May 19, 2025 • 29 mins
After a much-needed post-conference break, we’re back with a story that deeply moved us—and reminded us why we do this work. In this episode of Navigating Advocacy, we share the tragic and largely untold story of Wilma June Nissen, a woman who remained a Jane Doe for nearly 30 years after her brutal murder in rural Iowa.
Wilma’s life was marked by profound hardship—abandonment, abuse, and an unforgiving foster care system that failed her at every turn. Yet even in the face of unthinkable trauma, she showed resilience. Her daughter Krissi, who we met at Advocacy Con, is now on a mission to uncover the truth and find justice for the mother she never got to know.
We walk through Wilma’s early life, her disappearance in 1978, and the decades-long mystery that followed. With powerful insight from Krissi, we explore the barriers to solving this case, including degraded DNA evidence, gaps in the timeline, and a list of suspects still under scrutiny.
Wilma deserves justice. Her name deserves to be remembered.
➡️ Anonymous Tip Line: If you know anything about Wilma’s case, please call 712-472-8334.
➡️ Support Chrissy’s Advocacy Work:
➡️ Have a case we should know about? Email us at: info@navigatingadvocacy.com
Wilma’s life was marked by profound hardship—abandonment, abuse, and an unforgiving foster care system that failed her at every turn. Yet even in the face of unthinkable trauma, she showed resilience. Her daughter Krissi, who we met at Advocacy Con, is now on a mission to uncover the truth and find justice for the mother she never got to know.
We walk through Wilma’s early life, her disappearance in 1978, and the decades-long mystery that followed. With powerful insight from Krissi, we explore the barriers to solving this case, including degraded DNA evidence, gaps in the timeline, and a list of suspects still under scrutiny.
Wilma deserves justice. Her name deserves to be remembered.
➡️ Anonymous Tip Line: If you know anything about Wilma’s case, please call 712-472-8334.
➡️ Support Chrissy’s Advocacy Work:
➡️ Have a case we should know about? Email us at: info@navigatingadvocacy.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Happy Monday, Happy Monday.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
It feels so weird to be recording. We've taken quite
the hiatus to recover from the conference.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Which is insane because we never took one week off
for four and a half years, and then we're like,
let's just take six weeks off. It's fine, Yes, Dad,
I have missed it, like I never thought I would
miss recording me too.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
It's one of those things where it had become just
like a habit for us of like getting a story,
putting it together, recording it, editing it, all the steps
that it takes, and then when it's gone, it's you
would think we'd have so much more free time, but
I just did other things, like I just filled it
with more books or more couch rotting. Some it's time
(01:21):
by the pool, like I didn't do anything productive. But
I really think we needed that mental break after putting
on the conference.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Completely agree, and it really led us like miss recording
like it sometimes gets you get into this, like just
this routine of day in and day out, mondays, let's record,
let's do this and this, and so I think that
break really inspired us to start like we need to
get back at it. There are more cases out there
(01:49):
that we need to cover and more families that need
to be helped, and Advocacy Con was just brought all
of that full circle. It really did.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
The motivation is that an all time high and I
just can't wait to get.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Back to this agreed. So welcome to Navigating Advocacy. Obviously,
you guys know this is a podcast that highlights unsolved crimes,
they forgotten victims, and honestly anyone that needs fighting for justice.
I'm Melissa and I'm Whitney.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
This story actually came to us through Advocacy Con where
we met Chrissy, a young woman who's trying to learn
new ways to navigate advocacy for her mother.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
So today we're telling the story of a woman who
was forgotten by the world for nearly three decades. She
was brutally murdered and left in a ditch in rural Iowa.
For twenty eight years, she was known only as Jane Doe.
But now she has a name. She had a life,
(02:56):
and her name is Wilma June Nissan. Wilma's story is
not an easy one. It's filled with pain, abandonment, resilience,
and injustice. But more than anything, it's a story that
deserves to be told. Wilma was born on October nineteenth,
nineteen fifty four, in San Francisco, California. Her dad was
(03:22):
Charles Clarence Neissen and her mom June Simmons Bradford. Just
starting off. Her early life was filled with turmoil, and
by the age of eight, her mother had abandoned her
and her sister, Mona, who was actually deaf and nonverbal.
They were left in the custody of their father, but
(03:43):
life did not get better when her mom left. The
girls would end up being locked in closets. They didn't
go to school, they couldn't read or write. They actually
didn't even learn how to eat with utensils. Wilma was
ten years old when before she finally could even hold
(04:04):
a fork. The abuse was extreme.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Chrissy was told stories of how after Wilma's father lost
his job, the three of them were living in his
car for quite some time. During the day he would
leave the girl. He would leave the girls in the car,
sometimes locking Wilma's sister in the trunk. Wilma would wander
the streets during the day at nine ten years old,
searching for food.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Eventually, California's authorities intervened. Wilma and Mona were removed from
their father's custody in nineteen sixty four. Of course, they
were sent to a series of foster homes. Each was
really just this temporary stop in kind of her search
for stability and love. And we know how it is
so often sibilings don't get put together all the time,
(04:54):
especially when one is a children with disabilities. So the
fact that they had to also most likely be split
up was devastating.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Your history, your family history with being in the foster system,
as far as like being a foster parent. That there's
even fewer foster homes out there for medically needed situations.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
It's very hard to find a home, a foster family
that's willing to accept children with disabilities, and then along
with children with siblings, it's so hard, especially if they're
not babies or anything like that. I could only assume
that they were not put together very often, and in
(05:41):
this time in the sixties, who knows what was happening
to the children in foster care in California as well.
So it wasn't until nineteen sixty seven that Wilma finally
found some semblance of a home. But even then, Wilma
had experienced so much trauma throughout her entire life. She
(06:01):
was described as wild when she arrived, but still the
family took her in until things became too difficult. Like
we said, she didn't know how to read or write,
had never been to school, didn't know how to eat
with utensils. Like in a way that is that's wild behavior.
But it wasn't her fault at all, that this is
just the way that she had grown up and the
(06:22):
family did amazing with teaching her everything that she needed
to know. But things became difficult.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Absolutely, and even then if you look at what would
be team termed or described as behavioral issues, because back
then they didn't, like you said, in the sixties, the
tools weren't out there for how to help kids go
through anything, let alone a traumatic event. Let's add in
(06:51):
the fact that they were kept out of school, so
they were largely uneducated to this point. They didn't have
any sort of stability to teach them how to act
in a home environment, definitely not a public environment. So
I'm sure there was a lot of acting out in
class or acting out in school.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Because she had never been there.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Agreed, the family loved Wilma. Even with those difficulties, they
taught her how to use a fork, how to write,
and were able to help her learn how to read
at a first grade level in the short time she
was with them. Chrissy shared that she learned the family
had a dog that Wilma mainly took to because she
never had the opportunity to have a pet. And the
(07:36):
stories that Chrissy was able to tell me about Wimma
Wilma are few and far between because she never met
her mom and because she was passed around foster families
so many times, there weren't many people to turn to
for Chrissy to get information about her mom, especially in
those early years.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Exactly so Wilma won't be with the family forever. She
would end up getting put back into the system, but
it would be years later that this same family would
end up adopting Chrissy, which is absolutely insane to me.
So Chrissy would be born in nineteen seventy seven, Wilma
(08:18):
was the biological mother to three kids. She gave birth
to Michael in nineteen seventy four, Donald a year later,
and then Crystal, who we refer to as Chrissy in
nineteen seventy seven. So the two boys, they ended up
in foster care for while Chrissy was adopted to this
prior family that her mom had lived with, which is
(08:40):
I think is amazing because at least somebody could tell
her stories at least for that short period of time
that Wilma lived with them.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
You would think that, but honestly, they didn't talk much
about Wilma. She didn't know who her mother was. She
didn't even know her mom's name for quite some time.
She originally thought that Wilma stayed with this family the
entire time she was within the foster care system. Chrissy
was under the impression that Wilma had been at this
family the whole time, and that's how she got lucky
(09:12):
enough to be with the family later. But they didn't
talk about Wilma. They didn't have many stories to tell her.
It was not as exciting as you might think, Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Yep, did not know that. I was like, oh, they
would be there to tell her. Do you know how
long Wilma was actually with the family. Around two years,
give or take a few months. Okay, so from like
ten eleven is to almost thirteen, So like we were
saying Wilma's life wasn't easy to say the least. She struggled.
She had a ninth grade education. She hitchhiked. Her nickname
(09:50):
was Boots. As it's the mid to late seventies, everyone
was hitch hiking, and I just love the nickname Boots.
I can just imagine her all he's wearing like cute
boots walking around hitchhiking, and that's like where she picked
up that name. I feel like it could have. That's
a cute name. It is, it really is. But she
(10:11):
would also eventually end up engaging in sex work to survive.
She was often at the mercy of people who used her,
abused her, and then would abandon her.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Chrissy believes that she was introduced into sex work. However,
you may want to take that. I don't like to
say people are pimped because that's very degrading. Some people
choose to become sex workers, and that's okay too, that's
their choice. But she believes that she was introduced into
that as a way to make quick money. At just
(10:45):
eighteen years old, Wilma married Donald Wellington and gave premature
birth to her first child, a son. Seven months later,
she had her second son, again prematurely. Child Protective Services
took both boys as it was alleged that Wilma was
trying to hitchhike to Florida with one premature baby and
(11:05):
a newborn, So two very young children hitchhiking from California
to Florida. It just seemed like an unsafe practice. Wilma
was married to Donald for a few years before the
two divorced, and then she married Chrissy's biological father in
nineteen seventy seven. She had met him just a little
bit before that in seventy six, and Chrissy was born
(11:28):
in seventy seven, also prematurely. She was told that Wilma
left the hospital immediately after she was born and that
Child Protective Services would be taking her.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
In as well.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Chrissy's mother and father did not stay together long, maybe
a year and a half before they broke.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Up, so in February of nineteen seventy eight, Wilma left
California for Georgia. One rumor stated that someone wanted to
hurt her, and then another sex worker had asked a
man to drive her out of town. These were all
just rumors circulating around that time about what Wilma may
(12:06):
have been up to, but there's very little actual knowledge
of where she was what she was doing within this time.
So she was apparently traveling with a much older man
named Charles in men Belt, and apparently they were going
to stay with his mother. Once again, all of this
is just circulating from various people that had known Willa
(12:28):
at this time. So Charles claimed that she left his
mother's house in Atlanta just days after they got there.
This was the last time anyone saw her alive. This
is I want to preface and say none of this
is confirmed. This is one man saying this is the
last time I saw her, and he's just, oh, she
(12:48):
left a couple days after we got to Atlanta, and
that is as much of a timeline as we know,
because after this we really have no clue what happened exactly.
And this is back in Februs.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Remember this is February of nineteen seventy eight, so early
on in the year, and from here, no one knows
what's going on with Wilma, where she's at, who she's with,
where she's staying. But Chrissy's learned that this time she
was with Charles's mother, was anywhere from a few.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Days to two weeks.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
We know that she somehow makes it back to Iowa
because she starts working for an escort service in Sue Falls,
South Dakota. Now, I'm terrible in geography.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
You would think that.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Doing this, where we've researched towns and different areas, that
I would get a little bit better about a map,
But I'm not that great at it. I thought Sue
Falls was on the western side of South Dakota, and
so when later we learn about her situation in Iowa,
about her being in Iowa, I'm like, man, that's a
(13:51):
long way apart.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
No, Whitney's wrong.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
It is literally thirty five miles away. They're both like
border towns. It's a really like a hop, skip and
a jump away from where she's later found.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Oh well, yeah, I never think about South Dakota. So
I'm like, it's to me, everything is far away from
South Dakota. So that's it's great that you figured that out,
because I would have assumed it was far away as
well from Iowa. It's definitely far away from Atlanta, and
we really have no idea how she went from Atlanta
(14:24):
to South Dakota, but most likely she hitch hiked, which.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
To me, if you're hitch hiking, you're likely not getting
in one vehicle to go that far because let's be real,
how many vehicles on the highway are being like, Yeah,
I'm gonna pick up in Atlanta and you can ride
with me all the way.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
To Suit Falls, Dakota, South Dakota. Not there's that can't
be like she.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Just got lucky and got in the one vehicle that
was going that direction and that's where she ended up.
I feel like there would have been several people who
could have seen her on this journey, agreed or gave
her a ride.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Also, who knows if she wanted to to even go
to South Dakota. She could have just been like, I'm
willing to go anywhere until she figured out she wanted
to stay. She might not have had an actual plan either.
Sheren just went wherever people were driving. So we're at
February when all that's happening. Don't know how she gets
(15:18):
to South Dakota. Don't really know what's going on for
a few months, but we know on October fourth, nineteen
seventy eight, so the same year, a telephone worker lane
cable near Highway one eighty two in Lyon County, Iowa,
stumbled upon something horrifying. In a ditch. Hidden beneath browning
(15:39):
weeds lay a decomposed body. A young woman, faced down,
half naked with her feet bound by braided hemp rope.
She had white patent leather go go style boots were
still on her lower jaw was missing. With no identification
(16:02):
and a severely decomposed body. She was labeled Jane Doe.
Investigator scoured the area for her jaw, her clothing, and
really anything that could help identify her, and they could
not find any of it. So for nearly thirty years nothing,
no name, no answers, no justice. They knew this was murder.
(16:27):
As well. The body only had two teeth left in
the skull, which was odd, as well as the missing
jaw that I spoke about, which made this seem unusual
to say the least. It is believed that the missing
teeth and jaw are unrelated to any animals or anything.
We a lot of times when people are out searching
(16:47):
for remains, they're not going to find the entire body
or all of the bones or anything like that. This
case in particular, they're like it should have been there
because everything else was perfectly intact, and the fact that
the jaw and then she only had two teeth in
her mouth was missing. I don't know how they know,
(17:09):
but they're like, this is unrelated to any animals gavenging
or taking any of the bones.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
I don't know how that is. Think about it. We've
done a lot of research with this when it comes
to predation when animals come in. If this were related
to an animal, they wouldn't take They're not going to
take just one bone. They're going to take several pieces
with them, and it's also going to scatter the remains.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
They're not going to go pin the brick, one little
tiny bone and move along.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Right. Also, if there's only two teeth left in the skull,
where are the rest of where are her remaining top
teeth exactly?
Speaker 1 (17:52):
So yeah, you'd be missing all of the bottom ones
with that jawbone. But if only two teeth and if
they're like still intact in the school, this was okay.
So we got February all the way till October, so
a few months. But this is Iowa, so I mean
it's not crazy hot there, but it's also through.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
They didn't say skeletal remains. They found a decomposing body.
We know that she's unaccounted for from February to October
as far as the timeline goes, But she could have
just went missing, because no one ever reports are missing.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
She could have disappeared in.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
September and all I had only been out there for
a few weeks exactly, And I think we do I'm
I think we do mention like how long medical examiners
think she was out there, and so definitely it wasn't
just her skeleton.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
This is a decomposing body, so they should have found more.
And the whole animal thing that's debunked. They know that
the animals did not mess with this body for whatever reason.
It wasn't until January thirty first of two thousand and six,
So we're going from nineteen seventy eight all the way
(18:59):
till January three first, two thousand and six that a
fingerprint finally matched and gave this Jane Doe her name back,
which was Wilma June Nissen. Okay. The LAPD stored her
print and when Des Moines lab technician made the match
to an arrest in Long Beach, it reopened the whole
(19:21):
entire case that had haunted this local sheriff. I'll get
into the sheriff, but sometimes I'm amazed by law enforcement.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Wilma had never been reported missing, so there was no
one was looking for her, so when they found this
body on the side of the road, there was never
a way to make a connection back in the seventies
of who it could potentially be of. That's why one
of the reasons it took so long she was she
was an adult, She had limited contact with her previous
(19:54):
foster families and was a wonderlust soul. She was always
in new places, all traveling and just on the go
in a time that you mailed letters or you called
when you could, and no one thought anything of it
when you went weeks, months, sometimes years without communicating exactly.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
And we all know if you listen to True crime
the seventies, even little bit of the eighties, jurisdictions didn't
speak to each other. So even if someone did report
her missing in California, where she grew up, the likelihood
they would have made that connection to Iowa really would
have been slim to none. Honestly, they just didn't talk
that to each other the way that they do now,
(20:39):
they didn't have a way to do it like with
the databases and the internet like we have now. Sheriff Blomandahl,
this is the one that I talked about that is amazing.
So he really took Wilma's story personally. He never put
her file away. He kept a timeline of her life
on his office wall, even though he barely knew anything.
(21:02):
This was when she was a Jane Doe as well
him just trying to figure out who she was. He
said he felt like he knew her and could understand
how she felt on any given day. He vowed to
give her justice. He said, her body was found in
my jurisdiction. Therefore, she is a member of our community
(21:23):
and he was not about to give up on finding
out who she was and what happened to her. So
Wilma's autopsy revealed trauma. There's possible signs of a struggle.
She had dislocations in her elbow and her neck. She
was nude from the waist up. Her pants and underwear
(21:44):
were wrapped around her left leg, so perhaps a sexual
assault or possibly a consensual sexual encounter went wrong.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Christy stated that law enforcement had the foresight to take
fear no clippings, although to Christy's knowledge, no evidence ever
came from them. This is just like another peg on.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
The sheriff's hat or shelf.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
That like, good job for thinking this through, because I
feel like they didn't take fingernail clippings very often in
the seventies.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
I agree. I think especially I don't think this Iowa
county is humongous. So they're training you wouldn't think would
be up to New York City or LA. So the
fact that he had the foresight to do that is amazing.
And he didn't just discount her because she was a
Jane Doe. I this sheriff is amazing in my book, agreed.
(22:42):
So in two thousand and seven her body was exhumed,
So this is a year after they figured out who
she really was, or like, Okay, now that we know
who she is, we can pinpoint where she was at
a few timelines in her life. Let's exhume her in
hopes of finding more DNA evidence. Is vastly different from
two thousand and seven to way back in the seventies.
(23:04):
They're like, let's figure some more stuff out. But time
and water had eroded what was left. Still, they did
not give up. Okay, So this is just they're like, okay,
two thousand and seven, this isn't working out, but we're
gonna try some stuff something else. In twenty sixteen, they
released a photo of a woman they believed to be
(23:25):
one of the killers. Now, once I read this, I
was shocked. I'm like, how did we get here? I
still don't really know, and I hope maybe Chrissy had
some thoughts on this. This woman was a known escort.
She had a pattern of robbing other women that were
in the sex trade as well. I couldn't really figure
(23:48):
out why or how they ended up with this woman
as one of their top suspects. I don't know anything
to do with DNA or what.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
I don't believe it had anything to do with DNA.
I believe that there was a history of actually.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Two women that were on a violent.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Streak or something where they'd get really upset if other
people got jobs that they weren't getting and they would
rob them. But basically, Chrissy told me that two women
worked with Wilma through this escort service. They had stage
names of Sugar and Peaches. Law enforcement was able to
identify Sugar, they interviewed her.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
She was given a polygraph test.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Chrissy said that the results were either a failure or inconclusive,
but we know that they're not admissible in court, so
that's neither here nor there in my opinion on this interview. Peaches, however,
has never been identified, which makes me wonder were Sugar
and Peaches working together and Sugar's not giving up Peaches,
or maybe they are two different people that had nothing
(24:52):
to do together. They didn't work together with these robberies,
or they just had the same kind of idea. I
don't know, because Peaches has never been identified. She's only
been described as a light skinned black woman. Yeah, and
then that photo that was released, it's a good photo.
It's not like a sketch of a possible person. This
(25:13):
is like an actual photo of this woman. It's mind boggling.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
But I know a lot of sex workers will go
by their nicknames obviously for safety reasons. They don't need
to be given out any personal information to anyone. So
maybe even if Sugar happened to be friends with Peaches,
maybe she never really knew her real name. I mean,
(25:38):
you never know. So police say that more than one
person's DNA has been identified on whatever evidence that they have.
But here's the problem. The DNA is also too degraded
to be used in the FBI database CODIS, and so
the investigators are waiting for the day that technology catches
(26:03):
up because we know it will. They're able to take
way more like microscopic DNA now than they could ten
years ago, so we don't know where it's going to be.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
And they literally just brought back an extinct animal back
to life, like they literally just came up with dire
wolves again, which had been extinct for forever. The technology
is there, like, we've just got to use it for
the right purposes people exactly. Chrissy learned that the rope
that was found with her mom's body had been sent
(26:35):
off to a Scandinavian based DNA company and they weren't
able to extract what is called amplified DNA from the
rope roughly five or six years ago. This is what's
fueling Chrissy in her advocacy journey currently. If she can
get this now amplified DNA processed, perhaps it can narrow
(26:55):
the list of the potential suspects that they have, which
I've never heard of a DNA. There's so much more research.
I'm gonna have to do about it because it's I'm
not a science person. If you tell me you can
do it with science, yay you, that's congratulations.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
You're way smarter than I am.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
I want to know what amplified DNA really beans agreed,
because I don't have a clue, and that's amazing for
whatever they're doing over there.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
So the sheriff office has a list of eight suspects.
Some are incarcerated, others have criminal backgrounds, but none have
actually been charged, and Wilma's children, Michael, Donald and Chrissy
are left with questions, grief, and a void that is
never healed. Wilma was a mother, a daughter, a sister,
(27:45):
a survivor, and she mattered. Wilma deserved more in life,
but she still deserves justice in death, and we will
keep saying her name until that justice comes. If you
know anything at all, you can call the anonymous tip
line at seven one two four seven two eight three
(28:05):
three four.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
This is where the advocacy piece comes in for us.
Chrissy is now fighting to get Wilma's story heard by
as many people as she can, so please look at
our show notes, follow her social media pages she has
a Facebook, she has a petition, and I believe she
recently started on Instagram. She also has a gofund to
be going to help raise funds to go towards the
(28:29):
DNA testing. She strongly believes that if she can get
that DNA tested, she'll have the starting point to getting
answers that Wilma deserves.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
We'll have links in the show notes, and if you're
interested in supporting cold case investigations, check out organizations like
Season of Justice and Iowa Cold Cases. Thank you to
Chrissy for sharing Wilma with us. If you or someone
you love has been affected by violence, please know that
there are resources out there.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
If you know someone with a missing or unresolved case,
please send them to info at Navigating Advocacy dot com.
This episode was research, written, and produced by us. You
(29:45):
can learn more about our podcast, advocacyn and our nonprofit
Impact Advocacy Foundation at Navigating Advocacy dot com
Happy Monday, Happy Monday.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
It feels so weird to be recording. We've taken quite
the hiatus to recover from the conference.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Which is insane because we never took one week off
for four and a half years, and then we're like,
let's just take six weeks off. It's fine, Yes, Dad,
I have missed it, like I never thought I would
miss recording me too.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
It's one of those things where it had become just
like a habit for us of like getting a story,
putting it together, recording it, editing it, all the steps
that it takes, and then when it's gone, it's you
would think we'd have so much more free time, but
I just did other things, like I just filled it
with more books or more couch rotting. Some it's time
(01:21):
by the pool, like I didn't do anything productive. But
I really think we needed that mental break after putting
on the conference.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Completely agree, and it really led us like miss recording
like it sometimes gets you get into this, like just
this routine of day in and day out, mondays, let's record,
let's do this and this, and so I think that
break really inspired us to start like we need to
get back at it. There are more cases out there
(01:49):
that we need to cover and more families that need
to be helped, and Advocacy Con was just brought all
of that full circle. It really did.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
The motivation is that an all time high and I
just can't wait to get.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Back to this agreed. So welcome to Navigating Advocacy. Obviously,
you guys know this is a podcast that highlights unsolved crimes,
they forgotten victims, and honestly anyone that needs fighting for justice.
I'm Melissa and I'm Whitney.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
This story actually came to us through Advocacy Con where
we met Chrissy, a young woman who's trying to learn
new ways to navigate advocacy for her mother.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
So today we're telling the story of a woman who
was forgotten by the world for nearly three decades. She
was brutally murdered and left in a ditch in rural Iowa.
For twenty eight years, she was known only as Jane Doe.
But now she has a name. She had a life,
(02:56):
and her name is Wilma June Nissan. Wilma's story is
not an easy one. It's filled with pain, abandonment, resilience,
and injustice. But more than anything, it's a story that
deserves to be told. Wilma was born on October nineteenth,
nineteen fifty four, in San Francisco, California. Her dad was
(03:22):
Charles Clarence Neissen and her mom June Simmons Bradford. Just
starting off. Her early life was filled with turmoil, and
by the age of eight, her mother had abandoned her
and her sister, Mona, who was actually deaf and nonverbal.
They were left in the custody of their father, but
(03:43):
life did not get better when her mom left. The
girls would end up being locked in closets. They didn't
go to school, they couldn't read or write. They actually
didn't even learn how to eat with utensils. Wilma was
ten years old when before she finally could even hold
(04:04):
a fork. The abuse was extreme.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Chrissy was told stories of how after Wilma's father lost
his job, the three of them were living in his
car for quite some time. During the day he would
leave the girl. He would leave the girls in the car,
sometimes locking Wilma's sister in the trunk. Wilma would wander
the streets during the day at nine ten years old,
searching for food.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Eventually, California's authorities intervened. Wilma and Mona were removed from
their father's custody in nineteen sixty four. Of course, they
were sent to a series of foster homes. Each was
really just this temporary stop in kind of her search
for stability and love. And we know how it is
so often sibilings don't get put together all the time,
(04:54):
especially when one is a children with disabilities. So the
fact that they had to also most likely be split
up was devastating.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Your history, your family history with being in the foster system,
as far as like being a foster parent. That there's
even fewer foster homes out there for medically needed situations.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
It's very hard to find a home, a foster family
that's willing to accept children with disabilities, and then along
with children with siblings, it's so hard, especially if they're
not babies or anything like that. I could only assume
that they were not put together very often, and in
(05:41):
this time in the sixties, who knows what was happening
to the children in foster care in California as well.
So it wasn't until nineteen sixty seven that Wilma finally
found some semblance of a home. But even then, Wilma
had experienced so much trauma throughout her entire life. She
(06:01):
was described as wild when she arrived, but still the
family took her in until things became too difficult. Like
we said, she didn't know how to read or write,
had never been to school, didn't know how to eat
with utensils. Like in a way that is that's wild behavior.
But it wasn't her fault at all, that this is
just the way that she had grown up and the
(06:22):
family did amazing with teaching her everything that she needed
to know. But things became difficult.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Absolutely, and even then if you look at what would
be team termed or described as behavioral issues, because back
then they didn't, like you said, in the sixties, the
tools weren't out there for how to help kids go
through anything, let alone a traumatic event. Let's add in
(06:51):
the fact that they were kept out of school, so
they were largely uneducated to this point. They didn't have
any sort of stability to teach them how to act
in a home environment, definitely not a public environment. So
I'm sure there was a lot of acting out in
class or acting out in school.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Because she had never been there.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Agreed, the family loved Wilma. Even with those difficulties, they
taught her how to use a fork, how to write,
and were able to help her learn how to read
at a first grade level in the short time she
was with them. Chrissy shared that she learned the family
had a dog that Wilma mainly took to because she
never had the opportunity to have a pet. And the
(07:36):
stories that Chrissy was able to tell me about Wimma
Wilma are few and far between because she never met
her mom and because she was passed around foster families
so many times, there weren't many people to turn to
for Chrissy to get information about her mom, especially in
those early years.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Exactly so Wilma won't be with the family forever. She
would end up getting put back into the system, but
it would be years later that this same family would
end up adopting Chrissy, which is absolutely insane to me.
So Chrissy would be born in nineteen seventy seven, Wilma
(08:18):
was the biological mother to three kids. She gave birth
to Michael in nineteen seventy four, Donald a year later,
and then Crystal, who we refer to as Chrissy in
nineteen seventy seven. So the two boys, they ended up
in foster care for while Chrissy was adopted to this
prior family that her mom had lived with, which is
(08:40):
I think is amazing because at least somebody could tell
her stories at least for that short period of time
that Wilma lived with them.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
You would think that, but honestly, they didn't talk much
about Wilma. She didn't know who her mother was. She
didn't even know her mom's name for quite some time.
She originally thought that Wilma stayed with this family the
entire time she was within the foster care system. Chrissy
was under the impression that Wilma had been at this
family the whole time, and that's how she got lucky
(09:12):
enough to be with the family later. But they didn't
talk about Wilma. They didn't have many stories to tell her.
It was not as exciting as you might think, Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Yep, did not know that. I was like, oh, they
would be there to tell her. Do you know how
long Wilma was actually with the family. Around two years,
give or take a few months. Okay, so from like
ten eleven is to almost thirteen, So like we were
saying Wilma's life wasn't easy to say the least. She struggled.
She had a ninth grade education. She hitchhiked. Her nickname
(09:50):
was Boots. As it's the mid to late seventies, everyone
was hitch hiking, and I just love the nickname Boots.
I can just imagine her all he's wearing like cute
boots walking around hitchhiking, and that's like where she picked
up that name. I feel like it could have. That's
a cute name. It is, it really is. But she
(10:11):
would also eventually end up engaging in sex work to survive.
She was often at the mercy of people who used her,
abused her, and then would abandon her.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Chrissy believes that she was introduced into sex work. However,
you may want to take that. I don't like to
say people are pimped because that's very degrading. Some people
choose to become sex workers, and that's okay too, that's
their choice. But she believes that she was introduced into
that as a way to make quick money. At just
(10:45):
eighteen years old, Wilma married Donald Wellington and gave premature
birth to her first child, a son. Seven months later,
she had her second son, again prematurely. Child Protective Services
took both boys as it was alleged that Wilma was
trying to hitchhike to Florida with one premature baby and
(11:05):
a newborn, So two very young children hitchhiking from California
to Florida. It just seemed like an unsafe practice. Wilma
was married to Donald for a few years before the
two divorced, and then she married Chrissy's biological father in
nineteen seventy seven. She had met him just a little
bit before that in seventy six, and Chrissy was born
(11:28):
in seventy seven, also prematurely. She was told that Wilma
left the hospital immediately after she was born and that
Child Protective Services would be taking her.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
In as well.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Chrissy's mother and father did not stay together long, maybe
a year and a half before they broke.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Up, so in February of nineteen seventy eight, Wilma left
California for Georgia. One rumor stated that someone wanted to
hurt her, and then another sex worker had asked a
man to drive her out of town. These were all
just rumors circulating around that time about what Wilma may
(12:06):
have been up to, but there's very little actual knowledge
of where she was what she was doing within this time.
So she was apparently traveling with a much older man
named Charles in men Belt, and apparently they were going
to stay with his mother. Once again, all of this
is just circulating from various people that had known Willa
(12:28):
at this time. So Charles claimed that she left his
mother's house in Atlanta just days after they got there.
This was the last time anyone saw her alive. This
is I want to preface and say none of this
is confirmed. This is one man saying this is the
last time I saw her, and he's just, oh, she
(12:48):
left a couple days after we got to Atlanta, and
that is as much of a timeline as we know,
because after this we really have no clue what happened exactly.
And this is back in Februs.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Remember this is February of nineteen seventy eight, so early
on in the year, and from here, no one knows
what's going on with Wilma, where she's at, who she's with,
where she's staying. But Chrissy's learned that this time she
was with Charles's mother, was anywhere from a few.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Days to two weeks.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
We know that she somehow makes it back to Iowa
because she starts working for an escort service in Sue Falls,
South Dakota. Now, I'm terrible in geography.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
You would think that.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Doing this, where we've researched towns and different areas, that
I would get a little bit better about a map,
But I'm not that great at it. I thought Sue
Falls was on the western side of South Dakota, and
so when later we learn about her situation in Iowa,
about her being in Iowa, I'm like, man, that's a
(13:51):
long way apart.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
No, Whitney's wrong.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
It is literally thirty five miles away. They're both like
border towns. It's a really like a hop, skip and
a jump away from where she's later found.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Oh well, yeah, I never think about South Dakota. So
I'm like, it's to me, everything is far away from
South Dakota. So that's it's great that you figured that out,
because I would have assumed it was far away as
well from Iowa. It's definitely far away from Atlanta, and
we really have no idea how she went from Atlanta
(14:24):
to South Dakota, but most likely she hitch hiked, which.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
To me, if you're hitch hiking, you're likely not getting
in one vehicle to go that far because let's be real,
how many vehicles on the highway are being like, Yeah,
I'm gonna pick up in Atlanta and you can ride
with me all the way.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
To Suit Falls, Dakota, South Dakota. Not there's that can't
be like she.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Just got lucky and got in the one vehicle that
was going that direction and that's where she ended up.
I feel like there would have been several people who
could have seen her on this journey, agreed or gave
her a ride.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Also, who knows if she wanted to to even go
to South Dakota. She could have just been like, I'm
willing to go anywhere until she figured out she wanted
to stay. She might not have had an actual plan either.
Sheren just went wherever people were driving. So we're at
February when all that's happening. Don't know how she gets
(15:18):
to South Dakota. Don't really know what's going on for
a few months, but we know on October fourth, nineteen
seventy eight, so the same year, a telephone worker lane
cable near Highway one eighty two in Lyon County, Iowa,
stumbled upon something horrifying. In a ditch. Hidden beneath browning
(15:39):
weeds lay a decomposed body. A young woman, faced down,
half naked with her feet bound by braided hemp rope.
She had white patent leather go go style boots were
still on her lower jaw was missing. With no identification
(16:02):
and a severely decomposed body. She was labeled Jane Doe.
Investigator scoured the area for her jaw, her clothing, and
really anything that could help identify her, and they could
not find any of it. So for nearly thirty years nothing,
no name, no answers, no justice. They knew this was murder.
(16:27):
As well. The body only had two teeth left in
the skull, which was odd, as well as the missing
jaw that I spoke about, which made this seem unusual
to say the least. It is believed that the missing
teeth and jaw are unrelated to any animals or anything.
We a lot of times when people are out searching
(16:47):
for remains, they're not going to find the entire body
or all of the bones or anything like that. This
case in particular, they're like it should have been there
because everything else was perfectly intact, and the fact that
the jaw and then she only had two teeth in
her mouth was missing. I don't know how they know,
(17:09):
but they're like, this is unrelated to any animals gavenging
or taking any of the bones.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
I don't know how that is. Think about it. We've
done a lot of research with this when it comes
to predation when animals come in. If this were related
to an animal, they wouldn't take They're not going to
take just one bone. They're going to take several pieces
with them, and it's also going to scatter the remains.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
They're not going to go pin the brick, one little
tiny bone and move along.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Right. Also, if there's only two teeth left in the skull,
where are the rest of where are her remaining top
teeth exactly?
Speaker 1 (17:52):
So yeah, you'd be missing all of the bottom ones
with that jawbone. But if only two teeth and if
they're like still intact in the school, this was okay.
So we got February all the way till October, so
a few months. But this is Iowa, so I mean
it's not crazy hot there, but it's also through.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
They didn't say skeletal remains. They found a decomposing body.
We know that she's unaccounted for from February to October
as far as the timeline goes, But she could have
just went missing, because no one ever reports are missing.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
She could have disappeared in.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
September and all I had only been out there for
a few weeks exactly, And I think we do I'm
I think we do mention like how long medical examiners
think she was out there, and so definitely it wasn't
just her skeleton.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
This is a decomposing body, so they should have found more.
And the whole animal thing that's debunked. They know that
the animals did not mess with this body for whatever reason.
It wasn't until January thirty first of two thousand and six,
So we're going from nineteen seventy eight all the way
(18:59):
till January three first, two thousand and six that a
fingerprint finally matched and gave this Jane Doe her name back,
which was Wilma June Nissen. Okay. The LAPD stored her
print and when Des Moines lab technician made the match
to an arrest in Long Beach, it reopened the whole
(19:21):
entire case that had haunted this local sheriff. I'll get
into the sheriff, but sometimes I'm amazed by law enforcement.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Wilma had never been reported missing, so there was no
one was looking for her, so when they found this
body on the side of the road, there was never
a way to make a connection back in the seventies
of who it could potentially be of. That's why one
of the reasons it took so long she was she
was an adult, She had limited contact with her previous
(19:54):
foster families and was a wonderlust soul. She was always
in new places, all traveling and just on the go
in a time that you mailed letters or you called
when you could, and no one thought anything of it
when you went weeks, months, sometimes years without communicating exactly.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
And we all know if you listen to True crime
the seventies, even little bit of the eighties, jurisdictions didn't
speak to each other. So even if someone did report
her missing in California, where she grew up, the likelihood
they would have made that connection to Iowa really would
have been slim to none. Honestly, they just didn't talk
that to each other the way that they do now,
(20:39):
they didn't have a way to do it like with
the databases and the internet like we have now. Sheriff Blomandahl,
this is the one that I talked about that is amazing.
So he really took Wilma's story personally. He never put
her file away. He kept a timeline of her life
on his office wall, even though he barely knew anything.
(21:02):
This was when she was a Jane Doe as well
him just trying to figure out who she was. He
said he felt like he knew her and could understand
how she felt on any given day. He vowed to
give her justice. He said, her body was found in
my jurisdiction. Therefore, she is a member of our community
(21:23):
and he was not about to give up on finding
out who she was and what happened to her. So
Wilma's autopsy revealed trauma. There's possible signs of a struggle.
She had dislocations in her elbow and her neck. She
was nude from the waist up. Her pants and underwear
(21:44):
were wrapped around her left leg, so perhaps a sexual
assault or possibly a consensual sexual encounter went wrong.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Christy stated that law enforcement had the foresight to take
fear no clippings, although to Christy's knowledge, no evidence ever
came from them. This is just like another peg on.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
The sheriff's hat or shelf.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
That like, good job for thinking this through, because I
feel like they didn't take fingernail clippings very often in
the seventies.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
I agree. I think especially I don't think this Iowa
county is humongous. So they're training you wouldn't think would
be up to New York City or LA. So the
fact that he had the foresight to do that is amazing.
And he didn't just discount her because she was a
Jane Doe. I this sheriff is amazing in my book, agreed.
(22:42):
So in two thousand and seven her body was exhumed,
So this is a year after they figured out who
she really was, or like, Okay, now that we know
who she is, we can pinpoint where she was at
a few timelines in her life. Let's exhume her in
hopes of finding more DNA evidence. Is vastly different from
two thousand and seven to way back in the seventies.
(23:04):
They're like, let's figure some more stuff out. But time
and water had eroded what was left. Still, they did
not give up. Okay, So this is just they're like, okay,
two thousand and seven, this isn't working out, but we're
gonna try some stuff something else. In twenty sixteen, they
released a photo of a woman they believed to be
(23:25):
one of the killers. Now, once I read this, I
was shocked. I'm like, how did we get here? I
still don't really know, and I hope maybe Chrissy had
some thoughts on this. This woman was a known escort.
She had a pattern of robbing other women that were
in the sex trade as well. I couldn't really figure
(23:48):
out why or how they ended up with this woman
as one of their top suspects. I don't know anything
to do with DNA or what.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
I don't believe it had anything to do with DNA.
I believe that there was a history of actually.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Two women that were on a violent.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Streak or something where they'd get really upset if other
people got jobs that they weren't getting and they would
rob them. But basically, Chrissy told me that two women
worked with Wilma through this escort service. They had stage
names of Sugar and Peaches. Law enforcement was able to
identify Sugar, they interviewed her.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
She was given a polygraph test.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Chrissy said that the results were either a failure or inconclusive,
but we know that they're not admissible in court, so
that's neither here nor there in my opinion on this interview. Peaches, however,
has never been identified, which makes me wonder were Sugar
and Peaches working together and Sugar's not giving up Peaches,
or maybe they are two different people that had nothing
(24:52):
to do together. They didn't work together with these robberies,
or they just had the same kind of idea. I
don't know, because Peaches has never been identified. She's only
been described as a light skinned black woman. Yeah, and
then that photo that was released, it's a good photo.
It's not like a sketch of a possible person. This
(25:13):
is like an actual photo of this woman. It's mind boggling.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
But I know a lot of sex workers will go
by their nicknames obviously for safety reasons. They don't need
to be given out any personal information to anyone. So
maybe even if Sugar happened to be friends with Peaches,
maybe she never really knew her real name. I mean,
(25:38):
you never know. So police say that more than one
person's DNA has been identified on whatever evidence that they have.
But here's the problem. The DNA is also too degraded
to be used in the FBI database CODIS, and so
the investigators are waiting for the day that technology catches
(26:03):
up because we know it will. They're able to take
way more like microscopic DNA now than they could ten
years ago, so we don't know where it's going to be.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
And they literally just brought back an extinct animal back
to life, like they literally just came up with dire
wolves again, which had been extinct for forever. The technology
is there, like, we've just got to use it for
the right purposes people exactly. Chrissy learned that the rope
that was found with her mom's body had been sent
(26:35):
off to a Scandinavian based DNA company and they weren't
able to extract what is called amplified DNA from the
rope roughly five or six years ago. This is what's
fueling Chrissy in her advocacy journey currently. If she can
get this now amplified DNA processed, perhaps it can narrow
(26:55):
the list of the potential suspects that they have, which
I've never heard of a DNA. There's so much more research.
I'm gonna have to do about it because it's I'm
not a science person. If you tell me you can
do it with science, yay you, that's congratulations.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
You're way smarter than I am.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
I want to know what amplified DNA really beans agreed,
because I don't have a clue, and that's amazing for
whatever they're doing over there.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
So the sheriff office has a list of eight suspects.
Some are incarcerated, others have criminal backgrounds, but none have
actually been charged, and Wilma's children, Michael, Donald and Chrissy
are left with questions, grief, and a void that is
never healed. Wilma was a mother, a daughter, a sister,
(27:45):
a survivor, and she mattered. Wilma deserved more in life,
but she still deserves justice in death, and we will
keep saying her name until that justice comes. If you
know anything at all, you can call the anonymous tip
line at seven one two four seven two eight three
(28:05):
three four.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
This is where the advocacy piece comes in for us.
Chrissy is now fighting to get Wilma's story heard by
as many people as she can, so please look at
our show notes, follow her social media pages she has
a Facebook, she has a petition, and I believe she
recently started on Instagram. She also has a gofund to
be going to help raise funds to go towards the
(28:29):
DNA testing. She strongly believes that if she can get
that DNA tested, she'll have the starting point to getting
answers that Wilma deserves.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
We'll have links in the show notes, and if you're
interested in supporting cold case investigations, check out organizations like
Season of Justice and Iowa Cold Cases. Thank you to
Chrissy for sharing Wilma with us. If you or someone
you love has been affected by violence, please know that
there are resources out there.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
If you know someone with a missing or unresolved case,
please send them to info at Navigating Advocacy dot com.
This episode was research, written, and produced by us. You
(29:45):
can learn more about our podcast, advocacyn and our nonprofit
Impact Advocacy Foundation at Navigating Advocacy dot com
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