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Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Time Machine: Grinnell bank robbery, murders
Montezuma couple were suspects in bank theft ... until their bodies were found
At first, it looked like an Iowa Bonnie-and-Clyde story, but it turned into something much grimmer.
When the Grinnell State Bank was robbed the weekend of Nov. 9, 1979, a missing bank teller became the immediate suspect.
There was no break-in. The bank’s back door was unlocked, the burglar alarm was off and a secondary vault that held $62,000 in cash had been looted. The time-locked main vault was untouched.
The FBI soon discovered that the bank’s bookkeeper, Dawn Kriegel, 21, and her husband, Daniel, 24, were missing from their rural Montezuma home.
Dawn had keys to the bank and knew the combination to the secondary vault. After getting a warrant to search the couple’s home, authorities found the lights on and unattended house pets.
Psychics called in
After five days with no clues, Dawn’s mother, Barbara Whisenand, contacted a psychic, Greta Alexander of Delavan, Ill. Alexander said the Kriegels were “quite a distance from our community.” She said she “saw” Dawn and some others get out of Dawn’s 1975 green Volkswagen and get into another “dark” car.
Alexander also said the outcome of the robbery would be different than it first appeared to be.
Dawn’s car was found Nov. 15 parked near a bus terminal in Des Moines. FBI agents interviewed ticket agents, but no one could tell them if the couple had boarded a bus.
Daniel’s family suspected something had happened to them. His brother, Gary, and father, James, tried an air search Nov. 16 but found nothing.
Grinnell police also called in two psychics. “The psychics have impressive records in supplying information about missing persons,” Officer James Ahrens said. One of the psychics reported seeing Daniel lying face down on the ground.
The FBI requested that warrants be issued Nov. 26 for the Kriegels on charges of conspiracy, embezzlement and larceny of more than $60,000.
Oddly enough, two other area families — both linked to the Kriegels — disappeared at the same time.
Merle Bennett, 36, of Brooklyn, Iowa, and his family, went missing. Gordon Earley Jr., 23, of Malcom, and his family disappeared as well.
Bennett had been charged with receiving stolen property in a case involving the Kriegels. The couple reported their car had been stolen in Des Moines the previous May. After they collected $3,100 in insurance, authorities found parts from the supposedly stolen car at Bennett’s auto business.
Earley was Dawn’s cousin and had been accused of stealing the Kriegels’ car from Merle Hay shopping center and taking it to Bennett’s shop to be stripped.
Bodies discovered
On Dec. 3, hunters found a frozen body face down in a ditch and culvert southwest of Grinnell. It was Daniel Kriegel. An autopsy showed he had been shot several times with a small-caliber handgun.
The state Division of Criminal Investigation sent searchers in airplanes, on horseback and on foot to search the area in case Dawn’s body was nearby.
On Dec. 4, Bennett was arrested in Lapel, Ind., about 9 miles from Noblesville, where he had been living, and brought to the Poweshiek County jail in Montezuma. Authorities found about $62,000 in cash buried in his yard in Noblesville.
On Dec. 7, the FBI charged both Bennett and Earley in the bank robbery.
On Dec. 8, two teenage hunters found Dawn Kriegel’s body southwest of Marengo. She was lying against a barbed wire fence in a weedy area near a dirt road. Her hands had been tied behind her back, and she had been shot multiple times.
A firearms expert said that all of the bullets recovered from Dawn and Dan Kriegel’s bodies came from the same 32-caliber Smith & Wesson Colt revolver. Bennett told authorities he owned that type of gun but had lent it to Earley and never got it back.
The trials, motive
Bennett made a deal, saying he’d testify against Earley if prosecutors wouldn’t charge him in the Kriegel murders.
Earley’s trial began in October in U.S. District Court in Des Moines and lasted four weeks.
Bennett testified that Earley had told him his cousin, Dawn Kriegel, had keys to the Grinnell bank and would cooperate in robbing it. He said that when he and Earley drove to the bank to rob it, Earley told him he’d shot Daniel Kriegel, who wanted nothing to do with robbing a bank. Daniel’s body was supposedly in the trunk of the car, and Dawn Kriegel was shot after the robbery.
Earley’s story differed. He said he and Dawn, who wanted money to get out of her marriage, had stolen the money. When they met to divide the money, Dawn brought along a “mystery man,” but everyone left that meeting alive. He said he knew nothing about the shootings.
A jury found Earley guilty in the Grinnell State Bank robbery and in the murders of Daniel and Dawn Kriegel.
On Jan. 8, 1981, U.S. District Judge Harold Vietor sentenced Earley to life in prison and recommended he not be considered for parole until he had served at least 30 years. Earley was imprisoned in Oxford, Wis., Memphis, Tenn., and Rochester, Minn., before being paroled in December 2009.
Bennett pleaded guilty to burglary and interstate transportation of stolen goods. Judge Vietor sentenced him to the maximum 30 years.
Daniel and Dawn Kriegel are buried in Calvary Cemetery in Brooklyn.
Iowa County Sheriff Bill Spurrier and Sgt. Darrel Lamb of the Grinnell Police Department use a metal detector to search a ditch along a road southwest of Marengo on Dec. 9, 1979. They were looking for the body of Dawn Kriegel after the body of her husband, Daniel, had been found nearby by hunters Dec. 3. (Gazette archvies)
Law enforcement officers searched the ditch alongside a road southwest of Marengo Dec. 9, 1979, where the body of Dawn D. Kriegel was found Dec. 8. Mrs. Kriegel, who had been shot to death, was the apparent victim of a kidnap-extortion in the Nov. 11 robbery of the Grinnell State Bank. Gazette photo
Law enforcement officers search the ditch alongside a road southwest of Marengo on Dec. 9, 1979, near where the body of Dawn Kriegel had been found by hunters the day before. (Gazette archives)
A Bureau of Criminal Investigation agent (left) and an FBI agent, both from Cedar Rapids, take a sample of the ground from where Dawn Kriegel’s body was found alongside a road southwest of Marengo on Dec. 8, 1979. (Gazette archives) Time Machine.03.03.24
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