The Suspicious Disappearance of Jodi Huisentruit
The disappearance of a beloved news anchor remains unsolved to this day; some claim that the authorities covered up what happened. There is a $25,000 reward for the location of Jodi’s remains.
On June 5th 1968, in Long Prairie, Minnesota, the family of Maurice and Imogene Huisentruit grew with the birth of their youngest daughter Jodi. In high school, Jodi found a love for golfing and was considered a promising talent; her team won back-to-back state Class A tournaments in 1985 and 86.
After high school, Jodi went to St. Cloud State University, studying mass communications and speech communication; she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1990. Her first job was with Northwest Airlines, but her career in the news began with CBS affiliate KGAN in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She would work as the Iowa City bureau chief for a little while before moving back to Minnesota for a job with ABC affiliate KSAX in Alexandria.
Her final job came in 1993 when she returned to Iowa to work as a television news anchor at CBS affiliate KIMT in Mason City.
On June 26th 1995, Jodi and her friends had just returned from a waterskiing trip in Iowa City. It was around 9 am when Jodi attended the annual Mason City Chamber of Commerce golf tournament fundraiser. She and the rest of her golf team briefly played at the Highland Park Golf Course until they were rained out; they went to socialize at the clubhouse.
Around mid-afternoon, Jodi headed home to change into dry clothes before attending an awards dinner at the Mason City Country Club. During dinner, Jodi told her friends about her annoyance towards the random phone calls she had been getting; she planned on changing her phone number to stop them.
By 8 pm, Jodi left the dinner, calling her friend in Mississippi while travelling back home; the friend’s husband later described Jodi as sounding cheerful. After this, the rest of her Monday is unclear, but a friend, John Vansice, told police that Jodi went to his home that evening. He showed her the videotape he had taken of her surprise 27th birthday that he had hosted earlier in the month. This wasn’t confirmed.
(EDIT: I made a small error here. Jodi returned home and then called her friend; through phone records, police were able to figure out the time and location the phone call was made.)
The following morning, around 3 am on June 27th, Jodi wasn’t at work like she was meant to be. When an hour passed and Jodi still wasn’t at work, producer Amy Kuns called her. Thankfully, Jodi was alright; she had simply overslept and would immediately make the five-minute drive from her Keys apartment. Despite her promise of being there shortly, Jodi didn’t show. 5 am passed, then 6 am came, and Amy had to anchor the hour-long newscast Daybreak for Jodi. Once that was over and Jodi still wasn’t at work, staff contacted Mason City Police, requesting them to perform a welfare check.
Around 7:15 am, police arrived outside the apartment, and right away, it was clear something terrible happened. Jodi’s new red Mazda Miata was still parked outside the building. Besides, it showed unmistakable signs of a struggle; there were drag marks on the pavement, Jodi’s car key was bent, and her high heels, blow dryer and earrings lay scattered on the ground. Investigators even found a partial palm print on the vehicle.
Nothing looked out of place inside her apartment, leaving officers to believe that whoever attacked Jodi did so while she was unlocking her car door.
Interviews from neighbours revealed several of them had heard a woman scream around 4:30 am. They didn’t think much of it and decided against calling the police. A person that lived up the street from the apartment complex reported seeing a light-coloured, mid-80s Ford Econoline van parked in the lot with lights on and engine running as he drove by at 4:30 am.
John Vansice arrived at the crime scene, telling the police about the evening before when Jodi went to his home and the previous weekend of water skiing in Iowa City that he, Jodi and a few other friends went on.
Search teams were assembled within hours of the initial call, and the immediate area was searched. That would expand to a further two miles. They found nothing. Jodi had vanished from beside her car in the early morning hours without any solid evidence left behind.
In September, the Huisentruit family hired a private investigator from McCarthy & Associates Investigative Services, Inc. (MAIS) in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They would enlist the help of Omaha, Nebraska-based private investigator Doug Jasa’s help. McCarthy and Jasa appeared on national TV shows, including America’s Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries.
In November, McCarthy, Jasa and Jodi’s family travelled to Los Angeles, California, to meet with three prominent psychics. The meeting was televised and served as the pilot episode for Psychic Detectives.
All of the shows generated leads, but none would result in any concrete evidence or a suspect.
In May 1996, around 100 volunteers searched part of Cerro Gordo County, leaving behind flags that they deemed suspicious. Law enforcement then went through even flagged sites and searched the area; once again, no solid evidence was located. Throughout the entire investigation, police and private investigators conducted over 100 interviews, but none resulted in a single piece of conclusive evidence.
After six years of nothing, Jodi Huisentruit was legally declared dead in May 2001.
The FindJodi.com site was created in 2003 by Minnesotan TV journalists John Benson and Gary Peterson; their goal was to keep Jodi’s case in the spotlight and serve as a clearing house for tips.
Their goal was aided by the arrival of the tenth anniversary of Jodi’s disappearance; the media began re-circulating the case. In one of the interviews she did at this point in time, Jodi’s mother said she believed her daughter was at the bottom of a lake near her home. Similarly, Jodi’s cousins revealed their theory that Jodi was being stalked by a man who kidnapped her.
The next event in the case came in early June 2008 when 84 photocopied pages of Jodi’s personal journal were mailed to local papers. Mason City Globe Gazette received the large envelope with no return address and a June 4th postmark from Waterloo. The original diary is in possession of law enforcement and had been since the beginning of the case meaning someone within the force had leaked the pages. Just days after Mason City Police revealed that the sender came forward, she was the wife of a former Mason City police chief. He had taken a copy of the journal home when he had left the office. No motive was given as to why the wife sent the documents.
In December 2016, an opinion piece was written for The N’West Iowa Review; the author was a retiring state representative John Kooiker of Sioux County. He described his experience with the case as a member of the Iowa State House Public Safety Committee; in the piece, he suggested that Jodi’s disappearance was subjected to a cover-up by Mason City officials. Not much else followed this, but in the following March, the first search warrant in the case was issued. The warrant was for the GPS of two vehicles owned by John Vansice.
As of 2020, the Mason City Police Department and the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation are still investigating Jodi’s disappearance. FindJodi.com also launched a podcast by the same name to try and garner a new audience to share the information with.
In 2022, ABC’s 20/20 debuted a new special, Gone at Dawn; it overviewed Jodi’s disappearance and re-interviewed those close to her. This was the third time ABC’s 20/20 included Jodi’s disappearance on the show.
With permission of JoAnn Nathe, Jodi’s sister, private investigator Steve Ridge has set a reward of $25,000 for any information that leads to the recovery of Jodi’s remains; the reward does not require an arrest or conviction. This came in February 2023 and is still active to this day. Ridge has asked any information be directed to the Mason City Police Department at 641–421–3636.
