A Mason City, Iowa, police investigator assigned to Jodi Huisentruit’s case met last week with the Wood County, Wisconsin, sheriff and a lieutenant to discuss a deceased murder suspect, Christopher Revak. Revak has been linked to two separate cases with female victims in the Midwest and he was also previously dismissed as a suspect in connection with the Huisentruit investigation.
Mason City Police Department Sergeant Terrance Prochaska made the four-hour trip to Wisconsin Rapids on December 10th to compare notes with Sheriff Shawn Becker and Lt. Scott Goldberg.
Lt. Goldberg said the meeting lasted several hours and the group plans to meet again after they do followup work looking into Revak’s timeline. They know a former wife lived in Mason City in 1995, the year Jodi was abducted from the Key Apartments parking lot on her way to anchor the morning news at KIMT-TV.
“It was a good meeting to work as a team and go over each other’s departments’ cases. This provides a better understanding for what needs to be looked at in both of our investigations as we move forward,” Lt. Goldberg told FindJodi.
We reached out to MCPD Chief Jeff Brinkley, prior to the Wisconsin meeting, to request a comment after the gathering. We also wanted to know what was new, if anything, since the MCPD looked at this lead fifteen years ago. The chief replied by email, “The MCPD efforts related to Jodi’s disappearance are ongoing. As you are aware, case specifics are not something that I will discuss publicly or comment on to the media.”
Revak’s name first came up publicly in 2009 after he hanged himself in a Missouri jail cell. He was facing charges for the 2007 murder of Rene Williams in Ava, Missouri. 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 went missing.
The other victim linked to Revak also had been at a bar before she disappeared. The remains of 21-year-old Deidre Harm were found five months later by hunters in the town of Seneca. Deidre was also a mom who had an infant daughter when the murder occurred in 2006.
Investigators said Revak, an EMT in Missouri, was visiting his hometown of Wisconsin Rapids at the time Deidre was killed.
Undated photo of Chris Revak. (via FindJodi Archive)
Wood County investigators reached out to Mason City police after working closely with a local podcaster and anchor, WSAW’s Kassandra Sepeda. During her research for an episode on Deidre’s case, Sepeda’s digging led her to also focus on other unsolved Midwest crimes. She found some similarities in Deidre and Rene’s cases. They included the fact both victims had been moved. She also wondered if there could be a connection with Revak to Jodi’s abduction after she learned Revak’s first wife lived in Mason City at the same time the KIMT-TV news anchor was there.
The Revak lead concerning a possible connection to Jodi was not new: FindJodi’s Josh Benson and the Globe Gazette reported on it back in 2009.
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.
Lt. Frank Stearns, the lead investigator on the Huisentruit case in 2009, said there was no evidence that connected Revak to Jodi’s abduction. A Globe Gazette article noted Revak’s first wife had lived in the same duplex where John Vansice, a friend of Jodi’s, lived in 1995, but moved out before Vansice lived there. Back then, Vansice told Mason City investigators Jodi had stopped by his apartment the night before she disappeared to watch a video of a surprise birthday party he cohosted for her a couple weeks earlier.
But Stearns told the newspaper the ex-wife had moved out of the duplex six months before Jodi was abducted. “There’s no evidence pointing to him (Chris Revak) being here,” Stearns said.
While this fresh look at the old Revak lead could result in the same conclusion previously reached by Mason City police fifteen years ago, Lt. Goldberg explained their mission.
Prior to the meeting with Sgt. Prochaska, Lt. Goldberg told FindJodi, “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.”
No date has been set for a followup meeting between the Wisconsin and Iowa investigators.
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.
