She was the star of local morning television in Mason City, Iowa – not as glamorous as it may seem, as it meant to get to work at three in the morning.
Despite arriving every day incredibly early for morning emission, Jodi Huisentruit had never been missing a program, not only once. On June 27, 1995, it eventually fell asleep. “I’m going there,” he said when his news producer called him to wake her up at 4 am.
Huisentruit lived alone in a small apartment complex in Mason City, about a kilometer of the work. Born in Long Prairie, Minnesota, was the youngest of three daughters. From an early age he stood out in sport and loved the golf especially. Before starting his journalist career, he worked for a short time as a on -board host of Northwest Airlines. A friend remembers she liked to say she wanted to be “in the air, not in the air” flying.
That morning, when he had not appeared at the station, “Jodi’s co -workers thought she probably fell asleep,” research journalist Caroline Lowe said.
With the disappearance of Huisentruit, the producer of the station presented the issue of 6 am. But then, as there was no sign of the presenter, the station asked the police to go to see.
Police did not find 27 -year -old Huisentruit, but found disturbing signs of his absence.
“When the police arrived at the scene, there were no signs of Jodi, but her car was there. There were clear signs of fighting” – like a folded car key, Lowe said, “he indicated that she was probably attacked from behind and that a lot of strength was used. And then, on the floor, they see her things, such as red jumps, the hair dryer, the earrings.”
“There were dragging marks in the parking lot,” said Brian Mastre, who at the time was a co-worker of Huisentruit at Kimt-TV, and “the objects he had in his suitcase, because he was late, were scattered throughout the parking lot.”
But that was almost just that. The building had no security cameras. Police found no witnesses, no blood.
Jodi Huisentruit has never been seen since. What is unusual in your case is that, 30 years later, a dedicated team of volunteers, such as Caroline Lowe, continues to try to solve the mystery. New and old clues are being evaluated – and far from Mason City, sinister excavations are still being made in the hope of finding Huisentruit’s body.
Disturbing telephone calls and a self -defense class
Mason City has his fourth police chief since the disappearance.
Current police chief Jeff Brinkley says the complaints continue to “arrive consistently throughout the year” and that their investigators are doing their part to “deepen the investigation.”
“Obviously, things increase a little at this time of year, when we approached a birthday, but we regularly received communications from several people from the community and across the country with ideas and information about Jodi’s case,” said Brinkley.
Huisentruit gave indications that he was concerned about his safety long before his disappearance. In October 1994, almost nine months before his disappearance, Huisentruit handed over a “suspect” that was “following, driving a more recent white pickup.”
She had also attended a personal defense course.
The day before his disappearance, Huisentruit participated in a charity golf tournament. Then he told some of his fellow players that he was thinking about changing his phone number after receiving disturbing calls.
“Her time was public, and she had the same time every day. Your data, where you lived, the phone number and the home address were on the telephone list,” Lowe said. “So it would have been very easy for a persecutor.”
A friend who maintained his innocence
Over the years, police have investigated several people who could be linked to the disappearance of Huisentruit. John Vansice was one of them.
He and Huisentruit were part of the same social circle, although it was 22 years older. He told police that she had been at his house the night before his disappearance. They had seen videos from a recent birthday party that he helped organize for the pivot.
A shoe found at the foot of Jodi Huisentruit’s house in the parking lot of his apartment block (Kimt/WCCO)
Police remained interested in Vansice, although it was never pointed out as a suspect or accused.
“From the first day, John Vansice said he worried about Jodi. He consistently denied any involvement in Jodi’s abduction,” Lowe said.
In 2017, investigators put GPS mobile location devices on two Vansice -related vehicles. He also complied with a court order to provide DNA, fingerprints and palm impressions to the FBI.
The location, however, seemed to provide nothing. Some of the information obtained with this exploration was revealed in April this year; Others, for reasons still unknown, were not. “Mere curiosity is never reason enough to potentially interfere with a ongoing criminal investigation, especially from a serious crime,” the president wrote about the disclosure, in response to a request for public records presented by Iowa lawyers who argued that the public is interested in knowing.
Chief Brinkley refused to comment when they asked him if Vansice had been officially excluded as having something to do with Huisentruit’s disappearance.
Vansice maintained his innocence until the day of his death in December 2024.
Another potential track
The police have some things. “We have an impression of the palm of hand as proof,” said chief Brinkley – and the department still has the belongings of Huisentruit that were collected at the scene, he said.
The impression was found in Huisentruit’s car. But who is the impression of the palm of the hand? This is the big frustrating unknown at the center of this case.
After receiving a complaint in October, Mason City researchers worked with Minnesota’s Winsted police to look near an agricultural construction area. Found only animal bones. “We haven’t found any remains,” Brinkley told CNN. “We didn’t win anything else with the search.”
But a few months later, a Mason City police member met with a Wisconsin sheriff to compare notes and review clues related to a man named Christopher Revak. He had been linked to two other cases with female victims; Its potential involvement in this case had previously been discarded.
Stickers asking for the sharing of information about Jodi’s disappearance (findjodi.com)
“It’s something we are analyzing,” said Brinkley. What has you aroused your new interest? Revak’s first wife, they knew, lived in Mason City when Jodi disappeared. (The woman is not considered suspicious.)
“There is a probable cause pattern here. There has to be evidence that supports these things in any direction we take in terms of accusation, or, you know, end the case, this kind of things. So when these evidence are clear and can advance in a direction, we will do so,” said Brinkley.
Revak, too, is dead. He died of suicide in a Missouri prison in 2009, when he was accused of a second degree murder of a woman.
Soon, few are those who have direct knowledge of the disappearance of Huisentruit or his suspects. Will the case be resolved before that?
“Right now, I feel a sense of impulse,” Lowe said. “I can’t explain, but there has been a lot of activity in the last year, between the judicial process, the search and the interview at Wisconsin, and this has made things continue to walk.”
“But,” he said, “I feel that I say this every year.” For her and her colleagues who are trying to resolve the case, developments that do not result keep them in an emotional roller coaster. “I don’t want to do the same thing again,” he said.
“A colleague of mine disappeared 30 years ago …”
Brian Mastre, former night news pivot at Kimt, had worked with Jodi. It can still feel anxiety and shock as if it had been yesterday.
A surreal element of the case is that Huisentruit’s co -workers had to cover the news of the disappearance as it was unfolding. Mastre wrote a two -page script for the emission tonight. He kept it, of course. Here, he read it again aloud, almost 30 years later.
“I thought of bringing you back and maybe someone remember, and that takes them back, and refresh your memory,” Mastre told CNN.
Currently news pivot and research reporter at Wowt-TV in Omaha, Nebraska, Mastre says nothing could have prepared him, him or his team, to have to report on the disappearance of a dear colleague.
“It was crazy, trying to get the story and find out what had happened, surrounded by other seasons doing the same, with the FBI and DCI” – the Iowa Criminal Investigation Division – “to interview us as we tried to write a program,” Masre said. “We were trying to get information from them and they were trying to get information from us.”
He said he is surprised that no one has slipped over the years to reveal any secrets that would lead to any answers.
Find Jodi
“She’s one of ours. I feel that we owe it to her as part of our family. I want to bring her home,” Caroline Lowe said. She spent 34 years as a WCCO-TV reporter in Minneapolis. After leaving the station, Lowe was on a special mission for Kare-11. Then he covered the case of Jacob Wetterling’s abduction, which became a national history. It took almost three decades to make a detention in the case of the murder of the 11 -year -old and the case was resolved after Wetterling was disappeared for 27 years, and the suspect ended up admitting the abduction and murder in court.
The Wetterling case shows that even colder cases may eventually be resolved – with luck and fieldwork.
Lowe is part of a larger community of journalists who worked zealously in the case. In 2003, journalist Josh Benson, at the time reporter and pivot of Kaal-TV in Austin, Minnesota, co-founded the “Find Jodi” group, along with its Kal-TV information director Gary Peterson. Other group members include Brian Wise, a photojournalist who previously worked at Kaal-TV in Rochester, Minnesota, and Scott Fuller, County10.com Director-General, a Wyoming media company. The nonprofit group also puts posters on Mason City in the birthdays of Huistentruit and the birthdays of his disappearance.
A poster requesting information sharing about the pivot’s disappearance in 2018 (Kimt/WCCO)
This year, the group has a poster exposed on the 122 motorway, in front of Mason City Municipal Airport. There is an image of Huisentruit and simply says “30 years. The time has come.”
The Call Telephone
Thirty years ago, it was an 11 -year -old child named Kristen who answered the phone when the police called to tell her family that Huisentruit had disappeared. (He asked CNN not to reveal his nickname for security reasons; currently manages a Facebook page to the family).
“The phone rang, I answered and they identified themselves as the police of Mason City. They recognized that I was a child and asked for my mother and my father.” She remembers seeing her father. “I remember his face when he answered the call, I knew it wasn’t good, I saw his face falling.”
“At 11, I had no idea what meant ‘missing,” she said. “It did not understand the disappearance of an adult.”
This has stayed with her all these decades. “It is not moved on; it becomes a part of us; it is always with us,” she said. “This is an ambiguous loss; we have no answers or justice in the case.”
Chief Brinkley told CNN that he still hopes that the police will resolve the case. “Under the right set of circumstances, it can be any day,” he said. “Whether it is DNA or confession, there are a hundred different ways to resolve the case.”
