On the day of her disappearance, though, their main priority was finding Jody. So while detectives were reading her journal, others in the police department began this massive search effort. Canine team sniffed around the apartment complex and up and down the banks of the Winnebago river, which runs behind Jody's apartment complex. The Mason City Fire Department went up and down the river in small boats, looking for any sight of Jody in the water and on the shore. Police dug through the dumpster at Jody's apartment complex. They Interviewed her neighbors. Another team went to her workplace, the Kimt TV offices. And there they actually learned something interesting. Because of Jody's local celebrity status, one of the early theories was that an obsessed fan may have taken her, which that sent me down a whole rabbit hole of looking into other journalists and other news anchors that have also had stalkers. And as we've discussed, Jody was very willing to talk to fans. Basically, anyone who came up to her, she would have a conversation with. And so they started worrying that, you know, even if it was in a dark parking lot, Jody would have given someone time of day, and it could have gone bad. Tammy believed that Jody would have been friendly to a stranger who introduced themselves as a fan in that capacity. So detectives started going through her desk drawers looking for anything that may have pointed to her having a stalker.
- [30:41]
Morgan Absher
Yeah, I mean, they were looking for creepy notes or anything they could find, and unfortunately, they didn't find any notes or any threatening letters. But they digged more into that crazed fan theory, and they found something that was actually buried in their own files. This brings us to our fourth clue, Jody's very own police report. At 6:44pm on October 8, 1994, about nine months before her abduction, Jody had called the police to file a report. It was in regards to a man in a white pickup truck that was following her. Now, the police did take this incident very seriously. They actually provided Jody with a police escort for a while, but it seems like they weren't able to make any contact with the person following her or really see them again. And there was nothing in that report that would help investigators now find that person or find the truck to see if maybe this was the same culprit. But they did discover as they dug into this, that Jody was more rattled than she was letting on. After this incident, she had started taking self defense classes. In March of 1995. She had told her instructors there that she was being followed, and she was concerned for her safety, especially because she left for work in the early morning hours in the dark. And when police started interviewing all of Jody's close associates, another disturbing twist emerged. Two of her golf friends said that Jody had been planning to change her phone number after getting calls that she described as nasty and naughty. She did kind of downplay it, though, and, you know, told her friends, I'm not too concerned. It comes with the territory. But this conversation that she had with these golf friends took place on Monday, June 26, the day before she disappeared.
- [32:31]
Kaylin Moore
So detectives at the precinct start looking into all of this but as they're doing that, the officers in the field got an unexpected visitor at the crime scene. John Van Cise, the guy that was mentioned in Jody's last three journal entries. John was a 49 year old father, 22 years older than Jody, who worked in sales. And John was very happy to explain how he had met Jody. He used to live in her apartment complex when he first moved to Mason City after he had recently been divorced. But they didn't meet there. They actually met at a local bar.
- [33:06]
Morgan Absher
Yeah. According to friends, and the way they describe it, John kept like being at the same bars as them and was very persistent about becoming Jody's friend.
- [33:15]
Kaylin Moore
Pursuing friendship with Jody.
- [33:17]
Morgan Absher
Yeah.
- [33:18]
Kaylin Moore
As a man 22 years older. So, you know, police really take that into account.
- [33:22]
Morgan Absher
They do. And it was really interesting, I mean, hearing how he described their relationship in a lot of these interviews. I mean, he said it wasn't romantic. I looked at her like a daughter. But again, like, they hadn't known each other very long.
- [33:38]
Kaylin Moore
Yeah. Also you guys, like, when we were going through the footage from the police, the news reports, John talks so much to the officers. He's all like, he went to the police precinct to really give the full story of how he met Jody. He loved talking about her. So the police get a. Of ton, a ton of information from him.
- [33:57]
Morgan Absher
I mean, a ton of information. Even about the fact that John cared for Jody so much, even just after knowing her for a short amount of time. He named his boat after her.
- [34:09]
Kaylin Moore
Yeah. Which all of her friends thought was weird.
- [34:11]
Morgan Absher
I mean, her friends are like, this is obsessive. Like, this is scary.
- [34:15]
Kaylin Moore
Yeah. And if I, you know, if I had, when I was 25, if one of my friends was like, yeah, this guy, 22 years older than us, 47 years old, named his boat after me, I'd be like, girl, what are we doing here?
- [34:25]
Morgan Absher
I know a little bit. You know, it's hard coming from Minnesota. Like, I'm from Minnesota as well. So I think, like, there's almost this culture around boats in Minnesota. Like, you want to make friends with someone that has a boat. Like, that was literally a goal in college. Totally. Who's going to make friends with the guy that has the boat? And we can go on Lake Minnetonka this summer.
- [34:44]
Kaylin Moore
We can use the boat.
- [34:44]
Morgan Absher
Of course, I, in the same breath, I'm like, I get why Jody would want to be friends. Yes, John, he's got a boat. But why is Jon, you know what I mean? It's like there's a 22 year age gap and not romantic. I look at her like my daughter
- [35:00]
Kaylin Moore
and he's talking about her so much. And mind you, this was fall of 1994 that he's talking about. John and Joanie only knew each other for less than a year when Jody disappeared, but it was enough time for, you know, John threw her a massive birthday party in that time. And like you said, Morgan, he only knew her for a short amount of time, but he named his boat after her. He also has children. He didn't name the boat after children.
- [35:23]
Morgan Absher
21 year old son. Jody's 27.
- [35:25]
Kaylin Moore
And he named it after Jody. But there was another piece of information also that John volunteered to police. See, according to John, Jody was at his house briefly the night of June 26, just hours before she disappeared. That was after Jody left the golf event where she talked about changing her phone number, which meant that John was the last known person to see her before her abduction.
- [35:57]
Morgan Absher
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Kaylin Moore
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- [38:03]
Morgan Absher
According to John, Jody stopped by the night before to watch a video from her birthday party. Now, as investigators are trying to create a timeline. Okay, you've got John showing up now saying, I was with her last night. Other friends are coming out and giving their statements. And so they're able to kind of narrow down a timeline. So investigators believe that this was sometime after 8:24pm because that's when Jody was at home making a phone call to one of her good friends. John said it was a good night. They laughed a lot, joked about which embarrassing parts of the video they should cut out for the final take. But after police hear this story, they want to see the video. They're like, okay, prove it.
- [38:43]
Kaylin Moore
Show us.
- [38:44]
Morgan Absher
Show us the tape. Now. The whole video has never been released to the public, but a few short snippets did air on the oxygen network in February 2020 as a part of a two hour special on Jody's case. From that, you can tell that Jody didn't exaggerate in her journal entry about it being a wild party. People are packed into this fairly large sports bar. It's decorated with balloons. There's beers everywhere. People look like they've happily partaken in maybe a few of those beers. It. It looks fun.
- [39:16]
Kaylin Moore
It looks like a really good time.
- [39:18]
Morgan Absher
And in a lot of these clips, they notice, like, it doesn't seem that John is necessarily partaking in a lot of the heavy drinking. And they kind of equate that to, he's had a few run ins with drinking under the influence. He was even ordered to install a breathalyzer in his vehicle. He seems to be very concerned with where Jody is and what she's doing kind of at all times. In this video and on Oxygen, they actually had a retired FBI profiler give their take on John's behavior. And they essentially said, he looks really happy when he's interacting with Jody, but when she's dancing with other guys, he's kind of like staring across the room at her with just this stiff expression on his face. And the profiler interpreted this as jealousy. A lot of her friends will corroborate this in other videos I've watched. In a special with 48 hours, a lot of her friends say John was very controlling, domineering, wanted Jody to really be focused on him. And another thing that they note while watching this video is the ease in which John can just pick Jody up and carry her away.
- [40:25]
Kaylin Moore
Right, of course, because that's what it seems like happened outside of her car. It would have been someone who could have dragged her away from her car really easily. But here's the thing. John had an alibi, kind of. So he had another female friend named ladonna Woodford who he would take these morning walks with. She said that she called John at his house at 6am on the day of Jody's disappearance to confirm that they were going to meet up. And he picked up his phone shortly after that. At around 7am they went for their walk. That alibi doesn't make it impossible for John to have abducted Jody around 4:30 in the morning, because that's likely when Jody left her apartment in a rush to get to work. But it would have made it pretty hard. Also, Ladonna mentioned that John didn't really seem to be stressed out during the rock. There was nothing collected, nothing about his behavior that made it seem like he had just dragged a woman away from her car and potentially killed her or locked her up somewhere. Nothing raised any flags for her. So still, the police didn't feel like it was enough to rule him out as a suspect just yet. But ladonna has always stood by Jon, really. She's kind of the only one of that entire friend group that has stood by John, because all of Jody's friends think that there's something kind of weird going on with Jon. But ladonna is like, no, I know him. He's not your guy. And part of the reason that Jody's friends all started thinking something was up with John is he started seeming more off, I guess, as the investigation keeps going. So the case eventually becomes this national story. And John keeps talking to the press a lot, just talking, which I know part of me is like, well, if you're guilty, why do you keep talking? But, I mean, we've covered cases where that doesn't stop people ever. I mean, look at the Kim Wall case we covered, which, like, watch that episode if you haven't already watched it. But true sociopath older man killed Kim Wall who was a journalist, and the way he just, like, talked about it so much, and his story kept changing. It's a wild story. But while John is talking to the police, he's not really doing himself many favors. On June 29, 1995, two days after Jody went missing, John did an interview with her TV station, kimt. He struck the interviewer as abnormally upbeat, especially, you know, considering that chipper, this girl he considered a best friend of his, was missing. Then at the beginning of July, with. In one week of Jody's abduction, John spoke with CBS's 48 Hours. The news crew interviewed him alongside one of Jody's closest friends, Ani Cruz. And the three of them used to water ski together. And when they spoke to John, he referred to Jody in the past tense, saying, quote, she wouldn't want us to sit around home and cry and sob. She'd want us to be out having fun, because that was her. And Ani quickly corrected him, saying, is her. That is her. What do you mean, was her?
- [43:23]
Morgan Absher
It was like, almost a slip.
- [43:25]
Kaylin Moore
We don't know that she's dead. Which, you know, that is one thing that police look for when they're interviewing people is, whose slip tense are you using?
- [43:32]
Morgan Absher
Yeah, and it was talking about the person. Every time he was talking about her, it was very, very past tense. And again, like, 48 hours was quick on the scene. We're going to put a clip in here for you guys so you can see. But they do have this interview going out on the boat, and Sean's, you know, bringing a cooler down the dock, and he's chipper, and he's like, jody wouldn't want us to be sad. She would want us to be, you know, having fun, because that was her. And her friend immediately is like, is her. Is her.
- [44:02]
Kaylin Moore
I mean, this is only a week after she went missing. It kind of makes me think about Savannah Guthrie's mom, about Nancy Guthrie, because we're watching this play out in real time right now, and you see her family and the way they speak about her, and they still just have so much hope, even though it feels more dire every day.
- [44:19]
Morgan Absher
Yeah.
- [44:19]
Kaylin Moore
So it's just interesting to hear how different people talk about this stuff.
- [44:24]
Morgan Absher
I know.
- [44:24]
Kaylin Moore
Later in the same 48 hours interview, reporters filmed John meeting with Jody's older sister, Joanne, who lived about 250 miles away in Sauk center, Minnesota. With cameras rolling, he suddenly warned Joanne that she might find items of his clothing at Jody's apartment. He said that if Jody liked one of his shirts, he would give it to her. Which is maybe deemed weird because John still claimed at the time that there was nothing romantic going on between him and Jody. But now he was trying to get ahead of it. He was explaining in advance why his shirts were at her apartment without necessarily being asked about it. And watching those parts of the interview back, it does kind of feel. When I watched it, I read it as like, he wanted everyone to know how close they were. So he was happy to talk about, you know, she loved my clothes so much, and that's why they're all over her closet. Not necessarily like, yeah, it might make me feel guilty. I'm just trying to get myself.
- [45:17]
Morgan Absher
It wasn't me, really.
- [45:18]
Kaylin Moore
Everything he said about her was like, look at how close. Look at how much she cared about me and loved me and how close we were.
- [45:24]
Morgan Absher
Yeah. And, I mean. I mean, a lot of Jody's friends talk about it. Jody really elevated John. John didn't have a lot of friends. The friends he made in the social circle he had was because Jody brought him into it Again, I think that's why he continues to bring this up where it's like, my life changed so much because of Jody. So much so I named my boat after her. And here's how close we are. I give her. I'll give her the shirt off my back. And I think he kept doing that, but it can be interpreted so many different ways.
- [45:54]
Kaylin Moore
Yeah. So that same July, John told the Mason City newspaper, the Global Gazette, that he'd passed a polygraph test shortly after Jody disappeared. And the police later confirmed that he was telling the truth. But they were not happy about him speaking to the media regarding their investigation. Afterwards, a police spokesman reprimanded him, saying that he could be putting Jody in danger by giving out information that the police hadn't intentionally released to the press yet. And around this point, John realized that, yes, indeed, he was talking way too much. Every time he tried to clear his name publicly, it just made him look worse. And he started refusing to talk about the case with reporters or with anyone else, really, other than the police.
- [46:38]
Morgan Absher
Despite how John might have handled some of those early interviews, there was some evidence that pointed away from him. Shortly after Jody's disappearance, police spoke to a few of her neighbors, and some of them ended up coming forward and saying that they heard a scream that could have been coming from the parking lot around 4:30am however, none of them had called the police to report it at that time. And there was also multiple reports of our sixth clue. A white van. This van was seen near Jody's apartment complex the morning of her disappearance. Some witnesses described it as as a mid-1980s Ford Econo line. One person reported seeing the white van actually parked in the lot where Jody was abducted just before 4am and nobody who lived in the apartment complex even drove a van like that. Unfortunately, none of the witnesses got a license plate. I mean, it's 4:00am like, who's. Okay, it's a van.
- [47:37]
Kaylin Moore
Nothing.
- [47:37]
Morgan Absher
Nothing's happened.
- [47:38]
Kaylin Moore
And it's dark.
- [47:39]
Morgan Absher
It's dark. But the make of the car was interesting in itself. This Ford Econoline is a work van. A lot of plumbers and electricians drive them. So police did announce that they were looking for a van fitting this description. And the tips started rolling in, but none of them seemed to point to the right van. This tip, though, did kind of help investigators rule out John. He didn't drive a vehicle like that. He didn't even have access to one.
- [48:07]
Kaylin Moore
So at this point, the police are really getting nowhere looking for Jody. On July 3, 1995, six days after she disappeared, they ended their search for her less than a week.
- [48:17]
Morgan Absher
Six days.
- [48:18]
Kaylin Moore
Six days. I. Is that a botch?
- [48:21]
Morgan Absher
It's, it's borderline really. It's six days.
- [48:24]
Kaylin Moore
I mean, if they have nothing to go forward with, like, where do you even go from that? But it's incredibly short. I mean, we've covered cases where they don't even start their investigation until after six days.
- [48:34]
Morgan Absher
I know they did continue to work
- [48:36]
Kaylin Moore
on the case, but whatever they were doing down at police headquarters, they were keeping it pretty quiet. Months passed with no known progress. By September, Jody's family decided that they were going to hire private investigators. They didn't necessarily gather any meaningful new clues, though. Hundreds of people were interviewed over the coming months without any movement. About two years after Jody's disappearance, police had to accept that they probably were not going to find a body or conclusive forensic evidence anytime soon. So around 1997, they tried to indict John Van Cuys with the very little circumstantial evidence that they had. Prosecutors secretly convened a grand jury. Ladonna Woodford, the walking buddy that was John's alibi, testified for five hours. But ultimately, the grand jury chose to not indict John. There just wasn't enough there. So investigators went back to the drawing board and tried their best to stay open minded, despite their suspicions about John. Between the PIs and the police, over 1,000 people were eventually interviewed. But as far as we know, they never uncovered a single shred of hard evidence.
- [49:47]
Morgan Absher
Which is why our next clue is very interesting. This clue wasn't discovered by any of the PIs or government investigators. It actually came in 1998 from someone in Jody's profession. It came from a TV journalist named Caroline Lowe of WCCO TV, the CBS affiliate for the twin cities area. Caroline knew Jody had always wanted to work in news in the twin cities. So Caroline really thought a lot about Jody, Especially when she covered local crime stories she was a part of, like, this investigative team that really was on the ground breaking these crime stories. And there was a string of crimes that occurred in Minneapolis that made her wonder if there was a connection to Jody's case. Which brings us to our seventh clue, the Tony Jackson theory. In January 1998, almost three years after Jody vanished, Caroline was covering a story about a serial sexual predator named Tony Jackson. He had been arrested the previous year in the Twin cities area, about two hours away from Mason City, Iowa, for assaulting four women in just 18 days.
- [50:56]
Kaylin Moore
Whoa.
- [50:57]
Morgan Absher
He was 24 by that time. He would have been around 21 when Jody went missing. And when Caroline and her team do a background check on Tony and they really start digging, she learned that Tony used to live less than a mile from Jody's apartment and just two blocks from her workplace at the news station.
- [51:18]
Kaylin Moore
So maybe would have known her schedule. Very easy to case her.
- [51:22]
Morgan Absher
Yeah. Yeah. And during his time in Iowa, Tony also briefly studied broadcast journalism, and he hosted a couple of student talk shows at a local community college. Caroline put all of these pieces together and kind of came up with this theory. Maybe Tony started watching the local morning news because he was studying to be a newscaster himself, and that's how he became obsessed with Jody. He could have been the one following her and placing those weird phone calls to her. He could have very easily learned her work schedule. He could have watched her bring home that new red Miata. And this also tracked with Tony's behavior. He had actually stalked some of his victims before he sexually assaulted them. And he planned out his crimes in enough detail that he would carry a kit with handcuffs, duct tape, a gun. And when Caroline started looking further into Tony, she found that he had a history of intimate partner violence and explosive rage. And this was according to an ex girlfriend. And that particular ex happened to look a lot like Jody. If you're watching on YouTube, you're going to see a picture. And it's. It's also on our clues podcast, Instagram. But looking at the two of them side by side, it is eerie how
- [52:38]
Kaylin Moore
similar they look definitely.
- [52:41]
Morgan Absher
And also this ex girlfriend said that she left Tony on June 22, 1995. This was five days before Jody went missing.
- [52:53]
Kaylin Moore
And I think we talked about it in another episode, too. I think this. It was the Golden State Killer, where him breaking up with his fiance or breaking up Bonnie, leaving him kind of triggered him to go into this explosive rage. And maybe there is something about being broken up with that just triggers people.
- [53:11]
Morgan Absher
So In April of 1998, Tony was sentenced to 15 years in prison for criminal sexual conduct. The next year, the sentence was extended to life in prison for serial SA after another conviction. Now, Caroline Lowe used her anchor job to let the public know all about her theory on him. She actually reported multiple times on Tony's potential connection to Jody. She even went and interviewed experts who believed his known crimes probably weren't his first instances of sa. And Caroline also learned that Tony didn't have an alibi for the time of Jody's disappearance. And she dug deep, like she got his stamps from work, where he worked at a meat processing facility, and he was not there during the time that Jody was taken.
- [53:59]
Kaylin Moore
Oh, my God.
- [54:00]
Morgan Absher
Caroline even found a former cellmate of Tony's named Dennis Goff, who claimed that Tony had written a rap where he basically confessed to killing Jody. Now, this rap mentions Tiffin, which is a small town in Iowa. It's about 160 miles from Mason City, and there's a grain silo in Tiffin near a cemetery. All of this is kind of lining up for Caroline, so she decides to get a team together and go and actually check it out. She invites law enforcement officers with cadaver dogs to accompany her. And two of the three dogs alerted to some areas at the silo, which were later tested by the state crime lab. However, no forensic evidence was found. Police did get a hold of the car Tony briefly owned, but it didn't match the white van, and they didn't get any new evidence from it. I will say, though, there were multiple reports from people that they more so noticed a smaller, greenish car. And there was someone that actually reported it to police because it had sat near Jody's apartment the whole week leading up to her disappearance. And they're like, what is this car doing here? It doesn't belong to a resident. This is odd. They reported it to police. The day Jody goes missing, that car is never seen again after sitting there for a week. So a lot of people are like, maybe the van is a red herring in this. Maybe we're looking for the wrong car.
- [55:18]
Kaylin Moore
Maybe we're tunnel visioned on this car. That has nothing to do with it.
- [55:21]
Morgan Absher
Exactly.
- [55:22]
Kaylin Moore
And that happens a lot all the
- [55:23]
Morgan Absher
time in these cases. I will say Tony was questioned about whether he ever met Jody. He denied ever meeting her or having anything to do with her disappearance. However, in one source I did find that a friend who went to a bar with Toni did recall her being there the same night they were there and Tony saying, oh yeah, I've seen her out at the bar before. Still, the Mason City Police Department spent months looking into Tony as a person of interest. They gave him a polygraph test, interviewed him multiple times. They even dug up the silo looking for any evidence. It all went nowhere. On May 5, 1999, almost four years after Jody's disappearance, police announced that they had ruled out Tony as a potential suspect.
- [56:14]
Kaylin Moore
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and coverage match limited by state law in May of 1999, nearly four years after 27 year old Jody Husentrute vanished, her case had completely stalled again. And two years after that, on May 14, 2001, Jody's family made the heart wrenching decision to legally declare her dead. And the reason being that they needed a death certificate so they could settle her estate. By this point, there wasn't much investigative work happening in Jody's case, even though it was technically still open. And this bothered two of her fellow journalists, Gary Peterson and Josh Benson. So they decided they were going to take matters into their own hands and they created a website in 2003 called findjody.com which later became a non profit dedicated to keeping the search for Jody alive. Caroline Lowe, who publicized the Tony Jackson theory, joined the Fine Jody team, as did a couple other reporters and some former police officers and investigators. Over the years, they've collected and explained as much information in the case as possible, and we actually did use that website pretty heavily when we were researching for this episode.
- [59:23]
Morgan Absher
Yeah, it is a very in depth website. They've even started a podcast now on YouTube answering people's questions directly. But they were among the first to know about another tip, one that wasn't shared with the public until years later. Which brings us to our eighth clue, a new suspect in the case. In 2007, 12 years after Jody disappeared, one of the Fine Jody founders, Gary Peterson, spoke to Jody's best childhood friend, Patti Niemeyer. She claims that she was suspicious that someone very close to her had done something to Jody. Patty's ex husband, Brad Millerburned. Patty and Brad got divorced on June 23, 1995, just four days before Jody vanished. And get this. Guess what kind of car Brad drove? A Ford Econoline van, just like the one potentially seen that morning at Jody's apartment. Now, Patty says that Brad did not know Jody very well. But he had admitted to taking Jody out for dinner in 1994 during one of his visits to Mason City. And apparently he had called Jodi just weeks before her abduction. But that's not the weirdest part for Patty. Patty tells Gary again, the founder of Find Jody, that her ex husband Brad, had called her 10 years after their divorce out of the blue. And he goes, quote, do you realize what day it is? And Patty is kind of confused. She's like, no, what day is it? Like, again, we don't talk. We're not close anymore. Like, why are you calling me? And he goes, it's the 10 year anniversary of Jody's disappearance. And she just says, like, it did not sit right with her.
- [61:07]
Kaylin Moore
It's so out of the blue.
- [61:09]
Morgan Absher
So out of the blue. So weird. They weren't close. And she was like, something's off. Something is wrong with this. So as Patty goes to police with this, she's like, I know my ex husband drove the same van. He called me out of the blue. This is kind of weird. So police actually show Patty a composite sketch of someone that a witness had seen. A suspicious man with facial hair outside of Jody's apartment complex. This sketch had never been released to the public, but when Patty saw it, she thought it did look enough like Brad that it gave her the goosebumps. Now, police did interview Brad at one point. He took a polygraph test, gave a DNA sample, though the results of those have never been made public. Police also searched land associated with Brad in Winstead, Minnesota, for human remains, and they found nothing. So ultimately, another dead end. And I will say there's a lot of speculation online about why they finally searched this farm that was associated with Brad. And a lot of people feel like this was kind of a missed, like, thing on their part. They knew about Brad, they knew about this connection, and it took years to search it. And it was kind of spurred by the development of the land. I think they were building townhomes or something in this area. And so they're like, oh, well, okay, now you'll search it. But I will say, like, we're adding a botched mark here. We're now up to three because they have this sketch that they've never released. Here we are.
- [62:45]
Kaylin Moore
Yeah.
- [62:46]
Morgan Absher
30 years later. Now, why are we still holding on to this sketch?
- [62:50]
Kaylin Moore
Well, also, they collected DNA from Brad. They haven't released any findings on that, but that suggests that they have DNA of the suspect. But they haven't really come forward and said, yes, we have DNA of the
- [63:02]
Morgan Absher
Suspect also, why are you not being like, yeah, we ruled Brad out thanks to DNA analysis.
- [63:06]
Kaylin Moore
They're not saying anything because it's still an open investigation to them, even though there hasn't really been many updates, at least not that they're saying publicly, but they are. They keep a lot close to the vest.
- [63:16]
Morgan Absher
I will say, I really appreciated the 48 hours interviewer that was speaking with one of the police chiefs, who I think has now since retired. But the interviewer was like, do you even feel there's a cat to be let out of the bag? Kind of like putting him on the spot of like, why are you still holding on to all this? Yes, it hasn't worked.
- [63:34]
Kaylin Moore
The. The way that the officer was talking about it was, we have a direction to go in, but no actual suspects or anything like it, which doesn't really make any sense, but apparently there's still stuff that they're doing on the case.
- [63:47]
Morgan Absher
Yeah, I honestly. I thought he looked kind of like a deer in headlights. He's like. He goes, yeah, well, no, there's not a cat to be let out of the bag. We're still gonna not release anything.
- [63:56]
Kaylin Moore
Yeah. So. In 2008, 13 years after Jody was abducted, the Mason City newspaper, the Globe Gazette, received an unmarked envelope, and it contained a copy of Jody's journal. Up until that point, only the police knew about her journal. It was never previously revealed to the public. And, you know, that is pretty much where the case stands now. It's still open. There's apparently lots of people of interest and lots of circumstantial evidence, but no forensic evidence, at least that we know of. No confessions and no body. Police continue to actively look for new clues. As recently as 2017, they were still looking into John Van Zeiss. That year, John was summoned back to Iowa, where he no longer lived because he had been subpoenaed to testify before another grand jury in Jody's case. And once again, they did not indict him. They decided there wasn't enough there. John continued to deny any involvement in Jody's abduction. And he said he provided DNA samples, fingerprints, and palm prints again after already giving them during the initial investigation. If there is one thing about John, he has been very cooperative investigation. He has given them everything, really making it seem like there's nothing to hide. And that was the last time he was publicly involved with the case. John later developed Alzheimer's, and that took his life in 2024. Detectives also returned to Winstead, Minnesota, in October 2024 to search the land associated With Brad Miller burned again, however, that search came up empty as well. A year later, in November 2025, they returned with a canine team to scan a different area in Winstead where a building had been recently demolished. But still there was no new evidence. Though the case did remain in the public eye. In 2025, Hulu released a three part documentary on Jody's disappearance called her last broadcast the Abduction of Jody Husentrute. There was a surge of interest in Jodi's case after that documentary aired, which led to a private investigator, Steve Ridge, to double the reward in her case to $100,000, but only until June of 2026. So there is a time stamp on it.
- [66:05]
Morgan Absher
It's coming back very soon.
- [66:06]
Kaylin Moore
Steve believes that there is someone out there who hasn't told the police what they know about Jody's disappearance. He's hoping the deadline will get them to come forward. If so, maybe that can finally lead to some closure for Jody's family.
- [66:22]
Morgan Absher
And where does that leave us now? A lot of loose ends. Steve Ridge comes up a lot and I've watched quite a few interviews with him and he is like steadfast on. I've gone through 20 some odd suspects and I've got four left on my list. And of those four I know one of them did it. Like he is steadfast that he knows exactly who it is. And he looked a lot into John Van Cuis. He actually went to Arizona, interviewed John. There was a court filing where they actually subpoenaed GPS tracking on John's vehicles and not the vehicles he even had at the time of Jody's disappearance, vehicles he was driving more recently. And Steve Ridge was going and like trying to get them unsealed and going against Iowa court system. And Jody's family actually came out and was like, please don't. Like if this could potentially hurt the investigation, like please don't. So he then backed off. But he spent I think over 10 or 11 hours interviewing John, who again, very cooperative. Yeah, but there's some other people that whether they're on his list or just kind of coming up, people think they might know who it is. And one of those people is a suspected serial killer named Christopher Revac. In 2009, Christopher was arrested in Douglas County, Missouri for killing a 36 year old woman named Renee Williams back in 2007. And police have suspected him of at least three other murders across two states. Now, investigators believe that some or all of those killings were sexually motivated. Before he could be tried in even one case, though, Christopher did die by suicide in prison in July of 2009. He was 36 at the time, which makes him 22 when Jody was abducted. And I know you guys are all probably wondering, like, what is his connection to Mason City? So Christopher's ex wife briefly lived in Mason City after their divorce. In a weird coincidence, she actually lived in the same duplex as John Van Cise. Police initially thought that they might have lived there at the same time, but they later learned that Christopher's ex moved out before John even moved in. That's really the only connection between Christopher and Jody's case, though. Police can't even prove he ever visited Mason City himself, since he and his wife were already divorced and not on good terms by the time that Jodi vanished. We also have that unknown stalker theory, Something Steve Ridge brings up a lot is a secret boyfriend. And this isn't really talked about in other sources quite a bit. It's really coming from Steve Ridge, who says that Jodi was talking to someone for the 10 days before her disappearance. They talked every day. They went on a ski trip together. He apparently interviewed him, said, nice guy, he saw a future with Jody. He lived out of state. No connection, I think. I don't think he's on my list, but other than that, you know. So he does think that whoever did it did it out of jealousy or was very, you know, obsessed with her and saw her with John or saw her with this new boyfriend and acted on it. I hope we get answers on this one. For me, going through the research in this case and, like, seeing how everything went, it honestly reminds me a lot of our case. Jeannie Childs, who, for years, the case was cold, and then new DNA technology connected it to Jerry Westrom, who is this seemingly normal hockey dad. Yeah, there was no. No connection.
- [70:09]
Kaylin Moore
They would have never found him if not for the DNA. I don't know if you've been following the cold cases that have been solved this year so far, but they've said that we're in the golden era of solving cold cases right now because of all the technology we've had. They've just made such incredible, incredible leaps since 2023 when it comes to closing cold cases. I was just reading about this one machine. I think it's called the vmac. The amount of DNA that it needs to build a whole profile on someone is so small.
- [70:35]
Morgan Absher
Minuscule.
- [70:35]
Kaylin Moore
Minuscule, minuscule.
- [70:37]
Morgan Absher
I love that.
- [70:38]
Kaylin Moore
So, you know, it gives me hope that if they actually do have DNA from this suspect, they'll be able to find out who it is. Part of me does think it's not even anyone on our radar, that it was just an obsessed fan who, you know, and if that was the case, she could still be alive. If it was someone who was obsessed with her and wanted to take her for whatever. You just never know.
- [70:58]
Morgan Absher
You never know. And, I mean, we've talked about it on other episodes where people have been missing for 70 years and they are able to end up coming home. Like 70 years.
- [71:08]
Kaylin Moore
Yeah.
- [71:09]
Morgan Absher
So I think that's one thing her family has really held on to, is, is hope, I think.
- [71:14]
Kaylin Moore
Yeah.
- [71:14]
Morgan Absher
You know, findjodi.com like, it's just, it's putting information out there, and hopefully investigators will maybe release a composite sketch or maybe release something to give the public more to go on because the public has been supportive from organizing searches. I mean, her friend Ani organized a search herself, went through the woods, the shores of the river, the whole town still, if you drive through, still has yellow ribbons on trees and polls, telephone polls. Like, people still are trying, so they need something to go on. So hopefully we can get somewhere.
- [71:54]
Kaylin Moore
Jody has been missing for more than 30 years now. A lot of people who knew her or who worked on the case have died and as have two persons of interest. But her family is missing her, celebrating her life, and they're still hoping for closure, especially her beloved niece Kristen, who was just 11 years old when Jody disappeared. She's now in her 40s. And Kristin recently started a Facebook page called Jody's hope to share family photos and memories in hopes that they'll spark new tips. As we mentioned at the time of this recording, the case remains open. It's still active. So if you know anything that might help find Jody and bring closure to her family, you can call in a tip to the Mason City Police Department at 641-421-3636. Emailed tips can go to the Iowa Department of Criminal Investigation, DCI addressed to special agent Ryan Herman at R. Hermanps State IA US and if you'd rather contact the nonprofit find Jody rather than law enforcement, you can call 641-999-1109 or email team find Jody. And with that, let's talk about the highlighted missing person of the week.
- [73:13]
Morgan Absher
The missing person we're highlighting this week is Kaylee Goodwin. Kaylee was reported missing on April 22, 2024, after her mother received a call from an unknown male demanding money via Cash App. Kaylee Goodwin is described as 29 years old, 120 pounds, 55ft, 4 inches. She has brown hair, blue eyes, her hair is long. Detectives have been working tirelessly to locate Kaylee, who was last seen on April 21, 2024 in Houston, Texas. She was last seen at approximately 7pm leaving an apartment on the 3100 block of Decker in a vehicle with an unknown male. Through their investigation, detectives were able to identify the vehicle that was tied to the Cash App account and traced it to 39 year old Quan Flowers. With the help of the Houston Police Department, Flowers was located and arrested. Quan Sergio Flowers is 39 and he was already jailed in Houston and charged with murder in the shooting death of a 24 year old named Megan Rouse. When Kaylee's mother, Casey Richardson got a call from the men demanding 600 via cash app, she said she could hear her daughter crying for help and saying she was getting beat up. Baytown Police Chief John Stringer has urged anyone with information, no matter how insignificant it might seem, to come forward. Tips can be reported to Baytown Crime Stoppers at 281-427-8477 or to the Crime Stopper's website. Stringer has said that your tip could be the key to finding her.
- [74:45]
Kaylin Moore
And that is all we have for this episode of Clues. Now we want to hear from you guys, your thoughts, theories, feedback, all of that stuff is what makes this community so special.
- [74:54]
Morgan Absher
Yeah, we gave you guys a lot to comment on. Again, let us know all your thoughts. Let us know if you'd like us to try to interview Caroline and again, if you want us to tackle the Jacob Wetterling case. And for our audio listeners, we ended this one with three marks on the botched board.
- [75:10]
Kaylin Moore
But I'm curious what you guys got when you were doing your own tallies.
- [75:13]
Morgan Absher
What did you get at home at Crime House we really value value your support. So share your thoughts on social media and remember to rate, review and follow clues to help others discover the show. Thanks guys. Bye bye. When it's time to scale your business, it's time for Shopify. Get everything you need to grow the way you want. Like all the way. Stack more sales with the best converting checkout on the planet. Track your cha chings from every channel right in one spot and turn real time reporting into big time opportunities. Take your business to a whole new level. Switch to Shopify. Start your free trial today.
- [75:57]
Kaylin Moore
When someone goes missing, the headlines focus on what happened. But the truth often lives in the smallest details.
- [76:05]
Morgan Absher
I'm Sarah Turney. After my sister disappeared, I learned how
- [76:09]
Kaylin Moore
those final hours, the last conversations, the
- [76:12]
Morgan Absher
last decisions can haunt families forever.
- [76:15]
Kaylin Moore
And I'm Courtney Nicole. After seeing crime impact my own family, I've learned how overlooked moments, missed red flags, and unanswered questions can change everything. Together, we're bringing those lived experiences into the work.
- [76:29]
Morgan Absher
This is the Final Hours, a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios.
- [76:34]
Kaylin Moore
A podcast that puts the the moments before a disappearance under a microscope. Listen to and follow the Final Hours wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday.