Murder victim's mother to lobby Iowa Legislature

A Davenport woman whose daughter was killed in 1993 hopes a trip to Des Moines to share her story with the Iowa Senate will break a legislative deadlock.

Cheryl Dittmer will tell the legislators about the abduction and murder of her daughter, 17-year-old Michelle Jensen, by six teens nearly two decades ago, a crime that made news and stunned people across the country.

“The reason is I'm outraged,” said Cheryl Dittmer, Jensen's mother, who plans to travel to the Capitol on Monday. “I'll talk to whoever will let me.”

The six people involved in the kidnapping and killing were all caught and sentenced to life in prison. “Killed by her friends, sons of the Heartland” is how The New York Times headlined its story.

That might have been the last most people would have heard about the incarcerated teens if not for a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court case, Graham v. Florida, which ruled that life without parole for a teenager who hasn't been convicted of first-degree murder was unconstitutional.

The ruling forced state legislatures to create new laws that put a maximum amount of time a teenager could be sentenced to before he or she became eligible for parole.

Earlier this year, the Iowa House passed legislation making that mandatory maximum 25 years before a hearing, but the Senate has yet to act. If senators don't, those teens and others like them could petition for parole immediately.

Dittmer wrote an email to all 150 lawmakers pleading her case to do what they can to help her keep Michelle's killers behind bars.

“I'm trying to understand that the laws may change so that they will have a chance for parole,” she wrote. “They made their choices and now they have to pay for it. We're paying for it every day. And now these proceedings are just another ‘twist of the knife' for the friends and family of Michelle Jensen.”

The email caught the attention of Jeremy Taylor, R-Sioux City, a freshman legislator who supported an earlier version of the bill that called for a maximum of between 30 and 45 years.

“When I saw that, I contacted her to see if she would be willing to speak about it,” Taylor said. “People ought to hear her story.”

Dittmer takes part in emotional intensity therapy twice a week. After her daughter's death, she said, she couldn't function and lost her job. She now takes classes in administrative office support at Scott Community College. She's traveling to Des Moines with her mother. Her other daughter, who is 32 now, but 14 at the time of the killing, may go, too.

“The other day, it really hit me when I realized that she's been gone for more time than she was alive,” Dittmer said. “It's things like that, it really gets you.”