Amy Kuns’ morning was going from bad to worse. The Mason City, Iowa, KIMT-TV producer was behind schedule and the morning anchor, twenty-seven-year-old Jodi Huisentruit, was not at work. Jodi’s primary job at the local CBS Affiliate station was to deliver the news on the morning show, Daybreak. She was scheduled to be at the station by no later than 4:00 a.m. to prepare for the show, which aired at 6:00.
By 4:15, with Jodi still a no-show, Amy called her home. An apologetic Jodi told her she had overslept and would be there shortly. Her apartment was approximately a five-minute drive from the news station, but she still had not arrived by 5:00. Several more phone calls to her home went unanswered.
With still no word from Jodi by air time, a co-worker was dispatched to her apartment as Amy delivered the morning news. After the broadcast, an angry Amy expected to be told something to the effect that Jodi had fallen back asleep. Her anger, however, soon turned to concern and then to fear. Her morning had been bad, but Jodi’s appeared to have been ominous.
Instead of delivering the news to Mason City residents, beloved television anchor Jodi Huisentruit became the news. The woman who reported on many crimes had likely become a victim.
Jodi Huisentruit
The coworker arrived at the Key Apartment complex where Jodi lived to find her Mazda Miata still in the parking lot and surrounded by many of her personal items strewn on the ground. Among them were her red dress shoes, a blow dryer, a bottle of hair spray, earrings, and her bent car key. The scene had the telltale signs of an abduction.
Jodi’s colleague called the police. On the pavement near the car, they found drag marks indicating she had been attacked and abducted while attempting to enter her vehicle. The bent car key suggested she was accosted as she was unlocking her car door. Her personal items trailed away from the car, indicating she had been taken forcibly.
A smudged partial palm print and strand of hair determined not to be Jodi’s were found on her car. They have not been matched to anyone.
The only personal item determined to be missing was an address book Jodi had only recently started using. It was never found.
Jodi’s Car And Personal Items Strewn On the Ground
Three apartment building residents reported having heard screams coming from the parking lot at approximately 4:30 a.m., the time Jodi was likely headed to work. Others recalled seeing a white 1980’s Ford Econoline van parked with its engine and running lights on; no one knew to whom it belonged. Around the same time, a woman jogging past the complex said she was nearly hit by a car zooming out of the parking lot. She did not get a good look at the car or driver.
Apartment occupants also told investigators that the previous evening they had seen an unknown young man run up the facility’s inner stairway and loudly yell and knock on Jodi’s door at around 8:30. After receiving no response, he just as quickly exited the building.
The Key Apartment Complex did not produce the key to finding Jodi. Her apartment showed no signs of a struggle and a search of the entire complex produced no clues.
Jodi’s Apartment Complex
A search party was organized by the Mason City Police, aided by the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation and the FBI. Rescue teams scoured the countryside while divers and police dogs searched the Winnebago River that ran through the park next to the Key Apartment complex. These searches failed to yield any trace of Jodi.
No Trace Of Jodi. . .
All signs showed that the local television anchorwoman, who reported the occurrences of many crimes, had likely become a crime victim. Police, however, could find no eyewitnesses to Jodi’s probable abduction, nor could they determine or identify anyone with a motive to harm her.
. . . Or A Possible Motive
At the time Jodi disappeared, twenty-two-year-old Tony Jackson lived in Mason City, only two blocks from the KIMT-TV station. A year later, he was charged with domestic violence in Muscatine, Iowa, two-hundred miles southeast of Mason City, but the charges were dismissed. In 1998, however, he was convicted of three counts of rape, kidnapping, and burglary in Minnesota and sentenced to life in prison.
Jackson’s cellmate, Dennis Goff, says he told him that he had murdered Jodi Huisentruit. Goff, also a rapist, said Jackson recited a rap song to him, the lyrics of which described a body buried in a silo in rural Johnson County, near Tiffin, one-hundred-sixty miles southeast of Mason City. The area was searched, but no body was found.
Tony Jackson
The same jogger who was nearly hit by the car on the morning of Jodi’s disappearance had also been jogging near the complex the previous morning. At approximately 4:00 on June 26, while near the complex, she says a young black man rode past her on a bicycle. The jogger did not speak to the biker, and she caught only a brief glimpse of him. She believes he may have been Tony Jackson but cannot definitively say so.
Was Jackson The Biker?
No connection could be established between Tony Jackson and Jodi Huisentruit; he was cleared of any involvement of her disappearance in 1999. Sixteen years later, however, he was again a person of interest.
Cleared But Reemerges
In 2015, a former acquaintance of Jackson stated he believed the convicted rapist was involved in Jodi Huisentruit’s abduction.
The informant said he befriended Jackson through their girlfriends in Mason City. After work, the two men often frequented the Southbridge Lounge, a bar also often visited by Jodi. Shortly before she vanished, the man says Jackson approached her at the bar and engaged her in conversation. Jackson’s friend says he could not hear what was discussed and that Jackson refused to tell him. At the time, he thought nothing of the encounter, and he believed Jackson, who was attending North Iowa Community College in Mason City and had an interest in broadcasting, was seeking career advice from Jodi.
Upon Jackson’s later convictions, his friend recalled similar instances of Jackson’s approaching Jodi and frequently talking about her; he believes the rapist was obsessed with her and believes he abducted her.
Jackson says he never met Jodi and never saw her in public or even on television. He denies making a jailhouse confession of killing her and insists he had no involvement in her disappearance.
Did Jackson And Jodi Meet?
Tony Jackson is currently serving his life sentence at the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Stillwater, Minnesota.
Convicted Rapist
Another person of interest in Jodi’s disappearance is John Vansice. The forty-nine-year-old described his relationship with the twenty-seven-year-old Jodi as a “father-daughter type relationship.”
The day before she disappeared, Jodi participated in a golf tournament. That evening, Vansice says, she came to his house to view a video he had made of her twenty-seventh birthday party held three weeks earlier.
John Vansice With Jodi And Friend Ani Kruse
At Jodi’s Birthday Party
A 2004 Des Moines Register article states police were told a portion of the cement in the basement of Vansice’s residence appeared to be newer than the rest. A later article states police searched Vansice’s home that year but found nothing connecting him to Jodi’s disappearance.
Vansice’s Home Is Searched . . .
In March 2017, police obtained a search warrant for GPS data from two vehicles owned by Vansice, a 1999 Honda Civic and a 2013 GMC 1500. Investigators stated the warrant was related to their investigation into Jodi’s disappearance but would not elaborate. The warrant was sealed, meaning no other information is publicly available about why the search was ordered or what was discovered. It is still unknown what information, if any, was gleaned from the search.
The seizing of Vansice’s vehicles is interesting as Jodi’s disappearance predates them. The issuing of the warrant seems to suggest that police may have reason to believe that he may have used them in transporting Jodi’s remains to another locale.
. . . Along With His Vehicle
That same month, Vansice, now residing in Arizona, was subpoenaed to appear at a United States District Court in Iowa and provide finger and palm prints, as well as DNA. Now seventy-five-years-old,
Vansice is reported to be suffering from progressing Alzheimer’s disease. The illness may call into question any further information he may provide regarding Jodi’s disappearance.
Vansice Is Ailing
In January 2022, the investigative series 20/20 aired an episode on Jodi’s case which named suspects not previously made public. One of those mentioned was Thomas Corscadden, who had been convicted of multiple sex crimes including solicitation, public exposure, voyeurism, rape, and attempted rape.
In 1995, Corscadden lived in Austin, Minnesota, fifty miles north of Mason City, and drove a white van similar to the one seen outside Jodi’s apartment complex on the morning of her disappearance. His daughter, Allysha, says he made frequent work trips to Iowa which often involved going through Mason City and that he frequently watched Jodi on television. Corscadden’s ex-wife said he was obsessed with her.
In 2004, investigators said the palm print found on Jodi’s vehicle did not match Corscadden’s . Nevertheless, his daughter and other family members believe he may have been involved.
The incarcerated sixty-nine-year-old Corscadden died from leukemia and bone marrow cancer in January 2022.
Thomas Corscadden
In 2004, a televised meeting of three psychics discussing Jodi’s disappearance became the pilot for the television program Psychic Detectives. The episode was broadcast several times, resulting in some leads, but none panned out.
The Psychics Fail
From the onset of her disappearance, Jodi’s eighty-four page personal journal has been in the possession of law enforcement. In June 2008, photocopies of her journal were anonymously mailed to the Mason City Globe Gazette. The material was sent in a large envelope with no return address and a June 4 postmark from Waterloo, Iowa, eighty miles southeast of Mason City.
Several days later, the sender came forward; she was the wife of a former Mason City Police Chief. Mason City police gave no explanation for their former boss’s wife sending Jodi’s journal to the newspaper.
Jodi’s Journal Is Mailed
In an opinion piece published in The N’West Iowa Review in December 2016, retiring Iowa State Representative John Kooiker of Sioux County described his experience with the case as a member of the Iowa State House Public Safety Committee.
In his article, the legislator suggested a cover-up by Mason City officials in their investigation into the disappearance of Jodi Huisentruit.
A Cover-Up?
Four billboards, one of them digital, are displayed around Mason City seeking information relating to Jodi’s abduction. In January 2020 one was spray-painted with the name ”Frank Stearns” and the words “machine shed” beneath the name in smaller letters. Stearns is a former Mason City Police Department Lieutenant who was involved in the investigation into Jodi’s disappearance.
As the Mason City Police have been criticized for their investigation into Jodi’s disappearance and a lawmaker suggested a cover-up, some believe the message is indicating that Stearns is Jodi’s abductor and that her body may be found at a “machine shed.”
The Machine Shed is also the name of a chain of six restaurants, two of them in Iowa.
Billboard Spray-Painted
Jodi Huisentruit’s presumed kidnapping is one of Iowa’s most infamous missing person cases. In this photo, the television anchor and Minnesota native reports on one of Minnesota’s most infamous kidnappings, that of Jacob Wetterling.
Jacob’s remains were found in 2016, nearly twenty-seven years after he was kidnapped. After twenty-nine years, Jodi remains missing.
Jodi Huisentruit Reporting On Jacob Wetterling
Many questions remain regarding Jodi Huisentruit’s disappearance. As an attractive young woman who was a public figure, she may have been taken by an admirer, but her disappearance could just as easily have been a crime of opportunity. It could also have been related to a story she was covering, but that does not seem to be a popular theory among investigators.
Jodi had plenty of friends and was outgoing, but I could not find much regarding if she was dating anyone at the time of her disappearance or if a former boyfriend could be involved. One article said she had several dates with the man from whom she had bought her car, but that he is not suspected of having anything to do with her disappearance.
A Cold Case
Perhaps the most haunting question is if Jodi had not overslept on that morning twenty-nine years ago, would she still be on the air, perhaps reporting on this year’s heat wave, instead of disappearing into thin air?
We Can Only Wonder
Jodi Sue Huisentruit has been missing since June 27, 1995, and was declared legally dead in May 2001. At the time of her disappearance, she was twenty-seven-years-old, five-feet-four inches tall, and weighed between one-hundred ten and one-hundred-twenty pounds. She had blonde hair, brown eyes, and both her ears were pierced. She would today be fifty-six-years-old.
If you have any information relating to her disappearance, please contact the Mason City, Iowa, Police Department at 515-421-3636 or the FBI at 202-324-3000.
Who Took Miss Huisentruit?
Jodi Huisentruit grew up in Long Prairie, Minnesota. Before becoming a rising star in television news, she was a very good high school athlete in several sports, including basketball.
Good On The Hardwood . . .
The sport, however, at which Jodi excelled was golf. She helped her school win the Girls Class A Tournament titles in 1985 and 1986.
. . . Great On the Golf Course . . .
. . . And Proud Of It
SOURCES:
- KIMT TV CBS Affiliate Mason City, Iowa
- Cedar Rapids Gazette
- CBS News
- Charley Project
- Daily Mail
- Des Moines Register
- Doe Network
- FindJodi. com
- Fox News Channel 9 Cedar Rapids
0 Comments