The Mason City, Iowa, police sergeant assigned to Jodi Huisentruit’s case is expected to meet with a Wisconsin investigator this week to compare notes on Christopher Revak, a deceased murder suspect. Revak has been linked to two cases with female victims and was also previously looked at, and dismissed, in connection with the Huisentruit investigation.
Wood County Sheriff Lt. Scott Goldberg told FindJodi they want to focus on Revak’s timeline to see if anything puts him in Mason City in June, 1995. That’s when Jodi was abducted from the parking lot of the Key Apartments on her way to anchor the morning news at KIMT-TV.
Revak’s name first came up publicly in 2009 after he hanged himself in a Missouri jail cell. He was facing charges in connection with the 2007 murder of Rene Williams in Ava, Missouri. Seventeen years later, Rene, a 36-year-old mother of three and a bartender, is still missing. Police said Revak was at the bar where Rene worked the night she disappeared.
In a 2009 article in the Globe Gazette, Mason City Police Department Lt. Frank Stearns said there was no evidence that connected Revak to Jodi’s abduction. It noted that Revak’s ex-wife had once lived in the same residence where John Vansice, a friend of Jodi’s, lived in 1995. Back then, Vansice told Mason City investigators Jodi had stopped by his apartment the night before she was abducted to watch a video of a surprise birthday party he had cohosted for her a couple weeks earlier.
In a 2009 article in the Globe Gazette, Mason City Police Department Lt. Frank Stearns said there was no evidence that connected Revak to Jodi’s abduction.
But Stearns told the newspaper the ex-wife moved out of the duplex six months before Jodi disappeared. “There’s no evidence pointing to him (Chris Revak) being here,” Stearns said.
While we don’t know what prompted Wood County investigators to recently reach out to Mason City police regarding the deceased EMT who was from Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin, it happened after a local reporter and podcaster, WSAW’s Kassandra Sepeda, was researching the case of Deidre Harm. Deidre was a 21-year-old Wisconsin Rapids woman investigators believe Revak murdered while he was visiting his hometown. Deidre’s remains were found by hunters five months later in the town of Seneca.
Undated photo of Chris Revak. (via FindJodi Archive)
Sepeda’s digging led her to focus on other unsolved Midwest cases. She found some similarities with Deidre’s case and Jodi’s. Bith Deidre and Rene had been moved.
“We wouldn’t be doing Jodi justice without looking into it.We are reviewing the connections to the timeline, going over our files with Mason City’s. The timeline includes the fact Revak’s ex was living in an apartment there. We want to determine if he ever visited there. We are not aware of any crimes or vehicles registered [there] at this time,” said Lt. Goldberg.
The Wisconsin trip is the second one by MCPD Sgt. Terrance Prochaska to another state on an old lead in the past couple of months. He talked about the Wisconsin Rapids lead in an interview with WSAW reporter Kassandra Sepeda for a story that aired last week.
“I have read through the case files of both Deidre Harm and Rene Williams down in Ava, MO, where she went missing, and later on learned that she was moved. Her remains were moved and things like that,” Prochaska said. “So there’s a possibility that could happen here in Mason City. I mean, there’s a reason why we haven’t found her body. A guy like Chris Revak fits that reason, so why not look into him?” Prochaska added, “Maybe an earlier encounter created an obsession with Jodi that we don’t know about yet. That’s an angle I am working on right now.”
In October, a tip on another old lead prompted Mason City investigators to search public park land next to an apartment complex construction site in Winsted, Minnesota. That search, on October 18, filmed by a video production crew, turned up animal bones but no human remains.
In a November 1st statement to FindJodi, Police Chief Jeff Brinkley said, “MCPD recently worked with Minnesota law enforcement officials to follow-up on a lead in Winsted. MCPD continues to receive, evaluate, and follow-up on information it receives related to Jodi Huisentruit’s disappearance on a regular basis. Information gleaned from this effort will be used in the ongoing investigation. At this time, there is no additional information about Jodi’s disappearance for public release. We do want to encourage anyone with information to contact the MCPD or the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation.”
The MCPD has not released any further public updates on the Winsted tip.
Anyone with any information on Jodi’s case should contact the Mason City Police Department at (641) 421-3636 or email Iowa DCI Special Agent Ryan Herman at rherman@dps.state.ia.us. You can always reach out to FindJodi here or anonymously, here.
