Welcome to Mysteries of the Missing, a podcast and blog about missing person's cases. You can find my podcast, my blog, and my social media on my Linktree at: https://linktr.ee/MysteriesoftheMissing.
Keep in mind that I am only reporting the events of what have happened, per my research through various media outlets. I’m not trained in any way in true crime. Instead, I’m solely a human being that’s trying to do my part to get the message of Jodi's story out there so that one day, hopefully, she may be found, and her case may be solved. Join me as I dive into the last day that people saw Jodi and what happened after she was last seen.
Jodi Huisentruit was born on June 5, 1968 in Long Prarie, Minnesota. Jodi was bubbly, the one to give you a spark if you are down," according to a coworker. Jodi was also popular in high school and also an avid golfer and even won the state Class A tournament along with her high school golf team in 1985 and 1986.
After graduating from high school, Jodi went on to study at St. Cloud State University, where she graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in Mass and Speech Communications in 1990. Jodi got a job in Mason City, Iowa. She would be doing the morning news and she would show up at around 4 a.m.
An Associate Producer of the KIMT Station, Amy Kuns, called Jodi at 4 a.m. on June 27, 1995 because she was late to work. Jodi usually left her apartment at 3 a.m. for work. That morning, Jodi said that she'd just woken up and she would be in soon. Jodi was often late so it wasn't unusual. Amy called a second time and the phone just rang and rang without anyone ever picking it up. Then, at 7 a.m, Jodi's AP called the Mason City Police for a welfare check. It took the police three hours to visit Jodi's apartment for the wellness check -- they didn't arrive until after 7 am. They knocked on the door of Jodi's second floor apartment but there was no answer...and no Jodi. Since there was a three hour window between the phone call to the police from Amy Kuns and the wellness check, Jodi's abductor would have had plenty of time to carry out whatever he pleased with her.
Jodi lived five minutes away from her work in The Key Apartments. Three neighbors heard screams that morning and none of them were able to identify the reason for the screams.
Pictures of The Key Apartments and Jodi's car location
The local police found Jodi's car only 20-25 feet from her front door in her apartment complex. Police officers found Jodi's car key bent, as well as a pair of red women's pumps, her hairspray, hairdryer, and earrings on the parking lot ground, scattered next to the car. There was a palm print on the car. A strand of Jodi's hair was found. There were heel marks showing that someone had been dragged in the dirt by the parking lot. It was obvious there was a struggle and Jodi had been abducted. The Mazda Miata that Jodi had in her possession was not hers - she was trying it out in the hopes of possibly buying it. There are allegations that the car might have been given to Jodi as a gift by an admirer. John didn't buy her the car, but the car was brokered between Jodi and another man from a car salesman as a favor.
Jodi's car, a Mazda Miata, was found with items scattered around it.
Police officers found the toilet in Jodi's bathroom in the "up" position, leading them to believe that perhaps a male was with her at the time of her disappearance. But the Police Chief stated that there was no other evidence of a man being in Jodi's apartment besides the position of the toilet seat.
The Mason City Police also conducted a search on the parking lot, Jodi's apartment, and the nearby Winnebago River, but nothing came up...until the following Wednesday, July 5, 1995. K9 officers were searching a two mile stretch along the river and they discovered clothes along the riverbanks. They couldn't determine if they were Jodi's or not. I don't know if the clothes have been DNA tested today, but that might be a good start for the police, right? Did someone drag Jodi to the riverbank where it was dark, rape and murder her, then throw her body into the river, leaving her clothes behind? I'm curious to know what the found clothes were exactly.
The Winnebago River was searched by police again recently.
The police didn't immediately tape off the crime scene, which could have caused some evidence to be contaminated. In addition, Jodi's car was released pretty soon after her disappearance to her parents.
The night before Jodi went missing, she was seen with John Vansice , a friend. Two weeks before Jodi disappeared, on June 9, 1995, John had a birthday party for Jodi to celebrate her 27th birthday. The week before Jodi went missing, she went water skiing with John and his son, Trent. Private Investigator Steve Ridge stated that Jodi went skiing with two men she had just met, and John wasn't too happy about that. Oddly enough, John named his boat after Jodi. He was obviously enamored with her.
The morning that Jodi disappeared, the news room where she worked received a strange call at 7:20 am, three hours after she was last heard from. No one knew she was missing yet, as this was the exact time that the police were at Jodi's house for the welfare call. Amy Kuns stated that the caller asked, "Is Jodi there?" Amy answered that Jodi wasn't there. She asked who was calling and the caller identified himself as John. When John asked where Jodi was, Amy let John know that Jodi wasn't there. He immediately let out a barrage of questions: "Where's Jodi? What's going on? Is she sick?" Amy answered that she didn't know where Jodi was, but that she wasn't there and she had to go, as it was a busy morning. Then, she hung up. This whole scenario is super shady to me.
After the call, later that morning, Jodi's friends came to her apartment to help search for her. John Vansice was amidst the group of friends, and he told the cops that he was the last person to see Jodi alive. According to John, Jodi had come to his apartment the night before she disappeared, on June 26, 1995, in order to watch a video he took of the birthday party. John told the Des Moines Register that Jodi "was in good spirits when she left his place."
On a tv report, John stated that he would "do anything he could to help." Many killers, abductors, and criminals insinuate themselves into the crimes they commit in order to get information on what the police are doing. For some of them, doing so allows them to relive their crime. Could John be the one who took Jodi, and if he was, was it because he wanted to find out more information about the investigation? Or...was he just being helpful? We still don't know today.
John was quickly named a person of interest, but he claimed he didn't know anything about Jodi missing. John passed a lie detector test then called tv news stations to celebrate the fact that he passed the tests. How odd.
John Vansice and a photo of Jodi Huisentruit
The DCI and the FBI joined the investigation and they focused on a serial sex offender that lived two blocks away from KMIT, convicted serial rapist Tony Jackson and Tom Korscavit?. Both were interviewed by Mason City Police and were found to be innocent.
Nine months before she went missing, on October 8, 1994, Jodi filed a police report of her own where she stated that she was being followed by someone in a white truck. A witness saw a white van in The Key parking lot the evening before Jodi disappeared, on June 26, 1995. According to one of Jodi's coworkers, there were so many white vans in Mason City, Iowa, so looking for the particular one that Jodi may been put into was difficult.
Police report filed by Jodi Huisentruit's account of a stalker before she went missing
Jodi indicated the day before she disappeared that she had been receiving harassing phone calls on her apartment landline. Since this was 1995, Jodi's address (down to the unit of her apartment) and her phone number were public knowledge in the phone book. Jodi also took self defense classes.
Was someone stalking Jodi? She never came out to say that, if so.
In the summer of 1995, KIMT showed a news conference every single day about Jodi.
Here is an excerpt from Findjodi.com, which you can find on Youtube here, titled as "Episode 8: John Vansice:" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS2doz4nYk0
In 1997, a Grand Jury was convened. Ladonna Woodford, a friend of Vansice, says that she testified for five hours.
On May 15, 2001, Jodi Huisentruit was declared legally dead.
A nonprofit was created in 2003 called "Find Jodi." Comprising of journalists and reporters, the hope was to bring awareness to Jodi's case, with the use of technology. "Find Jodi" has produced over thirty podcasts, hosted events to try to get information, and even posted up billboards in Mason City that ask if anyone knows about Jodi's disappearance. The reporters have even done their own investigations on people of interest, including John Vansice.
In 2011, a former Mason City Police Officer named Maria Ohl accused two police officers and a retired Iowa Division of Criminal Investigators (IDCI) agent of being involved in Jodi's kidnapping. The officer was a ten year veteran at the time, and she said that one of the officers involved was Frank Stearns. According to this cop, she received this information from an informant, whom she didn't name. Due to expressing concerns, Ohl said she was let go from the police department. An Orlando-based reporter, Joshua Benson, who also founded Findjodi.com, said he could not find any information to corroborate Officer Ohl's claims, though she confided in him.
On New Years Eve 2019, one of the Findjodi.com billboards in Mason City was vandalized with the words "Frank Stearns Machine Shed." Witnesses at a bar parking lot nearby saw two individuals dressed in black drive up to the billboard, climb a ladder, and spray paint the words on the billboard. Frank Stearns was a longtime investigator who worked on Jodi's case.
Billboard about Jodi in Mason City, Iowa was vandalized.
In 2017, Mason City Police exacted a search warrant on two of John Vansice's vehicles in an effort to seek GPS data. They were a 1999 Honda Civic and a 2013 GMC 1500. Why would the police want to search the GPS data of cars that were made after Jodi's 1995 disappearance? This tells me that they may have been tracking John to a place where police believe he could have kept Jodi's body all of these years.
The search warrant is sealed, by the way. In addition, authorities convened another Grand Jury, where Vansice was subpeoned to testify. He was also asked to provide finger and palm prints to the Grand Jury. Remember the palm print found on Jodi's Mazda Miata? Could this be the reason the Grand Jury had to take samples of John's hands? The outcome of the Grand Jury is unknown, since the proceedings aren't public, but John was most likely not indicted because he's still a free man today, in 2023.
Every warrant has to have a probable cause attached to it. So Scott Fuller of Findjodi.com says there has to be some type of evidence attached to the police warrant, and that's why he thinks the warrant is sealed.
In 2019, John Vansice issued two statements through an intermediary, in which he continued to maintain his innocence in the "apparent abduction" of "his friend" Jodi Huisentruit. First of all, "apparent?" She is missing, so it's not an "apparent abduction." It is an abduction. Also, John denied having a romantic relationship with Jodi. In an effort to further prove his innocence, John stated that he has gone through two voluntary polygraphs, was the subject of DNA testing, and has cooperated with police and officials on this case. In the same statement, John disclosed that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease. As someone whose own Great Grandmother had Alzheimer's and I've seen its effects, it's a horrible thing for a person and loved ones to go through. However, why bring that up in this situation unless you're trying to garner sympathy and throw the cops off of you because you're supposedly sick?
Funnily enough, John left Iowa to go back to Arizona two years after Jodi went missing. He still lives in Arizona and is more quiet about the case today.
In 2023, News Nation sat down to cover a piece about Jodi's case. When asked why "Iowa's Most Famous Unsolved Case is difficult to solve," Police Chief Jeff Brinkley stated that the age of the case, the lack of technology at the time, and no way to go back and preserve records are the reasons that this case is still unsolved today.
What's exciting is that the Police Chief also said in this 2023 interview that they have some working theories that they're continuing to work on. This sheds some hope onto the case, at least for me.
Amy Kuns said on the 2023 News Nation interview that she doesn't think Jodi will ever be found, but they're close to having some answers.
Scott Fuller (an independent investigator from Findjodi.com) answered some questions from viewers on the News Nation broadcast. One of the questions was why there weren't security cameras at the apartment. Unfortunately The Key Apartments had no security cameras in 1995. Due to technology, the presence of cameras around town was less prevalent than today as well. Scott says there weren't many security cameras to review footage from.
Marni Hughes of News Nation then asked Scott if there were missteps in the investigation. Scott said that of course, the scene would've been processed differently today, due to law enforcement techniques and crime scene processing changing since 1995.
Scott Fuller has sat in the front seat of Jodi's car and the reporters at Findjodi.com have done extensive research on Jodi's car.
Due to no body or blood being found at the scene, the case is still being treated as a missing person's case. Findjodi.com considers Jodi's disappearance as a "forceable abduction."
An evening news anchor stated that it was scary when Jodi went missing, like a "kick in the gut." The KIMT Former News Director, Doug Merbach, says that knowing that Jodi's disappearance was a possible crime scene just stopped him in his tracks, thinking, "What the heck?" Jodi's KIMT colleagues wore white ribbons dotted with a jewel in honor of Jodi after she disappeared. Many community members interviewed by the local news at the time expressed concern about Jodi's disappearance in their town. Everyone was willing to help because Jodi was a key part of the community as a daily news anchor. One of Jodi's evening coworkers said that she feels that the Mason City Police Department was in over their heads at the time. Kidnappings were obviously not frequent in Mason City, Iowa in 1995. Also, this town seemed like a tight knit community.
The reward for information that Private Investigator Steve Ridge put out in February 2023 has increased from $25,000 to $50,000. There is a tree with a yellow ribbon and a memorial just outside of the Mason City Iowa Police Department.
Jodi, I hope one day, you are found. Wherever you are, I hope you have found peace.
This has been another episode and blog of Mysteries of the Missing. Until next time, stay safe.
If you know anything about the disappearance of Jodi Huisentruit, you can visit one of the following websites or call the following phone numbers, or you may email me at mysteriesofthemissing2023@gmail.com:
970-458-JODI
Mason City Police: 641-421-3636
More information on Jodi Huisentruit's disappearance:
Jodi's family's statement on the 28th anniversary of her disappearance, June 27, 2023: https://findjodi.com/statement-from-jodi-huisentruits-family-on-the-28th-anniversary-of-her-disappearance/
Iowa's Division of Missing Persons:
Comments