ARREST 42 YEARS LATER OF A IOWA COLD CASE MURDER

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
A suspect has been arrested after forty years a murder
of the Ronald Lee Novak in Lynn County, Iowa. Ronald
Lee Novak suffered a gruesome and mysterious Christmas Eve death
in rural Lynn County over in Iowa. Novak's brother John
found his body in an unheated utility mud room that

(00:24):
led to the kitchen of Novak's farmhouse between Walker and
Center Point. Lynn County Sheriff's found the twenty four year
old's hands have been bound behind his back with a
nylon cord. His face and head had been beaten, and
investigators found two hammers, a piece of firewood, and a
golf club with a bent head, all with traces of
hair and blood on them. So you can see here

(00:44):
this was obviously a crime of passion, some kind of retribution, punishment, revenge.
If not, then it has to be associated with psychosis
more than likely, but I'm guessing more some kind of revenge.
He had been shot as well. A twenty two caliber
bullet entered the middle of his right shoulder from above
and penetrated his right chest. He had been left to

(01:06):
freeze in subzero temperature, so they were really trying to
punish him for whatever it was that they felt he did.
An autopsy determined he died from a combination of injuries
resulting from the beating in the gunshot and as well
as the freezing temperatures. There was no immediate suspect in
the December twenty fourth slaying in nineteen eighty three, but
forty two years later that finally was an arrest. Novak

(01:29):
had been a marijuana dealer, and investigators found thirty two
thousand dollars in cash and marijuana they valued at seventy
six hundred dollars at his home. I don't know if
it was seventy six hundred dollars today's money or forty
years ago. While the money and drugs were intact, Novak's wallet,
which usually had several hundred dollars in it, was missing,
leading investigators to suspect he'd been the victim of a

(01:50):
violent robbery. The lower right portion of a window in
the door between the kitchen and utility appeared to have
been broken in from the outside. Footprints in the snow
outside left from the dr way to a tree, where
someone could have acted as a lookout while another person
went inside the home. Sounds like a drug deal gone bad.
There are bloody footprints throughout the house and blood spotted
on the door to the kitchen on the walls of

(02:11):
the utility room. Investigators interviewed Novak's known associates and developed
a list of suspects that lacked physical evidence encourage anyone
they had a way for science. DNA testing wasn't it
yet a law enforcement tool when Novak died. It was
first used in the late eighties. In recent years, though,
it has played a huge role in cold cases, as

(02:32):
you well know, some long Dorman cases in Iowa, like
the most famously the killing of eighteen year old Michel Martinko,
who was found stabbed to death in her family's car
in the pocketing lot of a Cedar Rapids mall in
nineteen seventy nine, was saul thanks to DNA. The case
went unsolved for thirty nine years until police used the
DNA obtained from a genealogy test taken by the cousin

(02:54):
of a suspect to identify likely tied to the bloody
bloody to the blood found at the scene, then shadowed
him to obtain a sample of his DNA after eating
at a pizza ranch. The DNA had matched the blood,
and Jerry Lynn Burns was arrested in twenty eighteen, the
convicted of murder two years ago. In Novak's case, it
followed a similar course after investigators in July twenty eleven

(03:16):
sent evidence from the case to the Iowa Division of
Criminal Investigation Lab. The lab was able to match a
firshell match a male DNA profile from traces of another
person's DNA on novax sack in the socks. The Lynn
County Sheriff's Office began working when they developed a snapshot
of a suspect and pairabon in June twenty twenty, identifying

(03:40):
three possible relatives of the unknown male suspect through genetic genealogy,
and detectives then obtained DNA from distant relatives that allowed
the company to narrow the genealogy down to three brothers.
Detectives then covertly obtained DNA samples and over again. They
went to obtain a DNA sample from the third brother
identified in the documents as the defend Michael shapperd sixty

(04:01):
four years of age. That sample could not rule out
Shappard as the source of the unknown DNA found the
Novak soack So police in December twenty twenty three collected
a known sample of Shopperd's DNA and interviewed him. Detective
said that in the interview, Shappard placed himself in Iowa
and late nineteen eighty three, having hitchhiked there from Oregon
before Christmas, but he did not explain why his DNA

(04:22):
might have been at the crime scene, and the second interview,
Shapperd told him he had been at Novak's residence but
did not explain why, and in a phone call with
a brother Honor around December twenty first or twenty twenty three,
the detective said the monitored Schapper told one of his
brothers he had been in Novak's home because he had
been injured while trapping game in the area with another
person and knew Novak, so he went there to clean up,

(04:43):
but Novak was not known to let people into his house.
He kept a loaded shotgun by his door. Further DNA
testing in February twenty twenty four determined it was six
hundred and fifty trillion times more probable that the DNA
on Novak Soak originated from Shapperd than any anyone else
January twenty twenty five, reports to the Lynn County sheriff
Office and further DNA testing showed the grip of a

(05:04):
claw hammer found at the crime scene contained the DNA
of three people, and it was five hundred and twenty
times more likely that one of those three was going
to be shampered himself. Investigators using DNA samples from the
blue jeans and a blue coat Novak had been wearing
similarly determined he had been at the crime scene. The
report also said they cannot rule out Shappard as a

(05:25):
source of DNA found on the nylon rope Novak had
been bound with. On Wednesday, May twenty eighth, Moltnoma County
and Oregon, the Sheriff's a company by an FBI agent,
arrested Champer on a first degree murder. May thirtieth, on
Oregon reported that Chappard agreed to a court hearing to
be extradited to Iowa. No court date has been scheduled.

(05:45):
Shapperd reportedly had married in the nineties. His now ex
wife said he never really talked about his life before
they met. They have two daughters, one of whom had
lived with Shappard in Oregon. His suburb of Portland Fairview,
and the other with his ex wife from Boise. Shepherd
reportedly lived for the past twenty five years of Blue
Lake Village. So at the moment they have and arrest

(06:08):
I we'll have to see if he gets convicted enough
it was really him. I don't know what he's pleading.
It's a fascinating story how complicated it can be. But
we'll see. Hopefully we'll get the follow up on this,
but it probably would be of another couple of years
before they convict, if they convict him at all.