Cold Cases in Iowa City, Iowa





Patrolman Edward M. Leeney

32 YOA

Iowa City Police Department

Iowa City, IA

Johnson County

April 29, 1926

On April 29, 1926, Iowa City Motorcycle Officer Edward M. Leeney — married and a father of three young children — was killed in a streetcar collision while in pursuit of a fleeing Ford coupe.

Homicide

Edward J. Kriz

43 YOA

Hamburg Inn No. 2

214 North Linn St.

Iowa City, IA

Johnson County

November 10, 1962

Edward Kriz, 43, was shot outside the Hamburg Inn No. 2 in Iowa City when he startled a would-be robber on November 10, 1962.

Homicide

Ronald F. Lipsius

30 YOA

812 South Summit Street

Iowa City, IA

Johnson County

May 16, 1966

Ronald F. Lipsius, a 30-year-old Iowa City grocer, was shot to death on Monday, May 16, 1966 as he chased a woman bandit who’d just scooped $35 from a cash register in his 812 South Summit Street store.

Homicide

Sarah Ann Ottens

20 YOA

Rienow Hall

University of Iowa

Iowa City, IA

Johnson County

Case # 73-00179

March 13, 1973

On March 13, 1973, Sarah Ann Ottens was murdered in Rienow Hall at the University of Iowa.

Missing Person (Presumed Homicide)

Jane Wakefield

Age at Report: 26

DOB: November 19, 1948

NCIC Case No: M-703329643

Missing From: Iowa City, IA

Missing Since: September 6, 1975

Jane Wakefield — a teacher at Penn Elementary School in North Liberty, Iowa — was reported missing to the Iowa City Police Department on Monday, September 8, 1975, after failing to show up for work. Wakefield separated from her husband, John A. Wakefield, in 1975, and had filed for divorce six months prior to her disappearance. One informant told police Wakefield had been murdered and her body cremated and scattered along Interstate 80.

Missing Person

Charles Elmquist

DOB: 05/03/1945

Age at Report: 34

Missing From: Iowa City, IA

NamUs MP Number: 27722

Missing Since: November 16, 1979

Charles Elmquist went missing on November 16, 1979. His 1961 blue GMC van was located on November 17, 1979, parked in the University of Iowa Hydraulics Laboratory storage lot.

Homicide

Unidentified Newborn Baby John Doe

Found in Iowa City Landfill

Iowa City, IA

Johnson County

December 21, 1992

Four days before Christmas in 1992, a worker from a Kalona sanitation firm found a naked newborn baby boy’s body in a pile of trash at the Iowa City Landfill. The caucasian infant weighed 9 pounds and 3 ounces, and had just been dumped there around noon with the refuse picked up earlier from surrounding communities.

Homicide – Arrest Made, Suspect Entered Alford plea

Susan Pearl Kersten

38 YOA

Iowa City, Iowa

Johnson County

Case # 95-11388

September 24, 1995

On Sept. 24, 1995, Susan Kersten’s body was found in a burning vehicle in a farm field off Highway 923 about one mile south of the Regency Mobile Home Village in rural Iowa City where Kersten lived in Lot 130. The coroner determined she died from blows to the head before the car was set afire. Nearly 20 years later, her former boyfriend, Steven J. Klein, 54, was arrested in Muscatine and charged with first-degree murder. On Feb. 17, 2017, Klein entered an Alford plea and was sentences to 15 years in prison.

Homicide

Donna Lee Marshall

37 YOA

Iowa City, IA

Johnson County

Case # 96-00444

January 8, 1996

On January 8, 1996, Donna Lee Marshall, 37, was found by her fiancé and daughter in her southeast side Iowa City mobile home with a gunshot wound to the head. She died the next day.

Homicide

Laura Van Wyhe

21 YOA

From Iowa City, IA

Johnson County

Found along NE Missouri highway

October 26, 1996

On Oct. 26, 1996, a truck driver discovered Laura Van Wyhe, 21, alive but incoherent, alongside Highway 136 near Kahoka, Missouri. Van Wyhe died three hours later in a Quincy, Illinois, hospital.

Homicide

Frances Bloomfield – Closed/Cleared by Arrest and Exceptional Means

57 YOA

38 Wakefield Ct.

Iowa City, IA

Johnson County

September 20, 1997

Frances Bloomfield was reported missing on September 22, 1997, by her husband, John, who had returned from a business conference in France. Mrs. Bloomfield’s body was found three days later, bound with pantyhose and wrapped in plastic bound with duct tape, in a ditch along a highway about a half-mile south of Rockford, Illinois. She had been strangled. Investigators believe she’d been killed in her home on Sept. 20. John Bloomfield was arrested in November 2013 and charged with first-degree murder in his wife’s death. He died Nov. 6, 2014 while awaiting trial.