June 27, 2022 represented 27 years since KIMT-TV anchor Jodi Huisentruit was abducted outside her apartment complex in Mason City, Iowa.
Her case remains open and unsolved. Her family and friends are still seeking answers.
On this episode of the FindJodi Podcast, Caroline Lowe revisits a previous web post and provides an in-depth overview of the case.
Listen to “27 Facts” on Spreaker.
It will be 27 years on June 27th since 27-year-old Jodi Huisentruit disappeared without a trace, on her way to anchor the morning news at KIMT-TV in Mason City, Iowa, a city in the northern part of the state with a population of about 29,000. It’s located about a half hour or so south of the Iowa/Minnesota state line.
For almost 27 years, Jodi’s family and friends have been left with no answers or accountability for her abduction in the parking lot just twelve steps from her Key Apartment building.
FindJodi was cofounded in 2003 by Josh Benson and Gary Peterson. Our non-profit team remains committed to keeping Jodi’s case from fading from the public eye, and we will continue our search for what happened to the promising young news anchor from Long Prairie, Minnesota.
Among our efforts to help solve the case, we put up a new billboard in Mason City last summer, with a new message and photo of Jodi. We have also just finished our 29th FindJodi podcast.
As part of our mission to help produce the most accurate public record possible regarding the Huisentruit investigation, we have compiled a list of 27 facts about the unsolved mystery. We will continue to update this post as more information becomes available.
Before we get to the facts of the case, here is some background about Jodi’s life before she became part of one of Iowa’s most enduring mysteries.
1968-1995
Jodi was born on June 5, 1968, in tiny Long Prairie, Minnesota, where she grew up. Jodi was the youngest of three daughters of Maurice and Imogene “Jane” Huisentruit. Jodi’s dad died when she was just thirteen and her mom passed away in 2014, never knowing what happened Jodi.
Jodi excelled in sports in high school, especially at golf. She was a part of her school’s team when it twice won the state high school championship. Jodi also played basketball, where she was co-captain of her team, and she also played softball. Jodi’s passion for golf continued as she grew older, and she was part of a golf tournament in Mason City the day before she disappeared.
After high school, Jodi majored in mass communications and speech communication at St. Cloud State University, where she coanchored the campus news shows with Joe Vigil. While in college, Jodi also studied abroad for six months in England.
After Jodi graduated in 1990, she worked briefly as a Northwest Airlines flight attendant, prior to pursuing a career as a television news journalist. Friends remember her saying she decided she wanted to be on the air, not in the air.
Jodi’s ambitions included someday anchoring a network morning news show. To pursue her dream job, Jodi began her broadcast career on a typical tv news job track, starting in small television news markets, working for low pay and going to work at three in the morning at her last position as a morning anchor.
Jodi’s first reporting job was at KGAN-TV in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1991, assigned to their Iowa City bureau. That’s where she reconnected with her college co-anchor, Joe Vigil, who was also working in another KGAN bureau.
Jodi’s next stop was at KSAX-TV in 1992 in Alexandria, Minnesota. She worked as a reporter and an anchor before moving in 1993 to KIMT-TV in Mason City, Iowa, to anchor the morning news.
While Jodi was at KSAX, she interviewed Patty Wetterling, the mother of another high-profile missing Minnesotan, Jacob Wetterling. Jacob was also born in Long Prairie and his dad was from Mason City. Jacob was kidnapped by a masked gunman near the Wetterling home in rural St. Joseph in 1989, six years before Jodi was abducted.
Prior to the KSAX interview, Jodi also interviewed Patty Wetterling at her home, while Jodi was still in college at nearby St. Cloud State. Jacob’s remains were finally found in 2016, 27 years after he was murdered. His killer, Danny Heinrich, led investigators to Jacob’s burial site on a local farm, as part of a plea bargain.
At the time Jodi was abducted on June 27, 1995, her two-year contract with KIMT-TV was due to expire in the fall. She had been in the process of applying for jobs in bigger television news markets, including the Twin Cities,. It was two hours north of Mason City and much closer to where her mom lived in Long Prairie. And according to her friend Ani Kruse, Jodi was also exploring the possibility of moving to a state with a warm climate, including Florida and Arizona.
Jodi Huisentruit has been missing for almost 27 years.
27+Facts
#1 Jodi apparently had overslept on the morning of June 27, 1995. She was supposed to be at KIMT-TV, in Mason City, IA, by 3:30 a.m.to begin her news anchor shift. Jodi had spent the day before at the Mason City Chamber of Commerce golf tournament and dinner. She left the Mason City Country Club shortly before 8 p.m. and called a friend in Mississippi at 8:24 p.m.
#2 When Jodi failed to show up for work, KIMT-TV assistant producer Amy Kuns awakened Jodi with a phone call about 4:10 a.m. Amy said Jodi assured her she’d head right into work to anchor the 6 a.m. newscast in the studio, located about a mile away. Amy later said nothing sounded out of the ordinary when she talked briefly with Jodi on her landline in the one bedroom apartment where Jodi lived alone. The apartment was one of three buildings in the 73-unit complex located on the edge of the Winnebago River, by a campground and just north of the city’s largest park. Building C, where Jodi had lived since November, 1993, was the smallest one in the three building, horseshoe-shaped complex.
#3 Amy said Jodi had occasionally been late before.
#4 Jodi was apparently abducted about 20 minutes later, next to her car, parked just 12 steps from the entrance of her apartment building. It takes just 30 seconds to walk briskly from Jodi’s second floor apartment to where her car was parked, in the lot where it was still dark outside.
#5 During the struggle with her abductor, the key to Jodi’s red 1991 Mazda Miata was slightly bent, her red heels, blow dryer, earrings and hair spray were found scattered on the ground nearby.
#6 Police said there were no eyewitnesses to the abduction, no surveillance cameras to record what happened.
#7 Some apartment residents later told police they heard a scream around the time Jodi was abducted, but no one called police.
#8 At 6 a.m., when Jodi had not shown up for work, Amy Kuns anchored the hour-long newscast in Jodi’s place. Amy had to write and produce the newscast by herself.
#9 Around 7 a.m., just after the newscast ended, Amy asked a coworker to call police to check on Jodi. Although Jodi had been late before, she’d never missed a newscast.
#10 At 7:13 a.m, the KIMT-TV coworker called police.
#11 At 7:16 a.m, the first MCPD officer arrived at Jodi’s apartment complex. There were no signs of Jodi when the officer checked her second-floor apartment. But the officer saw clear signs of a struggle next to Jodi’s car, still parked in the lot below Jodi’s apartment.
#12 The MCPD chief at the time, and several other officers, soon after arrived at the Key apartment complex. Lt. Frank Stearns said the toilet seat was up in Jodi’s apartment, raising some questions if Jodi’s had had a male visitor. In a statement to a Globe Gazette newspaper reporter the day after Jodi was abducted, MCPD Chief Jack Schlieper said, “Police also found no evidence that anyone was with her prior to her disappearance.”
The entrance to Building C of the Key Apartments.
#13 Very little forensic evidence was found at the crime scene. A partial palm print was obtained from Jodi’s car and a strand of hair was also discovered, according to retired MCPD investigator Frank Stearns, in a television interview. Stearns refused to say if a root was attached to the hair. It’s not publicly known if the evidence found is related to Jodi’s disappearance. A witness also approached police stating that he’d seen a white van near Jodi’s car around the time she disappeared.
In a 2004 interview with FindJodi’s Josh Benson and Gary Peterson, Lt. Ron Vande Weerd said, “Unfortunately, in this case, there’s not a lot of evidence, period. But we do have definite parts of the investigation, different things that we know, that we are withholding for just that reason, that if we are able to develop a subject, that we are able to eliminate him or corroborate with him.” When Josh asked if police would consider releasing more evidence at some point, to help solve the investigation, Lt. Vande Weerd said, “Right now, there are no plans to release it. Obviously, we would release it if we felt it could help something. But right now, we are afraid it would just hurt. We don’t have that much to go on and we don’t want to give up what we do have.” (The interview was conducted one year after Josh and Gary cofounded the non-profit FindJodi organization in 2003.)
In an interview on the 20th anniversary of the abduction, Mason City Police investigator Terrance Prochaska told former KIMT-TV anchor Brian Mastre the MCPD has Jodi’s DNA, dental records and fingerprints to compare with unidentified remains in the national NamUS database. https://namus.nij.ojp.gov
#14 Jodi’s friend John Vansice, and two other men, arrived at the Key apartments that morning while police were on the scene. Police say Vansice told them he was the last person to see Jodi alive and that she had stopped by his Mason City duplex the night before to watch a video of a surprise 27th birthday party he helped throw for Jodi on the weekend of June 9th. The party was held at Sully’s bar in a building in Clear Lake, IA. The building was owned by a friend of Jodi’s and Vansice, businessman Aldin Stecker. Stecker’s former wife shot the video. Sources say the 18-minute video was given to Vansice the day before Jodi disappeared.
#15 Police told Vansice to bring the video to the MCPD station. That’s where he was interviewed by investigators.
#16 Jodi spent the weekend before she disappeared, June 23-25th, on a waterskiing trip to Iowa City with Vansice, her good friends Ani Kruse and Tammy Baker, and Vansice’s son Trent, who was a college student in Iowa City at the time. The group stayed at Trent’s apartment. Tammy shared a bedroom with Jodi. She and Jodi met several years earlier when both were working as reporters in Iowa City.
The previous weekend, June 17-18th, Tammy stayed with Jodi at her Mason City apartment. Tammy says they spent time with John Vansice and other friends in Clear Lake that weekend, boating and dancing. And Jodi planned to be out of town again the next weekend, scheduled to be a bridesmaid that Saturday in her dear friend Staci’s wedding in their hometown of Long Prairie, Minnesota.
#17 Jodi’s last entry in her personal journal was dated the previous Sunday, June 25th. Jodi wrote about how much fun she’d had waterskiing on Vansice’s boat that weekend. Vansice named the boat after Jodi, although her name was never actually painted on the boat. Vansice, who was 22 years older than Jodi, later told the media he took a polygraph and passed with “flying colors.” Vansice has repeatedly denied any involvement in Jodi’s abduction and has never been arrested or charged in connection with Jodi’ s disappearance.
#18 A copy of Jodi’s 84-page personal journal was mailed anonymously in 2008 to a reporter at the Globe Gazette in Mason City. A police investigation revealed it was sent by the wife of former MCPD Chief David Ellingson. Cheryl Ellingson previously worked for the newspaper, but no motive was ever given for why she sent the journal to her former employer.
#19 Two federal grand juries have reportedly been convened in connection with Jodi’s case. No indictments were handed down by either grand jury. A friend of Vansice, LaDonna Woodford, said she testified Vansice was home when she called him about 6 a.m. on June 27, 1995, and they went for a walk in the neighborhood .
#20 In March of 2017, Vansice was subpoenaed by a federal grand in Cedar Rapids, IA. He drove from his home in Phoenix, AZ, to provide a DNA sample, fingerprints, and palm prints. No charges came as a result of that grand jury.
#21 Also in March of 2017, the MCPD obtained a search warrant from a Cerro Gordo County judge to place GPS tracking devices on two vehicles connected to Vansice. Vansice had not owned these vehicles in 1995. Police Chief Jeff Brinkley told “48 Hours” correspondent Jim Axelrod the GPS searches did did not produce any evidence. The search warrant affidavits for the searches have remained sealed, so it’s unknown what probable cause investigators provided the judge to convince him to approve the searches.
#22 Jodi reported to the MCPD she’d been made uncomfortable by a person in a small, newer white truck on a Saturday evening in October 1994. (The truck has been erroneously described sometimes by some police investigators and the media as a black truck.) The truck and the driver have never been identified. Beside the 1994 incident, Jodi also told some friends and a self defense instructor in the months before her abduction about concerns that she might have been followed. Despite those incidents, police have been publicly skeptical about the possibility a stalker may have abducted Jodi.
#23 Jodi would have been easy to stalk. Her home address, apartment unit and phone number were listed in the public Mason City phone directory. Jodi had lived in her apartment, which faced the parking lot, since November 1993. She also had the same work schedule every day and frequently talked about her social and community event plans when she was delivering the news.
#24 A convicted serial rapist in Minnesota, Tony Jackson, was living just 2 blocks from KIMT-TV in Mason City, Iowa at the time Jodi disappeared. Another convicted sex offender,Tom Corscadden, was also in the general area. Both men were interviewed by Mason City investigators. Both men denied any involvement in Jodi’s disappearance, and were ruled out by police. Corscadden passed away in January 2022.
#25 A FindJodi billboard in Mason City meant to help generate leads in the case was vandalized on New Years Eve 2019. The name of a retired investigator and the words “machine shed” were spray-painted on the board. After a 4-day investigation, the vandalism case was closed with no answers to who defaced the billboard, or why.
#26 Almost twenty-seven years since Jodi was abducted, Iowa’s highest-profile unsolved case remains a mystery. Jodi is still missing, no one has been charged with abducting her and her family and loved ones mark another year with no Jodi, no answers.
#27 Jodi was declared legally dead in 2001. On June 27, 2022, Jodi will have been missing 27 years. That is the same number of years that Jodi was alive.
If you have information about Jodi’s case, you can reach the Mason City Police Department at (641) 421-3636. Or you can share information with the Iowa Department of Criminal Investigation (DCI) at (515) 725-6010 or via emailto Special Agent Ryan Herman at rherman@dps.state.ia.us.
You can also reach us anonymously at FindJodi: (641) 999-1109 or via email: Team@FindJodi.com
