It has been more than three decades since the disappearance of Jodi Huisentruit, in what authorities believe was a violent abduction. On June 27, 1995, Jodi vanished while preparing to go to KIMT-TV in Mason City, where she worked as a television news anchor and broadcast journalist.
Her personal belongings were found strewn across the parking lot and near her vehicle, leading police to consider the kidnapping narrative. Though there have been several tips over the years, no suspect was ever named in the investigation.
In 2001, she was legally declared dead, but police and private investigators have continued to come up with compelling leads.
June 27, 1995
Jodi Huisentruit’s alarm should have gone off hours before dawn. As the morning anchor for KIMT’s “Daybreak” broadcast, she was required to be at the station by 3 am.
Jodi was occasionally late, once a week, and when that happened, her producer would call to wake her, and she would be at the station within twenty minutes.
At 4.10 am on June 27, KIMT producer Amy Kuns noticed Jodi had not reported for work yet and called her apartment. She picked up the phone, and after a typical exchange, Jodi said she would be right in.
Years later, Kuns told Kare11, “I knew something wasn’t right when I went on the air,” said Kuns. “But honestly, my worst thought was she slipped and fell in the shower. Never did it cross my mind that, oh my God, somebody abducted her.”
By 6 am, Jodi hadn’t arrived yet, and Kuns filled in for her after a second call went unanswered. At 7.13 am, the KIMT staff called the Mason City police department. In the newsroom, the schedule kept going but an uneasy dread set in.
Officers arrived at the Key Apartments complex on North Kentucky Avenue and found Jodi’s 1991 red Mazda Miata still in the parking lot. They noted the interior showed signs of a struggle.
Jodi’s red high heels, earrings and a blow dryer were scattered across the pavement. The keys to the car were bent, and investigators lifted an unidentified palm print from a nearby pole.
At least three neighbors told investigators they heard screams around the time Jodi would have been leaving for work. Another witness claimed they saw a white Ford Econoline van idling in the lot at that time.
Within days, what had started as a missing person’s report was now being treated as an abduction. Investigators believed Jodi was taken just as she entered her vehicle, between 4.20 and 4.30 am that morning.
A Life Interrupted
Jodi Sue Huisentruit was born on June 5, 1968, to Imogene Laverne and Maurice Nicholas Huisentruit in Long Prairie, Minnesota. As the youngest of three daughters, Jodi had an active, bubbly childhood.
Family and friends remember her as a vibrant late-in-life baby who loved being the center of attention and made friends easily. When Jodi was just 13 years old, her father passed away from colon cancer.
Those close to her remember the loss as devastating and caused Jodi to lose a significant amount of weight during that period. Following her father’s death, Jodi became exceptionally close to her mother, whom she considered her best friend, and nicknamed her “Teddy Bear”.
Jodi studied mass communications at St. Cloud State University and, after graduating, took her first job as a Northwest Airlines flight attendant before working her way into local news stations in Cedar Rapids and Alexandria.
By 1995, she had landed the anchor chair at KIMT, a small CBS affiliate for Mason City and southeastern Minnesota. Doug Merbach, the former News Director for KIMT, told Kaal TV, “She was very vivacious and effervescent and very bubbly personality.”
Robin Wolfram, who also served as an evening anchor at KIMT and a close friend to Jodi, said, “She just had this amazing infectious laugh, and I just wanted to know who was attached to that.”
Warning Signs Before the Disappearance
As one of the more recognizable faces on local television, Jodi drew the kind of attention that came with the job. This included fan mail, viewers who felt they knew her, and individuals who lingered a bit more around her apartment or where she shopped.
Jodi’s disappearance did not happen in a vacuum. Nine months before she was taken in October 1994, Jodi was out jogging in Mason City before realizing she was being trailed.
She noted the stalker was driving a black truck and reported the matter to the authorities. Police investigated the report but were never able to identify the driver of the vehicle.
To alleviate her rising anxiety over the jogging incident, Jodi enrolled in a self-defense and martial arts class. Her instructor recalled that when she was asked why she joined, she mentioned an uncomfortable incident a few months prior but didn’t get into details.
In the weeks leading up to the abduction in June 1995, friends stated Jodi repeatedly expressed a gut feeling she was constantly being watched and once reported seeing a man lurking outside her window.
In May 1995, a teen girl reported being chased by an unidentified man whom she caught standing directly behind Jodi’s Kep Apartment building. The girl reported the incident to the Mason City police department, but the man was never identified.
A month later, two separate witnesses came forward to report a suspicious man lurking near Jodi’s apartment building. This was just a few days before she was taken.
Police created a composite sketch of the man this time, but it did not lead anywhere. Friends and co-workers also added that Jodi complained of harassing phone calls in the weeks before she disappeared.
She had even planned to change her number.
On Saturday, June 24, Jodi played in the Mason City Chamber of Commerce’s charity golf tournament and had a water-skiing trip planned that weekend.
The water event was on a boat belonging to her friend and neighbor, John Vansice. He was twenty-two years her senior and had apparently named the boat “Jodi”.
On June 26, Jodi went to Vansice’s home to watch a homemade videotape he had shot at a surprise birthday party he helped organize for her earlier that month. Afterward, she left his house and returned to her apartment.
Vansice would later become the last person ever to see Jodi alive. He told police about their interaction the day before.
According to Fox10phoenix, he said, “She always had a concern about being stalked because she is on TV every day and everybody can see her. Jodi and I became very good friends. Nothing more, nothing less,” Vansice said. “We did things as a group with other people, and we just got to know each other a lot, and we liked each other. We had a lot of fun together. I’m like a father-daughter situation.”
Wolfram, sitting across from Vansice during an interview, didn’t find the description reassuring. When he mentioned the name of his boat, something in her shifted.
She described thinking in that moment that he might have been responsible for what happened to her. She told CBS during an interview, “When he said I named my boat after her, that’s when I said, ‘Ugh, that’s an obsession.’ … I remember holding on to the microphone and just feeling so ill at ease and thinking to myself, ‘I think he might’ve done it”
Initial Investigations Without a Suspect
The disappearance of Jodi Huisentruit is one of many disappearances that have remained unresolved for decades. Her story bore similarities to the case of Briana Maitland who also disappeared after walking to her vehicle in the parking lot nine years later.
Police had various angles to consider after securing the scene of Jodi’s disappearance. Some neighbors had heard screams and others saw a black or white Econoline van near the place she must have been taken.
They also had incoming statements from friends and family concerning the escalating stalking that Jodi had experienced over the previous days and weeks. Police opted to prioritize timelines for everyone close to the victim.
Vansice, who had arrived at the crime scene that morning, provided an alibi that he had gone for an early morning walk with a friend. Investigators spent extensive time trying to verify the claim.
In the days following the disappearance, police also organized massive search parties. Hundreds of people combed ditches, local landfills, and the nearby Winnebago River.
Due to the high-profile nature of the victim and the lack of initial concrete leads, the FBI was officially brought in to assist.
The Mason City Police and the FBI also heavily focused on local logistics. They methodically vetted hundreds of tips concerning the Ford Econoline van spotted that morning. Despite multi-state tracking, there were no definitive vehicle matches.
On the first anniversary of her disappearance, family and friends held public vigils to generate new leads. The FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit also developed psychological profiles based on Jodi’s high-profile career.
They considered whether an obsessed viewer or a sexual predator was targeting her. Law enforcement also used federal authority to subpoena her acquaintances, co-workers, and residents.
They were required to give blood samples, fingerprints, and palm prints to compare against the prints lifted from the Miata. Nothing came of it.
Focus on Serial Offenders
On May 8, 1997, Tony Jackson was arrested in the Minneapolis area after a victim picked his voice out of a lineup. He was charged with and convicted of a string of brutal, methodical sexual assaults and burglaries.
Minnesota detectives also found that Jackson typically stalked his victims weeks in advance, memorizing their schedules and preparing kits for his attacks. This pattern fit the profile of Jodi’s abductor.
Alongside Woodbury police detectives, investigative reporter Caroline Lowe began looking into Jackson’s past. She found that in 1995, he lived just two blocks away from the KIMT-TV station where Jodi worked.
A former friend of Jackson’s also came forward to state that just before the abduction, Jackson invited him out for drinks at a local bar that Jodi apparently frequented.
Now, while Jackson was awaiting trial, an informant named Dennis Goff said Jackson bragged about killing Jodi. He provided authorities with a rap song Jackson wrote in jail. A&E TV gave a snippet of the lyrics, “she’s a-stiffin’ around Tiffin in pileage of silage bylow, low below.”
This prompted police to launch land searches with cadaver dogs in the Tiffin, Iowa area, but they found nothing. Detectives also discovered that the girlfriend Jackson was living with in Mason City in 1995 bore a strong resemblance to Jodi.
She had broken up with Jackson a week before Jodi disappeared, giving him a volatile motive to target someone matching her appearance. Following a year of scrutiny and polygraphs, Mason City Police issued a press release in 1999 indicating they had no direct tie linking Jackson to the crime scene.
Tony Jackson continues to serve a life sentence in Minnesota for the convictions in 1997 but has also denied involvement in Jodi’s disappearance.
In 2001, Jodi Huisentruit was officially declared legally dead, allowing the family to resolve her estate, but it did not stop active police efforts.
John Vansice, a Person of Interest
John Vansice underwent a polygraph early on in 1995, which he passed. He was never charged with a crime but remained the case’s central figure of suspicion for a long time.
In 2012, he moved out of Iowa to Arizona, pulling away from the local spotlight, though police kept the file open. Years later in 2017, MCPD investigators applied for a high-tech search warrant against him.
A judge authorized the use of covertly installed GPS tracking devices on two vehicles linked to him. These logged data tracking movement across Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico.
However, no actionable evidence was generated from the operation.
In 2020, private investigator Steve Ridge began an independent investigation. He successfully tracked Vansice down in Arizona in 2019 and conducted an interview to get his take.
During the interview, Vansice openly expressed immense frustration and agitation regarding the way the police were treating him, saying he felt he was being treated as a scapegoat.
When Ridge was asked if any questions were off limits, he told Find Jodi, “Absolutely none. I asked him everything. It can be uncomfortable to look a man in the eyes and ask, “…did you kill her?”, “did you have anything to do with it?”, “…do you have any knowledge of who did this?”
Ridge went on to say he considered several others could be responsible for Jodi’s disappearance. After suffering significant health battles, John Vansice died in December 2024 without providing any clarity on the case.
Alleged Confession Bombshell and the Case Today
Ridge claimed an investigative theory that a killer under extreme pressure would eventually crack or display erratic behavior in front of an intimate partner. For several years, he tracked down and built files on various women who dated prominent persons of interest in the case in Mason City during that period.
In June 2026, he eventually located a woman in her 80s who had been in a relationship with a primary suspect in the investigation after Jodi vanished.
Ridge maintained the witness had been keeping it a secret for three decades because of the fear of retaliation and the significance of what she saw. He gained her trust and verified the witness’s timeline and the authenticity of the relationship.
Ridge claimed the woman provided a huge archive of corroborating evidence, including dated photographs of her proximity to the suspect, bank and transaction receipts verifying their locations, and handwritten letters from the suspect that gave insight into his frame of mind while the police were searching for Jodi.
In an interview with KTTC, Ridge stated,
“Essentially, it’s a woman, who I surfaced, who had a relationship with a suspect in the case almost immediately after Jodi went missing. It was in the months right after.”
The woman recalled him being regularly tailed by authorities. “In a moment of exasperation or anger, he was slamming the steering wheel and saying, ‘I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it,’ but he finally said, ‘I did it.’”
Ridge synthesized the recorded statements into a 12-page dossier and delivered it to the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation. The documents have received aggressive pushback.
Police Chief Mike Mckelvey revealed that detectives personally interviewed Ridge’s source and the witness explicitly denied making statements the reporter gave to the media.
Ridge has since urged local authorities to pull in resources from the Iowa attorney general’s office. However, Steven Ponsetto, the director of the Iowa Attorney General’s Cold Case Unit, confirmed they would not be involved.
Despite these developments, Jodi’s family has publicly declared they do not endorse Steve Ridge’s independent investigation. Twin Cities Pioneer Press reported the family’s social media post, which read,
“Mr. Ridge was never hired as our family’s PI. This is not the first lie that has been perpetuated by Mr. Ridge in the media as it pertains to Jodi and this case, and unfortunately, People did not reach out to us to confirm the truth. This needs to stop. Please stop preying on Jodi and our family.”
Marking 31 years since she disappeared, the family released a heartbreaking letter on the Find Jodi platform. An excerpt read, “Without answers to what happened to her and having her home with us, we are left haunted and restless by our lingering questions and angered by the lack of justice for the beautiful life and future stolen from her 31 years ago today.”
Though Jodi Huisentruit was categorized as legally dead in 2001, it remains an open, active, and unsolved missing person and abduction investigation. No one has ever been arrested, nor have any suspects been formally named by the police.
If you have any information regarding Jodi’s disappearance, please get in touch with the Mason City Police Department at (641) 421-3636 or share your tip securely and anonymously with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation at (515) 725-6010.
For more stories on unsolved disappearances, explore our articles on Korrina Malinoski and Leigh Occhi.
