July 8, 2025 • 13 mins
Nearly half of America's murderers go unpunished. A news anchor disappeared on her way to work thirty years ago.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It is Tuesday at this time. You know what that means.
We bring you stories from the world of true crime.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
The story is true, sounds true? No, it sounds made up.
I don't know. Perry and Shannon present true crime.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
So here's a headline that captured our attention. Nearly half
of America's murderers get away with it. When you think
about high profile murders, you think of dateline, You think
of the familial murders, husband wife stuff. You think of
(00:43):
the headlines of Lacy Peterson and things like that, and
of course there's always one suspect that's zeroed in on.
And what do you mean half of America's murderers get
away with it? Because we hear about one percent of
the murders. I don't know how many of them reach
our our minds, our television screens, our newspapers, but many,
(01:08):
many murders do not reach that level. Someone had murdered
Raymel Atkins in Louisville in twenty twenty three, and more
than a year later, his mom and sister don't know
who did it. Police have not made an arrest in
the case. Raymel's not the only one. Same for Tiffany
Floyd killed in twenty twenty one, Michael David killed in
(01:29):
twenty seventeen, Corey Crowe killed in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Not just no ending, no solution, no verdict, no arrest.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Don't even have a suspect in these cases, and these
are just a couple of names. In fact, police in
Louisville do not arrest anyone in roughly half of murder cases.
Family members of these victims have a similar sentiment that
the police had abandoned them. The police don't really care.
(02:00):
They've proven it to me, the victim's family say. Now,
Lousville's police department acknowledges serious problems. They are understaffed, like
many major police departments, about three hundred officers below full staffing. Now,
you don't get to say that murders aren't solved. Nobody
(02:20):
cares about us. The police don't care about us. In
one hand, and in the other hand, say let's get
rid of the police department, because that has been the
mood in this country now for ten years, at least
five years, the defund the police movement, things like that.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Get rid of the police. They're out to get you.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
But what about when you need the police to go
get whoever killed your loved ones, then it's nice to
have them around, right. Well, that very sentiment of defund
the police has done just that. It's defunded a lot
of police departments. It's a struggle here in Los Angeles
to get the LAPD back up to where it needs
(03:04):
to be. It's not just budgetary concerns, it's recruitment. Who
wants to be a police officer anymore? Who wants to
be a police officer in twenty twenty five Put on
that uniform and that badge and go put your life
on the line every day for an ungrateful public who
wants that job. It used to come with honor and respect,
(03:26):
and now you get zero of those things. For a
lot of the population. You don't look at police and
see help. They look at police and see the enemy.
And one of the side effects of that is going
to be a very low conviction rate. The Louisville departments
trying to address those issues. They've told victims' families, we
(03:51):
understand you're grieving. Oh, it's frustrating for us too, they say.
In the United States, most people get away with murder.
Louisville's just my or cosm of that the clearance rate
was fifty eight.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Percent in twenty twenty three. What does that mean?
Speaker 1 (04:07):
The clearance rate, that's the share of cases that result
in an arrest or that are solved, just fifty eight percent.
All that figures inflated too, because they're also counting murders
from previous years that the police solved in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
So yeah, you're looking maybe at forty percent. In other words,
a murderer's.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Chance of getting caught within a year essentially comes down
to a coin flip. For other crimes that don't rise
to the level of murder, clearance rates are even lower.
You steal a car, You're pretty, You're good, You're good.
I'm sorry, but that's what the data says. Only eight
percent of car thef's result in an arrest. That's that's
(04:52):
pretty good odds. I hope I see a Lamborghini on
the way home. I understand understand why people jack cars
and lead police on a chase that aren't Lamborghinis. Now,
if I'm going to lead the cops on a chase,
I'm going to do it with it like a Dodge
charge or something with a little something with a little
(05:14):
go maybe a Honda civic.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
You know, if we're not going to get the Lamborghini.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
America compared with its peers, does an unusually poor job
of solving killings. When you look at murder clearance rates
of other countries Australia, Britain, Germany, those hover in the seventies, eighties,
and nineties.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
They say there are several issues.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Lack of resources, the sheer volume of cases, a distrust
of the police. This is from a criminal justice researcher
not named me. This is Philip Cook, who says it's
a serious problem. And I've got to believe my hypothesis
more than just the volume of cases. If you hate
the police, you're not going to talk to them either.
(05:57):
And a lot of clearing cases, solving cases relies on witnesses.
I'm not just talking about people who saw a crime,
but people who know the guy who did it, or
know that the guy who did it recently came in
the way of a firearm, things like that. Right, we're
just at this. If you're okay with defunding the police,
(06:18):
you've got to also be okay with unchecked violence. Unfortunately,
so they say that there's some sort of solution in
this article guns, they blame it on guns. Well, we've
had guns for a very long time. Volume distrust of
the police. Yes, they said that the solutions are this. First,
(06:41):
lawmakers and the police could commit more resources to solving murders. Okay, again,
nobody's signing up to be a police officer because of
the anti police sentiment right now in this country. They say, Second,
the police could make greater use of modern technology cameras,
facial recognition software.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Okay, well, I'd like.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
To introduce you to people over here called the ACLU,
which will keep that kind of technology wrapped up in
the courts for a long time. They talk about more
police departments embracing flock cameras they automatically read those license plates,
detect gunfire, things like that. Again, those are not going
to be in line with what civil libertarians will go.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
To bat for.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
So we're just at this place right now where we're screwed.
So if you want to steal a car, I guess
to take away is you know you might you might
do better in that in that field. Where is Jody
huisen trut I'm not sure if I'm saying that last
name correctly, but Jody Hoisten truth Twissen Truth was a
(07:51):
local morning television anchor in Mason City, Iowa, meant arriving
for work at three am. If you've worked the morning
shift in broadcast, you've done this before as well. And
she had never missed a show, not once. But if
you've ever done a morning broadcast schedule, you know that
time always comes.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
You oversleep at least once.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
When your alarm goes off at two AM to get
to work, it's gonna happen.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
It's going to happen at least once.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Even for the most dedicated, the strongest work ethic, it
happens at least once. Well, it was June twenty seventh,
nineteen ninety five, and she finally overslept. She called the
news producer at the station and she said, I'll be
right in. She realized she lived about a mile from work.
(08:40):
She was from Minnesota. Jody was youngest of three daughters,
very much into sports, loved golf, and she briefly worked
as a Northwest Airlines flight attendant. A friend remembers that
she liked to say she wanted to be on the air,
not in the air, and that morning, when she still
didn't show up at the station, everyone thought whateveryone one
(09:00):
else thinks, oh, she overslept.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
It happens. She was never found.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Twenty seven year old Jody hoisten Trut was never found,
but they did find disturbing signs of her absence. When
police got to the scene of her apartment, there was
no sign of Jody, but her car was there and
there were definite signs of a struggle a bent car key.
They said that it indicated she was probably attacked from behind,
a lot of force used. Her stuff was strown across
(09:30):
the garage and the floor, red heels, blow dryer, earrings,
drag marks in the parking lot. Anyway, her building had
no security cameras, it was not lit very well. Police
found no blood, no witnesses, never been seen nobody. Thirty
years later, there is a devoted team of volunteers still
(09:51):
trying to solve this mystery. Mason City, by the Way,
on its fourth police chief since Jody's disappearance. That tip
continually come in about Jody, usually around this time of
year because it's the anniversary. Late June is when they
hear more about it. Now, about nine months before she
went missing, she did file a police report regarding a
(10:13):
suspicious subject who was following her, driving her or driving
behind her in a small white Newer pickup. She had
taken a self defense class. The day before she disappeared.
She played in a charity golf tournament, and she told
some people that she was playing with that she considered
changing her phone number because she was getting harassing phone calls.
This is kind of troubling, but also she's in the
(10:35):
public eye and it's not completely out of the realm.
There was a guy that they focused in on, John
Van Seiss was his name. They ran in the same circle.
He was twenty years older. She had been at his
place the night before she disappeared. He was never named
a suspect, never charged. He had always claimed he was
(10:57):
friends with her and denied any involved in her abduction.
Back in twenty seventeen, as technology had come a long
way since ninety five, they did put a GPS mobile
tracking device on his vehicles. He provided DNA fingerprints palm
prints to comply with a court order, but nothing and
then he died.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
He died last year.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
They do have one piece of evidence, a palm print,
and they do have her belongings collected at the scene.
Whose palm print is it? They don't know. They did
get a tip last October and they worked with police
in her home state of Minnesota to search a farm
construction area. They'd only found animal bones. They had gotten
(11:43):
a tip that there was a guy by the name
of Christopher Revik who had been linked to two other
cases with female victims. And there were some sort of
connections between the two. But again that led nowhere, and
then he died. He died in jail, but again nothing,
nothing else. There's a colleague that worked with her at
(12:05):
the TV station in this small town, Mason City, Iowa,
and he said he can feel the anxiety and the
shock of it as if it were yesterday.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Yesterday.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Remember, she did the news, so this station was covering
her disappearance in real time. It wasn't just a local
girl has disappeared. It's a local girl who worked here,
who was on your television screen, in your living room,
in your bedroom.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Every night. They had to cover the news of her disappearances.
It was unfolding.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
This guy, Brian still has a two page script he
wrote for that night's broadcast. He said, nothing would it
have prepared him or that team for having to report
on the disappearance of a beloved colleague. He says he's
surprised that nobody has slipped up over the years to
reveal any secrets that would lead to any answers. He said,
it was crazy trying to be a news reporter just
(12:55):
starting out and investigating that story. And you know, the
person missing, the eyes in town, the Iowa Division of
Criminal Investigation are in town.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
They're all in the newsroom.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
They're doing the same investigation that you're doing about your friend,
interviewing them while they're trying to write that night's show.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
About the disappearance.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
I mean, it's all just so very surreal, just like
the fact that nobody has turned up. Now nineteen ninety five,
if not necessarily the time when you were having any
sort of great results with technology with DNA and things
like that, but it's not like it was nineteen fifty five.
(13:36):
It's wild that there's been no body and no one
has talked, and they worry that everyone that knows something
could could die. But again, nineteen ninety five not that
far away. Jody Hoisenstrut Weisnstrut. I'm going to learn her
name overnight.
It is Tuesday at this time. You know what that means.
We bring you stories from the world of true crime.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
The story is true, sounds true? No, it sounds made up.
I don't know. Perry and Shannon present true crime.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
So here's a headline that captured our attention. Nearly half
of America's murderers get away with it. When you think
about high profile murders, you think of dateline, You think
of the familial murders, husband wife stuff. You think of
(00:43):
the headlines of Lacy Peterson and things like that, and
of course there's always one suspect that's zeroed in on.
And what do you mean half of America's murderers get
away with it? Because we hear about one percent of
the murders. I don't know how many of them reach
our our minds, our television screens, our newspapers, but many,
(01:08):
many murders do not reach that level. Someone had murdered
Raymel Atkins in Louisville in twenty twenty three, and more
than a year later, his mom and sister don't know
who did it. Police have not made an arrest in
the case. Raymel's not the only one. Same for Tiffany
Floyd killed in twenty twenty one, Michael David killed in
(01:29):
twenty seventeen, Corey Crowe killed in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Not just no ending, no solution, no verdict, no arrest.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Don't even have a suspect in these cases, and these
are just a couple of names. In fact, police in
Louisville do not arrest anyone in roughly half of murder cases.
Family members of these victims have a similar sentiment that
the police had abandoned them. The police don't really care.
(02:00):
They've proven it to me, the victim's family say. Now,
Lousville's police department acknowledges serious problems. They are understaffed, like
many major police departments, about three hundred officers below full staffing. Now,
you don't get to say that murders aren't solved. Nobody
(02:20):
cares about us. The police don't care about us. In
one hand, and in the other hand, say let's get
rid of the police department, because that has been the
mood in this country now for ten years, at least
five years, the defund the police movement, things like that.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Get rid of the police. They're out to get you.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
But what about when you need the police to go
get whoever killed your loved ones, then it's nice to
have them around, right. Well, that very sentiment of defund
the police has done just that. It's defunded a lot
of police departments. It's a struggle here in Los Angeles
to get the LAPD back up to where it needs
(03:04):
to be. It's not just budgetary concerns, it's recruitment. Who
wants to be a police officer anymore? Who wants to
be a police officer in twenty twenty five Put on
that uniform and that badge and go put your life
on the line every day for an ungrateful public who
wants that job. It used to come with honor and respect,
(03:26):
and now you get zero of those things. For a
lot of the population. You don't look at police and
see help. They look at police and see the enemy.
And one of the side effects of that is going
to be a very low conviction rate. The Louisville departments
trying to address those issues. They've told victims' families, we
(03:51):
understand you're grieving. Oh, it's frustrating for us too, they say.
In the United States, most people get away with murder.
Louisville's just my or cosm of that the clearance rate
was fifty eight.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Percent in twenty twenty three. What does that mean?
Speaker 1 (04:07):
The clearance rate, that's the share of cases that result
in an arrest or that are solved, just fifty eight percent.
All that figures inflated too, because they're also counting murders
from previous years that the police solved in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
So yeah, you're looking maybe at forty percent. In other words,
a murderer's.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Chance of getting caught within a year essentially comes down
to a coin flip. For other crimes that don't rise
to the level of murder, clearance rates are even lower.
You steal a car, You're pretty, You're good, You're good.
I'm sorry, but that's what the data says. Only eight
percent of car thef's result in an arrest. That's that's
(04:52):
pretty good odds. I hope I see a Lamborghini on
the way home. I understand understand why people jack cars
and lead police on a chase that aren't Lamborghinis. Now,
if I'm going to lead the cops on a chase,
I'm going to do it with it like a Dodge
charge or something with a little something with a little
(05:14):
go maybe a Honda civic.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
You know, if we're not going to get the Lamborghini.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
America compared with its peers, does an unusually poor job
of solving killings. When you look at murder clearance rates
of other countries Australia, Britain, Germany, those hover in the seventies, eighties,
and nineties.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
They say there are several issues.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Lack of resources, the sheer volume of cases, a distrust
of the police. This is from a criminal justice researcher
not named me. This is Philip Cook, who says it's
a serious problem. And I've got to believe my hypothesis
more than just the volume of cases. If you hate
the police, you're not going to talk to them either.
(05:57):
And a lot of clearing cases, solving cases relies on witnesses.
I'm not just talking about people who saw a crime,
but people who know the guy who did it, or
know that the guy who did it recently came in
the way of a firearm, things like that. Right, we're
just at this. If you're okay with defunding the police,
(06:18):
you've got to also be okay with unchecked violence. Unfortunately,
so they say that there's some sort of solution in
this article guns, they blame it on guns. Well, we've
had guns for a very long time. Volume distrust of
the police. Yes, they said that the solutions are this. First,
(06:41):
lawmakers and the police could commit more resources to solving murders. Okay, again,
nobody's signing up to be a police officer because of
the anti police sentiment right now in this country. They say, Second,
the police could make greater use of modern technology cameras,
facial recognition software.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Okay, well, I'd like.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
To introduce you to people over here called the ACLU,
which will keep that kind of technology wrapped up in
the courts for a long time. They talk about more
police departments embracing flock cameras they automatically read those license plates,
detect gunfire, things like that. Again, those are not going
to be in line with what civil libertarians will go.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
To bat for.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
So we're just at this place right now where we're screwed.
So if you want to steal a car, I guess
to take away is you know you might you might
do better in that in that field. Where is Jody
huisen trut I'm not sure if I'm saying that last
name correctly, but Jody Hoisten truth Twissen Truth was a
(07:51):
local morning television anchor in Mason City, Iowa, meant arriving
for work at three am. If you've worked the morning
shift in broadcast, you've done this before as well. And
she had never missed a show, not once. But if
you've ever done a morning broadcast schedule, you know that
time always comes.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
You oversleep at least once.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
When your alarm goes off at two AM to get
to work, it's gonna happen.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
It's going to happen at least once.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Even for the most dedicated, the strongest work ethic, it
happens at least once. Well, it was June twenty seventh,
nineteen ninety five, and she finally overslept. She called the
news producer at the station and she said, I'll be
right in. She realized she lived about a mile from work.
(08:40):
She was from Minnesota. Jody was youngest of three daughters,
very much into sports, loved golf, and she briefly worked
as a Northwest Airlines flight attendant. A friend remembers that
she liked to say she wanted to be on the air,
not in the air, and that morning, when she still
didn't show up at the station, everyone thought whateveryone one
(09:00):
else thinks, oh, she overslept.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
It happens. She was never found.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Twenty seven year old Jody hoisten Trut was never found,
but they did find disturbing signs of her absence. When
police got to the scene of her apartment, there was
no sign of Jody, but her car was there and
there were definite signs of a struggle a bent car key.
They said that it indicated she was probably attacked from behind,
a lot of force used. Her stuff was strown across
(09:30):
the garage and the floor, red heels, blow dryer, earrings,
drag marks in the parking lot. Anyway, her building had
no security cameras, it was not lit very well. Police
found no blood, no witnesses, never been seen nobody. Thirty
years later, there is a devoted team of volunteers still
(09:51):
trying to solve this mystery. Mason City, by the Way,
on its fourth police chief since Jody's disappearance. That tip
continually come in about Jody, usually around this time of
year because it's the anniversary. Late June is when they
hear more about it. Now, about nine months before she
went missing, she did file a police report regarding a
(10:13):
suspicious subject who was following her, driving her or driving
behind her in a small white Newer pickup. She had
taken a self defense class. The day before she disappeared.
She played in a charity golf tournament, and she told
some people that she was playing with that she considered
changing her phone number because she was getting harassing phone calls.
This is kind of troubling, but also she's in the
(10:35):
public eye and it's not completely out of the realm.
There was a guy that they focused in on, John
Van Seiss was his name. They ran in the same circle.
He was twenty years older. She had been at his
place the night before she disappeared. He was never named
a suspect, never charged. He had always claimed he was
(10:57):
friends with her and denied any involved in her abduction.
Back in twenty seventeen, as technology had come a long
way since ninety five, they did put a GPS mobile
tracking device on his vehicles. He provided DNA fingerprints palm
prints to comply with a court order, but nothing and
then he died.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
He died last year.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
They do have one piece of evidence, a palm print,
and they do have her belongings collected at the scene.
Whose palm print is it? They don't know. They did
get a tip last October and they worked with police
in her home state of Minnesota to search a farm
construction area. They'd only found animal bones. They had gotten
(11:43):
a tip that there was a guy by the name
of Christopher Revik who had been linked to two other
cases with female victims. And there were some sort of
connections between the two. But again that led nowhere, and
then he died. He died in jail, but again nothing,
nothing else. There's a colleague that worked with her at
(12:05):
the TV station in this small town, Mason City, Iowa,
and he said he can feel the anxiety and the
shock of it as if it were yesterday.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Yesterday.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Remember, she did the news, so this station was covering
her disappearance in real time. It wasn't just a local
girl has disappeared. It's a local girl who worked here,
who was on your television screen, in your living room,
in your bedroom.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Every night. They had to cover the news of her disappearances.
It was unfolding.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
This guy, Brian still has a two page script he
wrote for that night's broadcast. He said, nothing would it
have prepared him or that team for having to report
on the disappearance of a beloved colleague. He says he's
surprised that nobody has slipped up over the years to
reveal any secrets that would lead to any answers. He said,
it was crazy trying to be a news reporter just
(12:55):
starting out and investigating that story. And you know, the
person missing, the eyes in town, the Iowa Division of
Criminal Investigation are in town.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
They're all in the newsroom.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
They're doing the same investigation that you're doing about your friend,
interviewing them while they're trying to write that night's show.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
About the disappearance.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
I mean, it's all just so very surreal, just like
the fact that nobody has turned up. Now nineteen ninety five,
if not necessarily the time when you were having any
sort of great results with technology with DNA and things
like that, but it's not like it was nineteen fifty five.
(13:36):
It's wild that there's been no body and no one
has talked, and they worry that everyone that knows something
could could die. But again, nineteen ninety five not that
far away. Jody Hoisenstrut Weisnstrut. I'm going to learn her
name overnight.
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