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January 2, 2025 44 mins

On today’s episode, Georgia and Karen cover the disappearance of Jodi Huisentruit. 

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Hello and welcome my favorite murder twenty twenty vis It's
twenty twenty ye, that's your darts, that's Karen Gilgar. Twenty five?
Is that a good number? Is that a lucky number?
How do we feel?

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Okay?

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Oh oh? The numeralges love twenty twenty five?

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Do they? Uh huh? Okay?

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Because if you add all of that up, it goes
to nine. And nine is the power number. For girls
that wear black nail polish, for girls that wear glasses,
for girls that like books.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
Crystals. Do we have a lot of crystals going on?

Speaker 2 (00:52):
A lot of crystals? Nine is the number of crystals?

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Okay?

Speaker 2 (00:56):
And you should have nine crystals on your windowsill?

Speaker 1 (00:59):
Shit mm hmm Okay, I'll get on that. We're playing
this before the New Year, so I can get on
that and do it.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah, that was all that was all acting, all that
happy New Year stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
It was just we're tricking you. We're here to trick you.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Show biz baby, Yeah, get used to it.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Drink your tiny coke and can't I have a tiny
sip every time we're supposed to be talking. Well, I've
had a fucking energy drink that hasn't hit me yet,
So do you better chug that thing? Is it a Celsius? No, No,
it's just like one of their shots.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
Cool. Please put your finger up like this when it hits.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Not the like good kind of like medicinal suck you up,
takes years off your life kind And I love those.
It's like one of the like juice juices with caffeine.
Oh your face.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
I man, I just immediately when you're like the kind
of fucks you up. It just reminds me of buying
those big black pills on the counter at seven eleven.
Remember those like last minute pulls by They call them
trucker speed, right, yeah, trucker speed, but like who knows.
It looked like it was made of ashes, like old
charcoal briquettes, and they're like, yeah, you'll totally get a

(02:10):
bunch of energy from this and no dose.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
I remember crushing up. Don't do that everyone, No, we're
from the nineties. We're allowed to crush pills up and
snort them. We've done that. We did it for you.
It burns. Don't do it.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
Yeah, if you're a youngster that has a real problem
with millennials and gen xers and then heed this advice. Yeah,
stay away from that shit. Just stick to your year, Bramte.
That's right, you're doing it right. Just here, it's fine,
You're fine.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
God, I can't believe we survived in the nineties. God
damn it.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
Icty eat those fuck it swallow those gigantic horse pills
that were black to somehow think that it was going
to like speed me up and like be exciting. And
I think I was trying to do some sort of
dumb diet thing always where it's like eat I won't
eat spaghetti just like you know, just you know, spaghetti,

(03:05):
eat this, and spaghetti especially now more than ever, eat
this especially.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
That's that kind that's got that's made from lentils. What No, Yeah,
there's no yeah, yeah no. Can you refused? I will not.
It's my brand.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
I made it. You didn't know that I started a
lentil So sorry. I love the hard stark Lentil metal company.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
Try them today.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
George is going to be a vegan in twenty twenty five.
That's correct, it's her new thing.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
Yep, all things vegan? Is it working yet? Am I awake?
It's weird to go from nap to energy drink podcasting.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
Yeah, I think it's cool. It's kind of like it's
the Dark Triad. Put your finger up like this. When
you start to feeling.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
Okay, okay, you'll know you love, it'll be me. It'll
be like the real meat doesn't get there. She she is,
she is. There's the reason she needs social breaks, because
she just gives it all.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
Into that microphone.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
So we're still on break this episode, which means only
one story today. But I'll make it powerful, I promise. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
Georgia loves acting and she loves storytelling. She's kind of
a folklorist in her free time, kind of like the
epitome of the number nine. You're such a nine.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
Hi, it's me, I'm nine. It's me. Hi, I'm the nine.
It's me. I'm the nine. It's me. So we have
ever been had a good holiday and a good New
Year New Year's Eve?

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Oh my god, I hope you had the worst New
Year's Eve. I hope you drank so many wine coolers
around ten and then around eleven you're like, I fucking
gotta throw up.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
I have to.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
My little gold dress is going to be ruined.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
All that spaghetti eight for dinner, it's going the girls
me eat the spaghetti and that's gone.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
They made me eat the Lentil spaghetti and now it's back.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
Heart struck brand Lentil spaghetti sure is sure comes up
gross and there's.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
A tiny picture of your face on the package making
a face like I don't like.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
This, Oh I would eat if I Seriously.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
I have had to eat a lot of gluten free
stuff with Nora, and yeah, there's some that's like shockingly delicious,
and then there's some that you're like, I need I
need a washcloth to get this out of my mouth
because it's so gross crazy.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
Some of the desserts are like fucking incredible. Mm hmmm.
You'd never know, Yeah, you could never tell the difference.
I'd only accidentally eat it or buy it. I wouldn't
do it on purpose. You wouldn't seek it out. Okay,
with a couple exactly right media highlights. This is our
podcast network, exactly right media and here's mylights.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
Okay, so don't tell your dud we said this, but
we think you should join our fan cult so you
can get access to all of these crazy new videos
that we're making. You get a twenty dollars credit to
our store and much much more. So go over and
visit fancult dot supercast dot com and get it on
the action because there's a lot of action.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
There is a lot of action, And if you have
a moment, please go follow us on social media. Our
handle is at exactly right on all platforms and you
can get updates on all of our podcasts including I
Said No Gifts and Ghosted by ros Hernandez.

Speaker 2 (06:28):
And if you would like to prove you love our podcasts,
make it your new's resolution to rate review and follow
us and them and everything exactly right wherever you like
to listen.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
Yeah, next time, like in a waiting room and you're like,
I don't know, I'm so sick of Instagram or whatever.
Just go to your podcast app and give that little
heart a pap on your favorite podcast because it really
does make a difference.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
It makes a huge difference. And then just go through
and kind of like you might want to delete some
pics in your phone and just let's clean that phone app.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
I guess rate reviewing and subscribe. I think it's kind
of like our like semi annual report or what's it called.
When you get like.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
That's right, like a performance review.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
That's it? Thank you, yes, think of it. As a
performance review and like it doesn't really matter, but also
it does matter. They can use it to fire even
in the future if it's not good. So like, we
need a positive performance review in the form of rate
review and subscribe. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 (07:22):
You can really, you can really push the needle in
the positive.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
Direction, sure, or the negative. I mean, we listen, we
might have pissed you off, you might be vegan free
will baby, it's your life, do what you want. You know,
we don't boss in that in that way, but we
do suggest strongly with a kind of mean looking on it.
That's right, with a fist raised.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
Review and Okay, so this is one of those episodes
where there's just one story, and this is one of
those episodes where it's just.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
Your just story. I'm happy about that, are you? I
love it so much. It Isn't it weird when you're
like to record today, I don't have to do jack
shit today.

Speaker 2 (08:03):
I don't you know, I have to do say a
bunch of bullshit about the nineties at the top, I
continually divert the conversation into a weird direction.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
Yeah, and boom, that's podcasting. You've married the podcast five
stars it's a great hobby if you can get it.
So okay, So I am doing a classic cold case,
you know, that's my obsession passion, and this one specifically
is a cold case that many people are obsessed with,

(08:33):
and it's still being actively investigated up until recently there
was even a little break. And this is one of
Iowa's biggest unsolved mysteries. This is the story about a
young TV news anchor who disappeared in nineteen ninety five.
This is the story of Jody, who's in truth. You
know what I'm talking about. No, I've never heard this.
You'll know when I start to tell you, because it's

(08:53):
like one of those ones that are like, how hasn't
it not been solved? But also how is there such
a small amount of evidence? And so everyone's able to
like put their own theories on it. There's groups of
people who have certain theories. There's like people fighting each
other about whose theory is right. So I have mine,
I want to hear yours. At the end of this,

(09:14):
I'll fight everybody. I know you will, and so I'm
ready for that. So the main source I used for
the story is an episode of twenty twenty called Gone
at Dawn and the rest of the sources can be
found in the show notes. And if you've watched any
of these true crime shows, you've seen this case. Probably Okay,
so this is the weird part of the story. It's

(09:36):
four in the morning on June twenty seventh, nineteen ninety five.
We're in Mason City, Iowa. Mason City is a small
city of about twenty nine thousand people. It's up by
Iowa's northern border with Minnesota, about halfway between Minneapolis and
Des Moines, so it's like a smaller town outside of
the big cities.

Speaker 2 (09:54):
Every once in a while when we talk about a
state and then you say something like that where it's
like it's up by Minnesota, and then I'm like, I
absolutely thought those two estates were nowhere near each other.

Speaker 1 (10:06):
And then I wrote this, this is like an Allie,
this is beck in my researcher Ali Elkin giving me details.
I didn't fucking know that.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
I went on a map and I was like, Wow,
you know what I'm going to get you and me
for Christmas, in Christmas, past, Christmas future. I'm going to
get us the United States map place mats, and then
we are going to know these states by heart in
one year.

Speaker 1 (10:27):
Okay, perfect, So here we are. For most people in
Mason City, it's the middle of the night. It's four am, Like,
who is at that early? But for twenty seven year
old Jody, who's in true it's time to wake up
and get ready for work because she is an anchor
for the morning show on the local TV network, KIMT TV.

(10:48):
She's a newscaster and she's supposed to be getting into
the office at this point to prepare for the show,
do her hair and makeup, get ready to go on
at six am. So ouch, Oh my god, who choose
that life? I would just be fired immediately.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
So difficult also because like then you have to go
to bed at nine point thirty probably right, and you
have to make sure no one wakes you up, yeah,
so that you can.

Speaker 1 (11:11):
Get your full night sleep. Sure there's no insomnia. You're
not allowed to have insomnia, which causes my worst insomnia
when I can't I'm not allowed to have in soomnia,
you know. Yeah, the pressure is on. Yeah, go to
sleep right now. Yeah. You have to be a very disciplined,
like reliable obviously person.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
The one thing I do love about that though, of
getting up and being that kind of morning person. First
of all, it's badass. So they're you know, you're really
doing it and you're in it.

Speaker 1 (11:36):
You have a dream and you're like doing all these Yeah,
it's this incredible dreaming your dream.

Speaker 2 (11:40):
Yeah, but then you're also out with like people who
deliver newspapers.

Speaker 1 (11:44):
Yeah, the guy that works at the donut shop.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
Totally, a very select group of people are up in
the morning when it's still dark. Yeah, it's cool, it's
cool to like dip into that.

Speaker 1 (11:55):
But then see this story reminds me that it's still
night time time and the creeps are still out, Like,
I guess this time night is a really is like
when people break into cars a lot, like there's still
a nefarious shit going on, and you think, well, it's
my morning, so everything's fine, but it's like still dark
out and it's deceiving, you.

Speaker 2 (12:16):
Know, yeah, middle of the night in a lot of ways.

Speaker 1 (12:18):
Like I don't think you're as alert because it's your morning,
but it's really dark out still.

Speaker 2 (12:23):
So.

Speaker 1 (12:23):
Jodie's originally from Long Peririe, Minnesota. She's been working as
an anchor at the TV Network for two years, though
she's only lived in Mason city for a relatively short time.
Jody has lots of friends. She's bubbly, she's social, she's outgoing,
as I think you kind of have to be to
be a female newscaster.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
It seems like, yeah, I think that would be part
of your makeup.

Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yeah, it's like you and the head of the sales team,
like you guys are all like yeah. They have this
personality that I've always been like, how do you do that?

Speaker 2 (12:50):
Yeah, the outward facing kind of like good morning Mason, say.

Speaker 1 (12:54):
Yeah, I made cupcakes. When did you fucking make cupcakes?

Speaker 2 (12:57):
I know.

Speaker 1 (12:58):
She's pretty much exactly what you'd imagine young TV news
anchor to be. She's got this like kind of blonde bob.
She looks to me like a cross between Belinda Carlyle
because she's also got the like nineties, you know, bob
kind of big teased bob cut. She looks a little
bit like Britney Spears as well, So cute dimples, like
really beautiful, exactly what you'd think of. And so the

(13:20):
problem right now at four am is that Jody isn't
at work yet as she should be. So the show's producer,
a woman named Amy Koons, calls Jody at her apartment.
The two women both have to be at the studio
well before fucking crack of dawn, so they have an
agreement to call each other by four am if one
of them isn't at work, to kind of watch each
other's back and make sure no one's overslept nice. So

(13:43):
here's where our story differs from every other story we
tell that begins this way. Jody actually picks up the
phone and Amy's call has woken her up when she's
supposed to be at work, so Jody asks time it is.
Amy tells her, and Jody, you know, scramble. She says,
I'll be right there, hangs up, and it should take
Jody about ten minutes to get to the studio. She

(14:04):
has like a bag that she brings she'll do her
hair and makeup while she prepares for the show, so
she's running late, but she still has time to scramble
and get there. But at four thirty, Jody still isn't
at work. Amy calls again, and this time she gets
Jody's answering machine, and at five am, Amy calls one
more time, still gets no answer, and at this point
Amy is scrambling to put together a show without Jody,

(14:25):
but it's like not on her mind that something is wrong.
She just figures she fell back to sleep she had
woken her up the first time. Amy winds up going
on for Jody when the morning show starts at six am,
and when the news director gets into the office at
seven am and the staff tells him Jody never showed up,
he immediately calls the police and asks to go check
on her. So when the police gets to Jody's apartment,

(14:46):
they first check inside, nothing seems amiss. But when they
go back outside to look at her car, which is
a red Mazda Miata, which is so cute for a
young working woman to have, you know, it's still in
its parking spot. But they are of a struggle and
there are some photos from this, and it's just like chilling.
You know, it's chilling to me too.

Speaker 2 (15:06):
When you said that, the news director immediately called the police.
Because the news director has been in the news for
I'm sure a long career, so anybody else that's just
kind of paying attention to other things, that news director
is like, I know these stories, we're calling the police.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
I've seen some shit totally. Oh and like even if
she had like fallen back to sleep when Amy called
her by seven am, she'd probably have been awake by
then and freaking out.

Speaker 2 (15:30):
Yeah, because you have that kind of early morning internal
alarm clock.

Speaker 1 (15:34):
Totally. So here's what's going on with the scene. The
driver's side mirror on the car is bent backwards. Jody's
belongings are scattered on the ground, like there's a pair
of red pumps that have essentially fallen off her feet,
a pair of earrings, a kind of hair spray, and
her hair dryer. Remember, she probably had her like go
bag with her to get ready at work, so she

(15:56):
was probably on her way to her car to go
to work to finish getting ready, and something happened outside
of her car. On the ground. Investigators also find the
key to Jody's cars it appears to be slightly bent
and on the ground. Near the car, investigators find what
looks like drag marks, like these little indentations that look
like someone's being dragged. And investigators also find one partial

(16:19):
handprint on the outside of the car. And I mean,
so there's a lot of scenes that you hear about
that don't give any clues as to what happened, which
really delays someone getting searched for. And I think that
all this evidence there is almost this lucky thing because
they know immediately something's wrong. Like I've been ready about

(16:39):
jac Duguard's abduction and it's just gone without a trace,
nothing off behind. And that's just almost worse because you
have nothing to go on. But here you have evidence
to go on.

Speaker 2 (16:50):
And like a little window of time where it's like, oh,
I had talked to her.

Speaker 1 (16:55):
Here and then I knew she was running to her car. Totally,
it had to be between this time and this time. Yeah, totally.

Speaker 2 (17:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:02):
And I think everyone who's obsessed with this case is
like for me personally, it's like the answer is somewhere
in here, in this little area and window of time.
But so the apartment complex where she lives, you know,
where the parking lot is, is a group of two
story in mid century type buildings, three neighbors from the complex,
so that they heard a scream at about four thirty am.

(17:23):
Of course, no one called the police. One witness reports
that they specifically heard a woman's scream leave me alone.
Do you like? Do you have what I have? Where
it's like I thought I heard one gunshot, but I
don't know, and so you don't call the police, right,
and it's like, I don't it doesn't sound I mean,
this is LA So some people are like, what are
you fucking talking about? But every once in a while

(17:46):
you hear a gunshot in La, Yes, in your neighborhood,
for sure, that's definitely happened, But you wouldn't What would
you say to the police when you called.

Speaker 2 (17:54):
You would be like, I heard what I think is
a gunshot, and they'd be like, okay, anything else, and
they would hang up on you because they literally don't
help you a lot of the time.

Speaker 1 (18:04):
If I heard a woman's scream in the middle of
the night, though, I think then I would.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
And say leave me alone, and you would. At least
I would love it if there were more dudes that
were like, I got to go out there and.

Speaker 1 (18:17):
At least go at least look totally like that hometown
we read recently where the dad like caught her and
ran inside and fucking caught me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I
think that Vince and I if we were fucking woken
up at four in the morning by a woman screaming,
would fucking take care of shit, take some action, take
some action, and also call the police. Yeah, yeah, you know,

(18:39):
you don't mind your own business. That's like rule number one.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
Mind your own business up until a point. Yeah, and
then when business gets scary and dangerous, yeah, go ahead
and don't mind your own business.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
Right. A scream is a cry for you to butt
into my business, you know.

Speaker 2 (18:54):
And as a woman, you can stay in your apartment
and start calling the police totally.

Speaker 1 (18:58):
You don't have to go outside. Okay. PSA, now we
have that out.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
I mean PSA that we're making up based on something
we wish mary badly didn't happen.

Speaker 1 (19:08):
Yeah. So curiously, another witness who lives across the hall
from Jody says she heard a commotion outside Jody's apartment
the night before. She says she heard a man banging
on Jody's door, saying open the door. I know you're
in there, but that said, this person tells this story
like weeks or months later, not immediately after JODI's disappearance,

(19:30):
so it's hard to like really pin down exactly what happened. So,
while police are still at Jody's building, a friend of
Jody's comes over and says that he believes he was
the last person to have seen her. This man's name
is John. I'm not going to say his last name,
but it's you know, all over the internet. And he's
older than Jody. He's forty nine, so like twenty years

(19:51):
older than her. But the two really do seem to
be close friends. He had recently thrown a surprise party
for her twenty seventh birthday, and the night before before
she disappeared, he says she had gone to his house
to watch a home video from that party. There's actually
a problem though, with this sequence of events, and here's
another camp that believes that this guy fucking totally did it.

(20:11):
So the day before Jody disappeared, she had played at
a charity golf tournament. That tournament was followed by dinner
at the country club, and Jody had been at that dinner.
Multiple people report that she had left dinner at eight pm,
but John maintains that she came over after at the
dinner to watch the video. The video is about fifteen
minutes long, but investigators know that Jody made a long

(20:33):
distance phone call from her apartment at eight twenty four pm,
so this timeline doesn't add up right. Jody wouldn't have
had time to get to John's from the dinner, watch
the video, and then drive home in time to place
the call. So it's just this weird discrepancy.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
I'm sorry. It was his story that that was the timeline.

Speaker 1 (20:55):
It was his story that she came over and that
is the actual timeline. It's like, I don't know if
they confronted him or not, but they're like, you know,
this doesn't add up, which to me is like super suspicious, right,
But why would he offer that infoo wasn't true? That's
the question, because he's trying to hide something, right. But
John makes himself available to the police. He's generally very cooperative,

(21:17):
and other friends of theirs confirmed that they were just friends.
There was nothing weird going on, But of course the
relationship raises eyebrows, and John goes on multiple local news
segments in the wake of Jody's disappearance, you know, talking
about her, saying he had nothing to do with it.
He tells police and local news media that he had
been asleep when Jody was abducted, which is understandable, was

(21:39):
for in the morning, and a friend of his says
that she went on a walk with him that morning
from six thirty to eight thirty am. Is it weird that.
I'm like, well, I could see them being friends if
they were both in AA, because that's like, that's the
only time you meet like older people. I feel like, AA,
that's so specific is you might as well say that's
the only time I've ever met honestly, like, yeah, you've

(22:03):
been in the program for a long time, like let's
hang out. Yeah cool. Yeah. In another TV interview, John
mentions that he named his boat after Jodi. Hmm. It's
unclear whether he did this before or after her disappearance.

Speaker 2 (22:16):
It's not after. It's not after that would be insane, But.

Speaker 1 (22:20):
Why before that? To me, that's insane too, Like you're
naming your boat after a friend of yours.

Speaker 2 (22:25):
Well, I don't know is which one. I'm just saying
which one's weirder. I think after your friend disappeared and
you're like, great, I'm gonna go name a boat after her.

Speaker 1 (22:33):
After to me is like a tribute. Before, to me
is an obsession. I hear you and I raise you.

Speaker 2 (22:39):
After is making it about you where it's like I
name because all you're doing is pointing out to other
people that you named your boat after her.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
But someone who would kill someone and doesn't understand how
things look. Would think that it's like a way to
be like, see, I'm honoring her memory, Like look, how
normal this is. Yeah, I don't think they'd understand how
I of great, it's fucking creepy. I feel like either way,
it's creepy. What are you doing?

Speaker 2 (23:04):
No? Once the last time you heard someone unless it
was their child or their grandchild. Totally, I don't know. No,
it's it's odd. It raises flags, you know what it is.
I don't like if he did do it. I don't
like if he didn't do it. That's how I feel
about this story right now.

Speaker 1 (23:19):
Yeah, he's of course treated as a person of interest
for years. He's taken two polygraphs, and police will not
discuss whether or not he passed. He says that he did.
And Jody actually kept a journal and she mentions him
in it often, and she writes about having fun with
him on a recent water skiing trip and has nothing
negative to say about him. But I don't tell the

(23:39):
truth in my journal, do you. I don't have a
fucking journal. I have a once in a while journal
when I feel.

Speaker 2 (23:47):
Like it, Well, I'm gonna go find it and read.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
It exactly that's why I'm fucking telling.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
The truth anything, but you take the time to lie.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
I'll write like thoughts that I have at the moment,
but I won't really like details and seek Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:00):
You know, okay, you're just more like recording stuff that happened.

Speaker 1 (24:04):
Not recording stuff that happened, just getting whatever thought is
in my head out, but no details got it, so
he read it, it might not make any sense to you.

Speaker 2 (24:12):
I always felt like you were beholden to tell like
deep feelings and secrets in a journal. That's why I'd
always be like, I should start doing this for my
mental health, and then literally two days later I'd be like,
throw it over my shoulder.

Speaker 1 (24:23):
For me, and I'm getting for you too. Growing up
with the sibling means that you don't write jack shit
in the fucking diary or they're going to read it
and make fun of you and hold it over your
head for the rest of your life.

Speaker 2 (24:33):
Absolulutely do you know that? My sister one time I
wrote a letter. A boy that I went to camp
with wrote me a letter when we got home.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
I had a huge crush on him.

Speaker 2 (24:42):
And I wrote a letter back to him, and my
sister went and took it out of the mail box.

Speaker 1 (24:46):
Oh wow, because she.

Speaker 2 (24:48):
Knew she knew was like the wrong move, and she started, oh,
she that was nice. I know, but of course I
was like, I didn't know until and then she told
me like two years later, she's like, you never I
was like, oh my god, I signed on the most
embarrassing letter.

Speaker 1 (25:02):
She goes, no, you didn't. But what if that had
been like heartfelt and real?

Speaker 2 (25:08):
She was at camp she knew how not real it was.

Speaker 1 (25:11):
Okay, wow, that's actually really touches.

Speaker 2 (25:14):
She was. Laura was looking out the meanest, most loving
older sister of all time, which is like, please stop
acting like this, and I'd be like, I'm not going
to and then she'd be like.

Speaker 1 (25:24):
Okay, you're gonna have to keep following me, picking up
my trash along the way.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
Everything's a show, come and fix it.

Speaker 1 (25:36):
Okay, we're back in. So they call the State trippers.
The police call the State troopers in to come help
the Mason City Police to look for Jodie, which we
always like. They bring in dogs and search in nearby river.
There's also like park grounds across the street from her
apartment building. It seems like maybe campers hang out there.
Maybe also people party there like it's and also like

(25:56):
if she has a stalker, it's a good manage point
to like watch, yeah, you know what I mean. No
sign of Jody is found though in that park area
and inside Jody's apartment, police notice two things. There are
two wineglasses by the sink, and the toilet seat is
up in Jody's bathroom, which would suggest dear dumb male guests,
which happened at hers right. This leads, of course, people

(26:20):
to wonder if a man had been in her apartment
the night before she disappeared. I've also read somewhere that
there were beer bottles like by the dumpster outside, as
if someone was hanging out waiting around. But oh, I
you know, I can't find anything further on that, and
no further evidence is found, and it sounds like the
glasses aren't tested for DNA, or if they are, there's
no an account for male DNA, like you know, they haven't.

(26:43):
It's an open case. So they haven't really said, but
you'd think that they would let us know if that
was the case. So people point out that Jody is
a local celebrity and so that might have been a factor.
In her disappearance. It is a small town, and I
think the newscaster is like a big deal there, right, Yeah,
it would be a huge Yeah. There's no fucking online influencers.
There's no online It's like this is these are the celebrities.

Speaker 2 (27:06):
And like it's a person. You turn on your TV,
you're seeing them all the time. I feel like somebody
like a newscaster would be especially prone to a stalker
in that way.

Speaker 1 (27:14):
Totally. So Mason City is very small. In other parts
of the country, we would call it a town. It's not,
you know, a city. And Jody lived life like a
regular person, even though people started their mornings with her
every single day. So it's not unheard of for TV
news personalities to have stalkers inpact. Obviously, it's very common.
And Jody was a young woman who lived by herself

(27:35):
in a small apartment complex without any kind of special security.
She was listed in the phone book and so it
probably wouldn't be hard for someone to figure out.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
Where she lived, no security.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
You go to the news station, you wait till she
comes out, you follow her home. I mean it's yeah,
kind of terrifying. Yeah, So the current lead investigator on
the case says that the stoker angle doesn't add up
for him. And remember, Jody was late for work the
day she disappeared, So on a normal day, she would
have walked out the door three in the morning. So

(28:08):
a stoker waiting for her would have had to stay
outside her apartment building for a whole extra hour to
grab her on the day she disappeared. And the investigator
doesn't think that that's likely. And I hate to contradict him.

Speaker 2 (28:19):
But yeah, he's wrong.

Speaker 1 (28:21):
If he knew she had to be at work, he
could have just waited.

Speaker 2 (28:25):
I'm sorry you're trying to say that stalkers wouldn't wait
an extra hour.

Speaker 1 (28:29):
I feel like that is what they do. Yeah, it's
like today's the day I'm going to do it.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
They wait all the time. It's stalking.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
Yeah. And then the other thing people think about is
that if she did have someone over the night before
and she was being stalked, that might have upset the
stalker enough to wait for her and attack her. Yeah,
that makes sense. So that kind of is an angle
I really think is strong. So nine months before she
went missing in October of nineteen ninety four, Jody made

(28:59):
a police report saying that she had been out jogging
she was being followed by someone driving a white truck,
and the night before Jody disappeared, a neighbor reported seeing
an unfamiliar white van in her building's parking lot. Don't
like that. Some people also say that she was going
to change her phone number because she was getting nasty
calls from someone. And there's one other angle that people

(29:21):
always wonder about. I mean, this is kind of loose
for me, but Jody had been covering the growing issue
of drug use in the Midwest. Some people think that
she was possibly killed by people who didn't want her
to keep reporting on it. But I mean, she was
not an investigative journalist. I can't imagine she was like
breaking any crazy news that like gangs were worried about

(29:42):
her sharing.

Speaker 2 (29:43):
Right, you know what I mean, all after the fact
kind of stuff that already happened.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
Yet, right, So that seems unlikely to me. So two
years after JODI's disappears, in nineteen ninety seven, a serial
rapist is arrested and ultimately convicted. And this man lived
in Mason City, about a block or two away from
the te studio where Jody worked. Oh yeah, police look
into him in connection with Jody based on an account
from a jailhouse informant. But they ultimately rule him out,

(30:09):
which I am like based on what because it must
have been it had to be like he was out
of town that day or something to rule him out,
you know, right, it's pretty crazy. There's another man from nearby,
Minnesota who has a record of sexual assaults going back
to the nineteen seventies. He was known to spend time
in Mason City. He owned a white van, not unlike
the one that the witness had seen in Jody's apartment

(30:32):
building's parking lot. And this man's ex wife actually says
that he had a special interest in Jody. Yeah, and
two witnesses who have had conversations with this man say
that he bragged to them about being involved in her disappearance.
So I just want to know how close they were
looked at, and like, can we do it again? Please?
There are private investigators, there's you know, regular investigators on this.

(30:56):
You'd have to think that they looked as much as
they can put into these people.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
If anyone came and said, hey, this guy bragged to
me that he was involved, you know that they looked
into that.

Speaker 1 (31:07):
Person right right, and that does happen all the time. Yeah,
and they had nothing to do with it. In two
thousand and four, police serve this guy with a search
warrant for his finger and palm prints, and the officer
who executed this warrant says that this man became irate
when presented with the search warrant, but he had to comply.
He was never charged. Police say they've cleared him. In

(31:30):
June of two thousand and one, Jody's family makes the
awful decision to declare her legally dead, but no one
is given up on finding out what happened to her.
In two thousand and three, a group of journalists former
website called fine Jody dot com, and this group is
still extremely active. So for journalists, this case hits home

(31:50):
because it's a big community made up of some people
who knew Jody personally, but also other journalists who didn't
know her, and this just hit them, it seems, so.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yeah, it's one of their own, one of their own.

Speaker 1 (32:02):
Yeah, yeah, So this is another crazy little like red
creum to throw in there. In early June two thousand
and eight, eighty four photocopied pages of Jodie's personal journal
were anonymously mailed to a local newspaper. The original journal
had been in the possession of the former Mason City

(32:23):
Police chief. So who sent this? Well, it turns out
the sender was identified as the wife of the former
Mason City police chief. He had taken copies of this
home or the journal, I don't know which, and she
sent them maybe in a bid to like try to
fucking get this solved. You know, it's just weird. It's

(32:43):
just a weird violation. Maybe she was hoping that someone
would lean some information off of it. You know, it's
been it had been thirteen years.

Speaker 2 (32:50):
So is there anything in it that helps people or
it furthers anything.

Speaker 1 (32:55):
It doesn't seem like no, I mean maybe, yeah, who knows?
It is that thing where like they keep stuff secret
so that only the killer knows. But eventually, if there's
no leads at all, you've got to put some information
out there to try to get some leads. So in
twenty seventeen, John, the older friend guy who named his
boat after Jodi, is subpoena to appear before a grand

(33:19):
jury for a second time. Like they're on this guy.
He gives finger and palm prints in a DNA sample.
The results of that grand jury proceeding is sealed, but
I feel like it happened at twenty seventeen. If they
had anything on him, he would have been indicted by now, right,
it seems like it. Yeah. John recently gave a statement
saying he has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, and he

(33:42):
has reiterated that he had nothing to do with Jody's disappearance.

Speaker 2 (33:46):
Sorry, So ultimately, the reason they went to him first
was just because they were close.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
I think he showed up that day when they were
searching when they went to the crime scene. Oh, he
kind of inserted himself, you know, which we always in
true crime that's a red flag. But he does. He
did think he was the last person to see her
the night before, and.

Speaker 2 (34:09):
If you heard, if someone told him she might be missing,
he might run over there to see what's going on.

Speaker 1 (34:15):
Sure, Yeah, Or he's driving by and it's this friend's
apartment building and something's going on in there. Yeah, right,
So it could be totally interestent. That's why I'm not
saying his last name because who the fuck knows, right, right,
And like, if we find out what happened and this
whole time, this guy's been hounded and had nothing to
do with it.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
Which happens a lot. Yeah, when they're like they just
the police decide this one person is guilty and they're
gonna bend it all around to Yeah, get that.

Speaker 1 (34:42):
It just like this sudden violent act. To me, it
either seems like a stalker or a crime of opportunity,
like something guy, someone from nefarious person was there, maybe
breaking into cars or like peeping tom And at four am,
she happens to come out.

Speaker 2 (34:59):
And when you first said that, she screamed, leave me alone.

Speaker 1 (35:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:02):
To me, I interpreted that as that she had dealt
with this person totally.

Speaker 1 (35:07):
Like I know I've seen you leave me alone, because
you won't leave me alone. You won't leave me alone.
Tips still come in all the time on this case,
most recently just this past October that we just had
investigators got an anonymous tip about possible human remains on
a farm in Windstead, Minnesota, and it was known that
it was about Jody. So people were like excited that

(35:29):
something was finally going to happen in this case. It
turns out that the bones which just farm animal remains,
but you know it did once again stir up interest
in the case. The Fine Jody Group still maintains billboards
around Mason City asking for people to come forward with
tips about this case. They get tips regularly and they
run down all of them, hoping to finally solve this

(35:50):
almost thirty year mystery.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
God, I know.

Speaker 1 (35:54):
Jody's sister Joanne says, quote, I don't like the word closure.
You're not going to close something. We're always going to
think about Jody. We're always going to miss her. End quote.
And that is the story of the disappearance of Jody,
who's in truth.

Speaker 2 (36:09):
That is so crazy.

Speaker 1 (36:12):
That's just one of the ones that like holds space
in my mind at all times, you know.

Speaker 2 (36:16):
Yeah, the drag marks, Yeah, the clarity that it was
something potentially violent.

Speaker 1 (36:23):
Dangerous, scary shoes, the shoes left behind bent key, I know,
I know, you know, whenever there is a crime in
the immediate area or even larger, it's like, does this match?
It kind of reminds me of the Springfield Three who
just disappeared out of nowhere as well. It's just so like,
did you do them? I did that one? Andrews told

(36:45):
me episode ninety five. Good to know, But that was
two hundred years ago, So that was in nineteen ninety
nine that I did that. Twenty twenty five. Now good
to know, Yeah, good update.

Speaker 2 (36:58):
I think it's that thing of like it's a It
doesn't surprise me that there are all kinds of theories,
camps and people discussing it and fighting about it. Yeah,
because it's all to the good of let us figure
this out, right, So you know, again theorizing about why
people like true crime. But it's like, if we all
put our brains together here on Reddit or anywhere else,

(37:18):
can we please just get this going one step forward?

Speaker 1 (37:22):
Right, because the investigators haven't been able to find anything,
so like, why not have more people put their eyes
on it? Thirty years later?

Speaker 2 (37:29):
It's like, and I think you're right about when you're
like reinterview some of those people or just like is
there anything that like you know that much later can
could change or break or oh, this alibi actually isn't solid.

Speaker 1 (37:42):
Or any of those things. Yeah, like her phone records.
Was there someone calling her and saying weird things like yeah,
it sucks that, like you know, we have GPS tracking now,
which is so great, but back then there's just like
nothing to go on. Wow, that's my story. We'll go
back to two stories very soon.

Speaker 2 (38:01):
I mean, here's the thing I think about all the time,
and my frustration with your cold cases, because because we
all want a button ending, which is not how life works.
And how many many many crimes, the majority of crimes
do not work that way. But then there is that
potential of like and here is the break that you know,
thirty years later, here's the headline. We've been looking for.

Speaker 1 (38:22):
Carly, and it does fucking happen. It happens all does
the time. You know it does.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
So I just saw one on TikTok by a huge
person on there. Her name's true Crime Mama, and she
tells the story of this couple. It's the forty four
year old missing person's case of Charles and Catherine Romer.
And yeah, and they just and the guy with the.

Speaker 1 (38:46):
Sonar, Yeah, what's his what's what's their name?

Speaker 2 (38:49):
It's a man named Jason Serrata who has his own
sonar equipment. He searched the pond directly. It's like behind
this old hotel and then you can see where the
driveway basically goes down. So if they drove and like,
for whatever reason, just drove and drove into that in
this big old Cadillac and it sank like you can

(39:10):
just kind of see of like, oh my god, if
it was like the Mills a night.

Speaker 1 (39:13):
Yeah, no lights would happened. They were drunk or something.

Speaker 2 (39:16):
And then just like and that's that if no one
witnessed it, they wouldn't know totally.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
Yeah, those cases just give me the chills. And I
think there's probably so many missing person cases that can
be attributed to that. And there are like a lot
more companies and people now who are taking that seriously.
You know, the town doesn't have the money to use
that equipment on the lakes, but these individuals aren't. I

(39:42):
think that's amazing. Yeah, well, amazing job.

Speaker 2 (39:46):
I mean, it feels very trite to say I hope
I hope there's some breaking news the way there can
be breaking news sometimes, I really hope there is totally.

Speaker 1 (39:56):
Should we go back to what do we do now?
Fucking hooray? Do we do? What are we even doing
right now? Should we do a new one for twenty
twenty five? Yes, we should start a new one? What's
your what does nine mean? Again? Say it again? Do
I made all that up?

Speaker 2 (40:13):
Did you think that I swear to God, I swear
I've heard that the number nine means. I mean that
it was an amalgamation of all this stuff that I
just look at on my phone and see and did
it does great?

Speaker 1 (40:25):
Whatever, I believe it.

Speaker 2 (40:26):
It is true that twenty twenty five adds up to nine.

Speaker 1 (40:30):
Sure, but that doesn't mean anything though. It turns out no,
it doesn't. All the things about nine, I just wanted
people to feel good. I want people to like, let's
start interpreting numbers exactly the way we want to to
tell ourselves that we are going to be powerful and
strong and exactly what we want to be. It's chronic positivity.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
Let's go to toxic positive, toxic positivity.

Speaker 1 (40:54):
I love it.

Speaker 2 (40:55):
Chronic toxic delusional positivity for twenty twenty five.

Speaker 1 (41:00):
I've why not? So what should we have people tell us?

Speaker 2 (41:03):
Like?

Speaker 1 (41:03):
What are you what are you excited about this year?
Maybe what's your power number? Yeah, tell us what your
power number is, and then you have to get a
tattoo of.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
It hashtag for hash hashtag twenty two.

Speaker 1 (41:15):
Let's do what are you excited? What are you even
excited about this year? What are you even excited about?
In twenty twenty five. That can be a nice new question.
Why don't we answer it since we obviously don't have
any emails from it yet.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
Yeah, that's true. We can't because it's not the future.

Speaker 1 (41:31):
We truly can't.

Speaker 2 (41:33):
What I'm excited about for twenty twenty five and you.

Speaker 1 (41:36):
Can manifest something to make something up that, like that's
going to be the year that I get another dog
or whatever.

Speaker 2 (41:42):
Can you imagine the dream coming true of getting another dog?
I think I would like to do some more serious
actually writing, like write a script. I think that's going
to be my thing because I talk about it all
the time. There's like seven I've actually said on this podcast,
so poor man's copyright. But by talk about it too much,
I now need to just actually do it. And I

(42:03):
think that I'm going to make the time, find the
time and actually do it.

Speaker 1 (42:07):
Fuck yeah you should. I love that. Thank you. What
you'res going to be? What's mine going to be?

Speaker 2 (42:13):
It has to be far enough away that it's hard.
It still like what you ruminate on a thing that
comes back to you a lot.

Speaker 1 (42:20):
Let's see, in twenty twenty five, I'm going to become
proficient in gardening. Ooh what that's what I'm gonna do.
I'm going to like read gardening for dummies. I'm gonna
not stop watering plants. Okay, no joke.

Speaker 2 (42:38):
I have a gift for you because I accidentally bought
two of this book. It's a book called Plantopedia. Yes,
and Bradford Borlowski, who works in our legal department in
the Great Lakes Office, told me to get it because
he is a total green thumb. And he was like,
I actually just got this book and it tells you
like water this plant, water this type of thing. And

(42:58):
wherever I bought it, I accidentally bought to Okay, So
I will wrap it up as if I meant for
you to have it, and you can have it.

Speaker 1 (43:06):
Thank you, Thank you. I'm excited for that. Yeah, I'm
gonna do that this year. I'm going to be a
responsible adult who doesn't kill plants that's good, and who
cultivates a beautiful garden that I'm proud of. Great, what
are you even gonna do in twenty twenty five? Let
us know what do you comment to do? Or you're
trying to make it sound like the other one. Yeah,
what are you even planning to do in twenty twenty five. Yeah,

(43:27):
let us know in the comments of all our places.

Speaker 2 (43:29):
Yeah, we'll just like, we'll power number this into existence. Yeah,
and until then, stay sexy and don't get murdered by Elvis.

Speaker 1 (43:38):
Do you want a cookie? This has been an exactly
right production. Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck.

Speaker 2 (43:51):
Our managing producer is Hannah Kyle Crichton.

Speaker 1 (43:54):
Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.

Speaker 2 (43:56):
This episode was mixed by Leanna Scuillacci.

Speaker 1 (43:59):
Our researcher are Maren mcclashan and Ali Elkin.

Speaker 2 (44:02):
Email your hometowns to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot com.

Speaker 1 (44:05):
Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at my Favorite Murder.
Byebye
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Hosts And Creators

Georgia Hardstark

Georgia Hardstark

Karen Kilgariff

Karen Kilgariff

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