Articles Tagged: Murder

A former Iowa City woman was extradited from Missouri to Iowa City and formally charged with first-degree murder in the 1992 death of an infant found at the city’s landfill.

Dakota Van Patten, 19, of Cedar Rapids, faces life in prison without the possibility of parole for the kidnapping and strangling of 20 year-old Melody Hoffman of Marion, on Feb. 18, 2024. The jury deliberated for about three hours.

Dakota Van Patten repeatedly told police he had no knowledge and wasn’t involved in Melody Hoffman’s assault and strangulation in February 2024. He wouldn’t be able to “live with himself” if he killed someone, he told investigators.

A North Liberty woman arrested last year in Minnesota after crashing a car with the dead body of her ex-girlfriend inside has been convicted of murder by a Hennepin County jury.

A state medical examiner testified Tuesday 20-year-old Melody Hoffman was strangled from behind by her attacker and likely died within minutes on Feb. 18, 2024.

Dakota Van Patten took 200 selfies of himself wearing Melody Hoffman’s glasses after she was killed Feb. 18, 2024. An investigator found the photos on his cellphone during the investigation.

Marion police investigators testified Friday about how traffic cameras and cellphone data helped them piece together what happened to Melody Hoffman, who was kidnapped and killed in February 2024.

Karina Cooper, Ryan Cooper’s wife, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for her involvement in her husband’s death in 2021 in rural Traer.

Megan Hoffman testified Thursday about tracking her daughter’s phone the night Melody Hoffman was kidnapped, strangled and killed in February 2014. The information helped police piece together the crime.

Prosecutor, during his opening, says Dakota Van Patten and McKinley Louisma couldn’t have beaten, tortured and killed a 20-year-old Marion woman without the other.

The DNA tissue sample taken from a baby left in an Iowa City landfill in 1992 was so “degraded and contaminated” that traditional DNA testing couldn’t help investigators identify the infant or his mother. Advanced testing developed by a Texas lab in 2018 helped investigators identify the mother, who was arrested last week.

A Cedar Rapids man was arrested Wednesday and charged with murder after a fatal shooting in northeast Cedar Rapids.

A woman has been arrested after DNA testing connected her to a baby that was found dead in the Iowa City landfill in 1992.

The big brother of 16-year-old Michael McCune, who was targeted by four juveniles and fatally shot in 2023, said during a sentencing hearing Monday it’s not fair that he can only look at a gravestone, instead of seeing his brother’s smile that “lit up a room.”

A former Decorah man was convicted by a jury this week in the death of a 15-year-old girl, who was the daughter of his girlfriend. The girl went missing March 30, 2017 and was never seen again. Investigators determined she was dead but the body has never been found.