A lot of people with a lot of problems

11/6/2024

On June 18, Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, backed by the families of several murder victims, announced the launch of the first Iowa Cold Case Unit (ICCU). 

“We know that, with a cold case, a family is left in the dark, and a murderer is left walking free,” Bird said.

Phrases like “hope cannot be forgotten, “never stop looking,” and “ensure that no murderer walks free” were bantered. Steve Ponsetto, a retired Division of Criminal Investigation agent, was named leader for the unit that comes from Linn County law enforcement.

“The Cedar Rapids Police Department’s cold case unit is a success story,” Bird said. “But most other states also have a statewide cold case unit to back law enforcement in searching for answers. Now, Iowa does, too. I look forward to partnering with our law enforcement heroes, like our friends here in Linn County, to help families and seek justice. If we solve even one cold case and uncover answers for one family, it is all worth it,” Bird said.

The ICCU will consist of three full-time investigators and one prosecutor. It will partner with local law enforcement agencies across the state “to crack cold cases, seek answers for families, and ensure no murderer walks free.” The Iowa Legislature approved $536,000 of funding for the first year. 

Ponsetto said investigators will be “reviewing homicides, missing persons as well as cases involving unidentified human remains in cases where local law enforcement have hit dead ends in investigations.”

All news sources reporting this story used the number 400, or 400+ for unsolved murders in the state. We think it is far more than that. Project: Cold Case claims there were roughly 2,870 murders in Iowa just between 1980 and 2019. Around 2,122 of those murders have been solved. That leaves 748 unsolved murders in Iowa in those 39 years alone. 

Several requests for comment, direction and clarification for this story were ignored by Bird’s office, although we were told the AG “really was interested in shedding more light on the subject.” Efforts to contact the Cold Case Unit directly were referred to the dark hole of the AG’s office.

Obviously, Iowa’s unsolved murder cases go back much further than 1980, even before statehood. The second non-indigenous resident in Lyon County was known simply as “Old Tom.” He was killed, probably by a Sioux warrior who didn’t know his tribe had ceded the land to the U.S. No one was tried for that murder. 

Assuming that the number of unsolved murders in Iowa is more likely in the 1,000-plus range than 400, we gave up our plan to list all the victims in a Vietnam War Memorial type of tribute. Instead, we targeted some old ones that triggered our interest while demonstrating the ancient adage “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” That is usually said about love, but murder is just as passionately motivated. 

Most of the histories we retell here come from Nancy Bowers’ “Iowa Unsolved Murders; Historic Cases.” That is a fabulous study of the subject, and Bowers is a great historian. 

 

Is booze an excuse for murder?

“How to Commit the Perfect Murder was an old game in heaven. I always chose the icicle: the weapon melts away.”  – Alice Sebold, “The Lovely Bones” 

We begin two years after Iowa began, in 1847. In Linn County, where AG Bird focused Iowa’s search for cold case solutions, 39-year-old farmer Nathaniel Carnagy was walking down a road between Cedar Rapids and Marion when he was bludgeoned with “a billet of wood that might have been a fence post, a tree branch or a sled stake.” The bludgeoner was suspected to be James Reed to whom Carnagy owed money. The murder weapon disappeared.

Carnagy died 15 days later likely from the injuries he incurred, thus becoming the first murder victim in Linn County history. When a jury found Reed not guilty, Carnagy became the first unsolved murder case in Iowa post statehood.  

Bowers concluded that the jury agreed with newspaper accounts of the time that the murder was the result of “an old feud fueled by drink.” 

Codicil. Seventy-two years later, Cedar Rapids would enact a citywide alcohol ban, several years before the rest of the nation did. Because of that, speakeasies arose on the outskirts of town. Linn County still has The Lighthouse and the Ced-Rel supper clubs as memorials to the days when infamous alleged murderers Al Capone and John Dillinger visited, and/or hid out there. 

 

Did the lynch mob get it right? 

“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” – William Shakespeare, “Henry VI, part II” 

In 1886, on the Indian Creek subsidiary to the South Skunk River, an old farmer simply known as Mr. Knisely kept to himself, until he didn’t. After he disappeared for a pair of months, people found his dwelling empty. Because his closest neighbors, the Hamlin Brothers, were considered “insolent,” other neighbors concluded they had robbed and murdered the much nicer Mr. Knisely.

A mob captured the Hamlins and hung them by their thumbs, later putting nooses on their necks until they confessed. Because the brothers could not tell where they disposed of the body, some mob voices asked that the rule of law prevail, and the Hamlins were sent to jail — in Fort Madison because Fort Des Moines’ jail was too small. 

The Hamlins hired a Revolutionary War hero’s grandson — “Old Enoch” Eastman — who dramatically provided a surprise “witness” at the trial. The mysterious stranger claimed to be Knisely’s “brother from Missouri” and said he had been visited by the “victim” on his way to California. 

The Hamlins were released on a “reasonable” doubt that Knisely was dead. “Old Enoch” grew older for another 40 years and became both Lieutenant Governor and Senator of Iowa. Bowers concluded that most of the mob continued to believe they got it right and should have finished the job.

Codicil. In 2015, Shirley Carter was shot dead in her rural home a little south of the South Skunk. Her husband blamed her son, but a jury found him not guilty — on reasonable doubt. The husband did win a civil case against the son. 

 

 

Politics to kill for, but is it a defense for murder?

“The justifications of men who kill should always be heard with skepticism, said the monster.” – Patrick Ness, “A Monster Calls”

Silas McCart was a father of seven who had moved to Jefferson County from Kentucky in the contentious years when Abe Lincoln and Stephen Douglas famously debated whether this nation should be free of slavery. McCart’s pro-slavery faction in Jefferson County was at odds with John Mix and his politics. Two weeks before Lincoln would be elected president, McCart and five cronies attacked Mix’s house armed with “brickbats.”

Amos Wimer, who boarded with Mix, came out of the house. McCart struck Wimer with a brickbat as the other men swarmed him. Wimer drew out a “small spring dirk-knife” and stabbed McCart four times. McCart died a short time later. In fear of being lynched by the brickbat-bearing Democrats, Wimer fled and joined the Union Army. He died in the Battle of Shiloh, where U.S. Grant earned his nickname “Butcher,” without a dirk-knife. 

Wimer’s death left McCart’s friends without a suspect to try for his “murder.” 

Codicil. The county, now home to the peace worshippers of Vedic City and Maharishi University, marks McCart’s unavenged grave in Batavia. In 2022, 18-year-old Republican Cayler Ellingson was run over and killed in a small town alley by Shannon Brandt, 41, after a political argument. Prosecutors refused to allow the “political argument” to be considered as motive, even though Brandt said he was chasing the teen in his Ford Explorer because he was a “right wing extremist.”

 

Black-faced, white-hooded land dispute

“The desire of gain is a universal passion which operates at all times, at all places, and upon all persons.” – David Hume

In 1877, a brutal cycle of violence begetting violence began near Indianola when Charles Kading and his two oldest sons rode off to town, leaving teenaged daughter Augusta with three young siblings and an invalid mother. 

Soon after, a man in a white muslin hooded mask rushed in with a cocked gun while two others in similar masks waited outside. Augusta lunged at the intruder, grabbed his gun and ripped off his mask, revealing a black-face disguise. The intruder fired a bullet that struck Augusta in the right breast. Augusta shoved him, and he shot her a second time. The man standing behind the shooter said, “How do you like that?”

Mortally wounded, Augusta pushed the gunman out the door, slammed it and bolted it. After locking the other doors and windows and dragging heavy furniture to the cellar entrance, she collapsed onto her bed. Her dad and older brothers found her there holding the eerie mask she tore off the gunman.

Augusta identified the other man — the one who spoke — as the Kadings’ 26-year-old neighbor, Rube Proctor. For several previous weeks, over multiple visits to her house, Rube had been asking Augusta questions about money her family had supposedly received from a farm land sale. He had even asked her about the duration of her father’s and brothers’ trips to town.

Rube and his brothers were “well-known in the area for mischief, mayhem, and larceny.” Based on Augusta’s and her sister Bertha’s certainty that Rube was one of the home invaders, he was arrested.  

After word that Augusta was failing quickly and might have only hours to live, proceedings were moved to the Kading home to hear her dying declaration. “Although in great pain, she was lucid and rational as she recited her story.” She told of the intruders breaking into her home, of the shooting, of unmasking the gunman, and of believing that Rube Proctor was the man who spoke.

After her testimony, “a group of several hundred men — many well-respected, prominent citizens — milled in the street, growing angrier and angrier.” Then the unmasked mob seized and quickly carried Rube Proctor to a “stock scale nearby and hanged him from an overhead crossbeam.”

Afterwards, the mob mounted their horses and stopped in front of the dead body. “A local citizen thanked the men, and a self-congratulatory three cheers resounded through the streets before they rode away.” A coroner’s jury ruled that Rube Proctor died from hanging at the hands of “persons unknown.” 

Two days after the lynching, Augusta Kading died of her gunshot wounds. The coroner recorded her “death from a gunshot wound inflicted with felonious intent … by some person or persons to the jurors unknown.”   

One man had been lynched for an alleged crime against Augusta Kading. Two other men involved in the home invasion, including the one who actually shot her, remained forever at large, officially considered “unknown.” Her homicide remained unsolved.

Was there guilt among lynchers, or just second thoughts?

Codicil. Six score and six years later, in the same part of Warren County, Rodney Heemstra shot Tom Lyon dead in the head in a similarly curious dispute about the sale of farmland. Lyon was upset that Heemstra had purchased land that Lyon used to graze his livestock. 

Heemstra admitted killing Lyon but contended he was acting in self-defense. Heemstra was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Three years later, the Iowa Supreme Court overturned that decision. In a new trial, Heemstra was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 10 years. One year later, he was released. Civil suits went on for several years until Heemstra agreed to sell 1,200 acres of farmland to settle things with Lyon’s estate. 

At the time, newspaper reports found that both men’s families included both sympathizers and their opposite.  

 

Racism, the unspeakable motive?

“Heaven is comfort, but it’s still not living.” – Alice Sebold, “The Lovely Bones”

In July 1897, on the morning after the annual Green Corn Dance festival, 16-year-old Se-Ton-a-Qua’s body was found next to the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad tracks bordering the Meskwaki Settlement. She had been brutally beaten and sexually assaulted. Near her body lay a three-foot-long piece of cordwood, spattered with blood and hair.

Des Moines Daily News wrote that she had “become unchaste and was beaten to death by the members of her tribe” as a punishment. Waterloo Daily Courier reported that “the young squaw had become a loose character and had been beaten to death by [other] Indian squaws, who regard lack of virtue as grounds for death.”

Such assumptions were refuted by a postmortem exam by Dr. William Corns. Corns determined that Se-Ton-a-Qua was a virgin before she was raped, and that, after the sexual assault, she was slashed with a knife and then beaten to death with the cordwood.

Indian Agent Horace M. Rebok, who lived north of the settlement, oversaw the matter. Rebok told reporters that the Indian community was shocked and anxious for justice and had offered a $300 reward for information leading to Se-Ton-a-Qua’s killer. He asked the Indian Affairs Commissioner to add to the reward and also requested that Iowa Governor Francis Marion Drake (a famous Indian fighter before he founded Drake University) contribute on behalf of the state.

Newspapers began seeing the victim as a human being, not a virgin squaw or other oxymorons of racism. The Hull Index wrote “Se-Ton-A-Qua was a bright, intelligent girl. From the Indians’ point of view, she was a beauty, and whites who were acquainted with her acknowledged her grace and comeliness of person.”

Other newspapers reported that no murder had occurred at the settlement since 1877, “when a visiting Pawnee tried to steal ponies and was shot by Meskwaki tribe member Black Wolf.” At least one newspaper finally wrote that Indians and Whites alike were so disturbed by the horrible crime that “promises to lynch any arrested suspects were widespread.”

Authorities admitted that circumstances pointed to the murderer as being “someone who attended the dance and lured Se-Ton-a-Qua away to rape her.” Waterloo Evening Courier still equivocated: “Opinion varies as to whether the crime was committed by Indians or some traveling miscreant. The consensus of opinion is that the latter is the guilty party.” The Des Moines Daily News finally placed the blame squarely on an outsider to the tribe, calling them: “White brutes, either of this vicinity or tramps.”

Codicil. In 2021, Nicole Poole Franklin tried to kill three Polk County children, in three separate incidents the same day, by running them over with her car “because she believed they were of Middle Eastern or African descent.” She was sentenced to 304 months by a federal judge and 17.5 years in related state charges. 

In a sentencing memorandum, her attorney said, “While she understood the nature and quality of what she was doing, and knew it was morally wrong, she was also quite clearly in the midst of an extreme schizoaffective episode that was further exacerbated by methamphetamine use, post-partum depression, and the grief of losing rights to her child.”

The father of one victim told CNN that his family felt badly for Poole Franklin “because I think it’s just a person that has a lot of problems.”

And that is why Iowa needs a Cold Case Unit. A lot of people have had a lot of problems. ♦