As a telephone company laborer went to work on the morning of October 4, 1978, little did he know he would make a discovery that would instigate one of Iowa’s most wrenching mysteries.

The worker was laying cable along Highway 182 in rural Lyon County, near Rock Rapids in the far northwest corner of the Hawkeye state. In the course of his work, he found more than a few dead lines and one dead person. The skeletal remains of a half-naked woman lay in a ditch along the north side of a gravel road near Lake Pahoja, approximately one mile from the Rock Rapids School. Her identity remained a mystery for over twenty-seven years.

The victim was identified in 2006 as twenty-three-year-old Wilma Nissen. Over forty-five years after her murder, investigators believe they know one of the people responsible, but they do not have enough evidence to make an arrest.

Learning Wilma Nissen’s identity was as heartbreaking as discovering her remains, because much of her life was nearly as awful as her death.

Wilma Nissen

In January 2006, a Des Moines lab technician matched the woman’s left thumbprint to one that had been sent to various labs from Los Angeles. After over twenty-seven years, the woman in the ditch finally had a name: Wilma June Nissen. Sadly, she had not had much of a life.

Wilma was born in San Francisco in 1954 to Charles and June Nissen. Her younger sister, Mona, was deaf and unable to speak. Wilma’s mother abandoned her children when Wilma was eight, and her father abused his daughters. While he was at work, Wilma and Mona were locked in a closet. After Charles was fired from his job, the young girls moved from the closet to the car, where Mona was confined for most of the day while Wilma was dispatched to the streets to scour for food.

Wilma never attended school and could neither read nor write. In 1964, after the state of California removed the Nissen children from their father’s “care,” they spent the remainder of their youth bouncing around foster homes.

Young Wilma

Perhaps predictably, as she became a young adult, the uneducated and desperate Wilma resorted to prostitution.

Wilma, Age Eighteen

Wilma married twice and had three children with three different men; a son, Michael Pizzaro, Jr. with Michael, Sr. whom she never married; Donald Wellington, Jr. with her first husband, Donald Wellington, Sr., and a daughter, Krissi, with her second husband, Robert Irvin.

All the children were given up for adoption, Krissi having been adopted by Wilma’s final foster parents.

 

Left to Right: Wilma with Michael Pizzaro, Donald Wellington, and Robert Irvin

In February 1978, shortly after Wilma left Robert Irvin, she is believed to have traveled to San Diego, where she met fifty-four-year-old Charles Belt. The two traveled together to visit Charles’s mother in Atlanta, Georgia. Belt said Wilma left the residence several days later without telling him. He believed she planned to hitchhike back to San Diego.

Eight months later, human remains, identified as Wilma’s over twenty-seven years later, were found in northwest Iowa. Charles Belt was the last person known to see her alive. He now lives in Tijuana, Mexico. I could not find a picture of him.

Last Seen in Atlanta

Investigators believe Wilma was placed in the Lyon County ditch in either June or July 1978, three or four months before her remains were discovered in October. She was naked from the waist up, and her feet were tied together with a braided hemp rope.

Legs Bound with Rope 

Wilma had clearly been murdered but the specific manner could not be determined.

All but two of her teeth had been pulled; the rest, along with her lower jawbone and her other clothing and belongings, were never found.

Murdered

For a time, Robert Rhoades, AKA “The Truck Stop Killer” was a suspect in the murder of Wilma Nissen. He has been convicted of rape and three counts of murder in Illinois, and is suspected of murdering over fifty women from 1975-90. He is incarcerated at the Menard Correctional Center in Chester, Illinois.

Rhoades lived in Sioux Falls in 1978, but investigators say they have ruled him out as the killer of Wilma Nissen.

Robert Rhoades

“The Truck Stop Killer”

In August 2009, another suspect emerged when eighty-two-year-old John Van Gammeren was charged with six counts of perjury after lying to authorities regarding transporting strippers and prostitutes from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, across the Iowa border to his home in Inwood, approximately twenty-five miles away. The ditch where Wilma was found was not far from Inwood.

The charges against Van Gammeren, however, were later dismissed.

John Van Gammeren

Seven years later, in 2016, investigators announced they believed they know one of the people involved in the murder of Wilma Nissen.

Detectives believe that after leaving Atlanta sometime between February and April 1978, Wilma made her way to northwest Iowa after connecting with an escort service based in Sioux Falls. Police say the woman pictured below was a prostitute and escort for the same company as Wilma during the mid-1970s, when the photo was taken.

In the summer of 1978, investigators say several Lyon County residents attended sex parties in the western part of the county, near the South Dakota border. Both Wilma and this woman worked as dancers, escorts, and prostitutes at these parties. Police believe Wilma was killed at one of the parties and that robbery was the motive, as the woman pictured below frequently stole from other prostitutes, escorts, and dancers.

Lyon County investigators believe this woman, who went by the stage name “Sugar,” is one of several people involved in Wilma’s murder. Police have conducted several interviews with her; they know her true identity and where she is currently living but have not divulged that information, saying they need someone to independently identify her; so far, no one has done so.

Another prostitute, known only by her stage name of “Peaches,” is also believed to have participated in Wilma’s murder. Authorities do not have a picture of her; they say she is a black female from Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, who was in her mid-to-late twenties in the late 1970s.

One of Wilma’s Killers?

Michael Pizzaro, Sr., the father of Wilma’s first son, Michael, Jr., died in 1989.

Wilma and her first husband, Donald Wellington, married in August 1973 and are believed to have separated around October 1975.  Investigators would like to speak to Wellington, emphasizing he is not a suspect in Wilma’s murder and is only being sought for questioning. He was last known to be living in the Palmdale, California, area in 2000, when the below photo was taken.

Donald Wellington

Wilma Nissen is buried in Rock Rapids’ Riverview Cemetery. Her short and tortured life ended with her brutal death in rural northwest Iowa, an area to which she had no connection. Lyon County, nevertheless, considers the woman without a name for over a quarter-of-a-century as “Our Girl.”

By investigators’ own admission, a little luck led to learning Wilma Nissen’s identity. Perhaps luck will one day make a curtain call and lead to her killer’s identity.

“Our Girl”

A $10,000 reward is offered for information leading to an arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for Wilma Nissen’s murder. If you have any such information, please contact one of the people below:

• Detective Jerry Birkey, Lyon County Sheriff’s Office, (712) 472-8300
• Special Agent J.R. Mathis, Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, (712) 252-0507
• Special Agent Jon Moeller, F.B.I., (712) 258-1920

Reward Offered

Wilma’s daughter, Krissi Atkisson, is a member of my Facebook group.

Krissi at Her Mother’s Grave

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/19379833/wilma-june-nissen

SOURCES:

• ABC Affiliate KSFY TV
• CBS Affiliate KELO TV
• Iowa Cold Cases
• Lyon County, Iowa Sheriff’s Office
• Northwest Iowa Review
• Sioux City Journal