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30 years after her disappearance, Jodi Huisentruit’s family holds onto hope, deserves answers
Mason City TV news anchor vanished June 27, 1995
Jun. 29, 2025 5:30 am, Updated: Jul. 8, 2025 7:05 am
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The only evidence police had of a crime on June 27, 1995, were “drag marks” next to the woman’s red 1991 Mazda Miata convertible and what appeared to be items from a bag or large purse strewn onto the parking lot.
A red pair of heels, earrings, a blow dryer, hair spray and a bent Miata key were the only things left behind of Jodi Huisentruit, 27, a Mason City KIMT-TV morning news anchor.
She seemed to vanish during those early morning hours, when she was running late for her 6 a.m. broadcast. An assistant producer at the TV station called her about 4:10 a.m., waking her up, but Huisentruit assured the producer she would be there in time.
She never showed up.
The case remains unsolved 30 years later. Police have released information over the years, but nothing has led to an arrest. There has been speculation about several people police have questioned, including a person of interest who died in 2024.
Huisentruit, who had her first television job with Cedar Rapids KGAN-TV from 1991 to 1993 before going to the Mason City station in 1993, was declared legally dead in 2001. The family asked the court for the order after years of there being no evidence that their daughter and sister was alive.
Mason City Police Chief Jeff Brinkley told The Gazette last week he couldn’t provide any update on the investigation, except to say it is ongoing.
“We remain optimistic that someday we will be able to provide justice and closure for the family,” Brinkley said.
Huisentruit’s family, who asked the media to respect their privacy this year and declined requests for on-camera interviews, did share a favorite memory of her with The Gazette.
“There are many favorite memories that we have of Jodi, and it's hard for us to choose just one. However, one that always comes to mind is when we visited Jodi while she was working for the summer at Madden's Resort in Brainerd, Minnesota. She decided to take us canoeing on Gull Lake, but Jodi had a trick up her sleeve.
“When we were out far enough in the lake, Jodi decided it would be funny to tip the canoe back and forth as a joke. She ended up tipping it just enough that Jodi's oldest sister fell out of the canoe into the middle of the lake. Thankfully, a boat came by shortly after this and brought her sister back to shore.”
The family, in a statement, also said they always “have to hold on to hope that the case will be resolved and that we and all who loved Jodi will finally have peace and the answers we deserve and have waited on for 30 years now.
“We sincerely hope that it will be resolved sooner rather than later, as we have already gone this long without resolution,” her family said. “We will continue to search for answers until we have found Jodi and are able to bring her home.”
Huisentruit grew up in Long Prairie, Minnesota, with two older sisters. Her father, Maurice, died when she was 13, and her mother, Imogene “Jane” Huisentruit, died in 2014.
June 27, 1995
The KIMT-TV assistant producer, Amy Kuns, whose phone call woke Huisentruit that day, was the last person to speak to her. Huisentruit’s shift started at 3 a.m., Kuns told KARE 11-TV in Minneapolis in 2022. Kuns called Huisentruit a second time when she still hadn’t shown up, but she didn’t answer. Kuns had to write, produce and anchor the broadcast in Huisentruit’s absence.
Kuns, during the interview, said she knew “something wasn’t right.” After the broadcast, Kuns asked a coworker to call the police and have them conduct a welfare check.
Officers arrived at 7:16 a.m., but didn’t find Huisentruit in her second-floor apartment. An officer found some evidence of a possible struggle — contents of her bag and drag marks — near Huisentruit’s Mazda parked near the building.
Later, police said Huisentruit had been abducted sometime after her phone call with Kuns. She likely was attacked when she came out into the parking lot of the Keys Apartment complex, located along the Winnebago River, to drive to work.
It would have been dark outside, and not many people would have been around at that time. There was no surveillance video and no witnesses, police said.
A few neighbors told police they heard possible “screams or noises” around that time but it could have been animal noises, according to a June 29, 1995, Associated Press article. Investigators also couldn’t find any evidence of anyone having been in Huisentruit’s apartment that day or that she had been stalked, former Mason City Police Chief Jack Schlieper said in the article.
Police also didn’t have any DNA evidence, which has helped solve many cold cases in recent years.
During an interview, a retired Mason City police investigator said a strand of hair was collected and a partial palm print was found on Huisentruit’s car but there hasn’t been further information about those, according to a nonprofit, FindJodi.com.
Police said Huisentruit had a long day the day before she disappeared. She anchored the morning news and then went to a golf tournament, which was rained out, but she stayed and socialized with community members.
For dinner that night, she went with other golfers to the Mason City Country Club, according to FindJodi.com. Two golfers reported Huisentruit told them she planned to change her phone number because she’d been receiving harassing calls.
Huisentruit left the country club before 8 p.m. and called a friend in Mississippi at 8:24 p.m., according to news reports.
Person of interest
One of the last people to talk to Huisentruit was John Vansice, who has been a person of interest since 1995. Police said Vansice and two other men showed up at the Key Apartments while they were still on the scene that morning, and Vansice said he’d seen Huisentruit the night before.
Vansice told police Huisentruit had stopped by his Mason City residence the night before to watch a video of a surprise birthday party he co-hosted for Huisentruit the weekend of June 9 in Clear Lake. Vansice turned over the video and was interviewed. He told reporters he passed a polygraph test.
He denied any involvement in the abduction.
Huisentruit had spent the weekend of June 23-25 waterskiing in Iowa City with Vansice, two other friends and Vansice’s son, according to news reports. Friends also told police they knew Huisentruit had gone boating with Vansice on other occasions.
Two federal grand juries have been convened in Huisentruit’s case but have not returned indictments.
Vansice was subpoenaed in March 2017 in the second grand jury at the U.S. District Courthouse in Cedar Rapids, after he left Iowa and moved to Phoenix, Arizona, according to reporting by The Globe Gazette newspaper in Mason City.
Mason City police obtained a search warrant for GPS tracking devices on two of Vansice’s vehicles in March 2017, but Chief Jeff Brinkley, during a 2018 “48 Hours” TV episode, said the GPS tracking devices yielded no evidence.
That search warrant and an affidavit were sealed, but after Vansice died in December 2024, at age 78, lawyers for Steve Ridge, a private investigator not affiliated with law enforcement, asked an Iowa 2nd Judicial District judge to unseal the documents.
Ridge’s lawyer argued in a March hearing that the prosecution doesn’t have a right to investigate deceased individuals and that Brinkley had previously said the warrant didn’t produce any evidence.
Cerro Gordo County Attorney Carlyle Dalen said the warrant should remain sealed because Huisentruit's disappearance remains under investigation. The affidavit attached to the warrant includes information going back to the first day of the investigation, which only law enforcement know.
The Huisentruit family also opposed unsealing the warrant, concerned it might hinder the ongoing investigation.
The judge unsealed only the search warrant and kept the affidavit under seal.
Independent investigation
Ridge, who lives in Marion, told The Gazette last week he got what he wanted — the travel locations from the search warrant. He said he didn’t appeal the ruling because he knows the Huisentruit family was not in favor of unsealing the affidavit.
However, The Gazette was made aware after publication of this story that a notice for a request of discretionary review had been filed April 27. It wasn’t correctly filed through the clerk of court, according to an order by Iowa Supreme Court Justice David May on May 12.
Ridge said it was filed by his lawyers without his knowledge and he intends to withdraw it.
Ridge believes there are “multiple” people who know what happened to Huisentruit. Several months ago, he narrowed his list of suspects to four people. Huisentruit knew all of them, he said.
He also has shared a list of 21 people with Chief Brinkley that he thinks could provide testimony in a grand jury. The new witnesses, he said, could provide “critical insight.”
Ridge said he hasn’t ruled out Vansice as a possible suspect, even after interviewing him in 2019, when Vansice continued to deny any involvement in the crime.
Ridge now believes the motive of this crime was jealousy after he uncovered last year a “secret” relationship Huisentruit was having with a man who lived out of state but was staying at a house in Clear Lake, about 10 miles west of Mason City. Ridge said she got involved with him about 10 days before she was abducted.
“Not even her closest friends knew about them,” Ridge said. “I believe the person who abducted Jodi was jealous about this man.”
Ridge wouldn’t identify the man.
“I think this case can still be solved,” Ridge said. “People want to talk. They want to clear their conscience. But they are often afraid to speak with law enforcement.”
Chief Brinkley declined to verify what Ridge said.
Experience with cold cases
Cedar Rapids Police Investigator Matt Denlinger, a member of the department’s Cold Case Unit, said he’s talked to Mason City police and the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation about this case because it’s interesting and because he’s also had circumstantial cases that have lacked witnesses or DNA and video evidence.
Denlinger also is often asked about the Huisentruit case because the convicted killer of 18-year-old Michelle Martinko — a high-profile Cedar Rapids cold case that he helped solve in 2018 — mentioned Huisentruit when confronted about Martinko’s murder.
Jerry Burns, 73, of Manchester, was convicted of fatally stabbing Martinko in 2020 and is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
Denlinger said he didn’t think Burns was being serious and was just making nervous conversation. He didn’t say anything incriminating.
“I know Vansice may be considered a suspect in this abduction but you always have to keep an open mind because it may not be your favorite suspect,” Denlinger said. “But at the same time, it’s almost always your favorite suspect. There’s no twist coming at the end, like in the crime shows. The last person to see a (victim) is usually a suspect.”
Friends’ memories
The day Huisentruit went missing is “one that will be forever etched into my mind,” Robin Wolfram, Huisentruit’s friend and co-worker at KIMT-TV, told The Gazette.
“I was in utter shock and disbelief … Emotion that quickly gave way to a grief I had never known, until then,” said Wolfram, who regarded Huisentruit as a sister.
Jodi Huisentruit (left) and Robin Wolfram are pictured when they worked together in the early 1990s at KIMT-TV news station in Mason City. (Contributed photo)
Robin Wolfram
She recalled that night in the newsroom, looking up at all three monitors and seeing her friend’s face on all the national news stations. That wasn’t what they imagined.
“We had the shared goal of reaching network news and we worked a lot on honing our skills,” Wolfram, an anchor with KAAL-TV in Rochester, Minnesota, said. Jodi had goals as big as her personality.”
“What I would give to hear her infectious laugh and giggle one more time,” Wolfram said.
Joe Vigil, friend and former KGAN TV anchor, first met Huisentruit at St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, Minnesota, where they hosted a campus TV program. She graduated and went to KGAN, working in the Iowa City bureau, and he followed a few years later, starting in the station’s Dubuque newsroom.
Jodi Huisentruit and her friend, Joe Vigil, when they attended homecoming at St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, Minnesota (Contributed photo)
Joe Vigil
Vigil, now an anchor and reporter at KVVU-TV in Las Vegas, Nevada, said he would go to Iowa City and they would have a “blast.” They always had fun together. She was nice to everyone, he said, and he will never forget her “big smile and laugh.”
When Huisentruit moved to Mason City, Vigil went to Lawton, Oklahoma He was there when he received a call about his friend being abducted.
“I hated that call,” Vigil said.
“I hope the media coverage on the 30-year anniversary will prompt someone to come forward with information that leads to a suspect,” Vigil said. “It is time for everyone, including Jodi’s family, to know what happened to her.”
Amy Johnson, former anchor and one of Huisentruit’s co-workers at KGAN, said she was impressed by Huisentruit because although she was young and inexperienced, she was “willing to do the hard work and get her hands dirty.” In the Iowa City bureau, she was lugging the heavy equipment, finding a story, shooting live shots, editing the video and reporting it on air.
Johnson said none of them could believe what happened that day and then strange things started occurring. Vansice repeatedly called the KGAN and KIMT newsrooms in the following days, asking anyone who answered “What do you guys know, what are you hearing?” Johnson said.
Everyone was on edge because they didn’t know if other anchors and reporters might be targeted. Johnson also encountered Vansice staring at her from a distance during a Wisconsin football game a few months after Huisentruit’s abduction. She said it has “haunted” her to this day.
Wade Wagner, friend and former KGAN farm director/anchor, shared a memory of Huisentruit and how he underestimated her abilities — not in journalism, but in sports. Huisentruit “bragged” to him about her sports background, growing in Minnesota, where she was a state golf champion.
“I don’t know what possessed me to think I could beat her in a 9-hold match,” Wagner, also a former Cedar Rapids City Council member, said. I watched her first drive go 250 yards straight down the middle of the fairway. I knew right then — game over. She was very athletic and had remarkable talent on the golf course.”
Wagner remembers Huisentruit as a good friend and co-worker. Always smiling and “really passionate about people and journalism.”
Brian Mastre, friend and former KIMT anchor, said he never thought this case would still be unsolved after 30 years. He recently “dusted off” the breaking news script he kept from that day.
Reading those two typed pages with handwritten notes in the margins, all the same emotions flooded his mind, Mastre, an anchor/reporter with WOWT-TV in Omaha, Nebraska, said.
“Uncertainty. Unbelievable. Was she targeted because she was on TV? Are the rest of us in danger?” Mastre said. “Today, I’m thinking of Jodi’s family and the heavy burden of unknowing they’ve been carrying. One day, I hope that’s lifted.”
Watch an upcoming series about Huisentruit
A new three-part series — “Her Last Broadcast: The Abduction of Jodi Huisentruit” — will stream on Hulu starting July 15. It’s being produced by Committee Films and ABC Studios for Hulu. Amy Johnson and others connected to Huisentruit were interviewed for the series.
Jodi Huisentruit and her friend, Joe Vigil, working on their TV program at St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud. Minnesota, in this undated photo. (Contributed photo)
Jodi Huisentruit celebrating her 27th birthday in June 1995. She went missing June 27, 1995 and the case remains unsolved 30 years later. (Contributed photo)
This story was updated on June 30, 2025 to correct the number of Jodi Huisentruit’s sisters. It was updated on July 1, 2025 after The Gazette became aware that an appeal was filed in Steve Ridge’s case to unseal an affidavit in the case.
Comments: (319) 398-8318; trish.mehaffey@thegazette.com
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