Overview of Jodi Huisentruit
Mason City, Iowa, residents recognized Jodi's smiling face every morning. As the 6:00am newscaster, she was a local celebrity. Did a stalker abduct Jodi?
On June 27th, 1995, Jodi was scheduled to anchor the morning news at KIMT-TV, but when she didn't show up at 3:00am, a producer for the station, Amy Kuns, called her to wake her up. Amy later told investigators that Jodi had overslept, and that she explained that she would be there as soon as possible. Even though Jodi lived only 5 minutes away from the station, Amy grew more worried as Jodi missed her 6:00am newscast. Around 7:00am, a coworker called the Mason City Police Department to request a welfare check be done on Jodi.
When police arrived shortly after, they immediately noted that Jodi's new red Mazda Miata was still in the parking lot.
Investigators also noted that many of Jodi's personal items — a shoe, her car key, and a hair dryer — were scattered on the ground around her car.
Once they entered Jodi's apartment, they noted that nothing inside seemed out of the ordinary, prompting them to believe whoever harmed Jodi did so in the parking lot.
Upon further investigation, police learned that neighbors from Jodi's apartment complex heard a scream sometime around 4:30am, as well as seeing a mid-1980s white Ford Ecoline van in the building's parking lot around that time. Police also learned that Jodi had spent a short amount of time the night before her disappearance at a friend named John Vansice's home to watch a video tape from her birthday party earlier that month.
Jodi had reported to police around nine months prior to her disappearance that she believed she was being stalked by a man in a white truck while out jogging.
She also mentioned this to friends, and shared her concerns about leaving for work while it was dark. Jodi had also been hoping to leave her job & Mason City, and try to get a job at a Twin Cities TV station, closer to her hometown.
Since her disappearance, a non-profit organization named FindJodi Inc. was created by TV journalists Josh Benson and Gary Peterson, in order to keep Jodi's case in the spotlight. The organization erected four billboards in 2018 in attempt to bring in more information regarding her disappearance. In January of 2020, one of their billboards was vandalized with the words "Frank Stearns Machine Shed" written in yellow paint across the bottom of the billboard, mentioning a retired investigator in Jodi's case. The Mason City Police Chief does not believe that this is a tip, but instead was written by someone with "their own agenda."
In 2001, Jodi Sue Huisentruit was declared legally dead.
In 2023, new information was released in Jodi's case.
Despite many theories and potential suspects, current detectives say many sources still communicate with the police anonymously, indicating a severe level of fear surrounding the case.
New information released also details that Jodi didn't own the red Mazda Miata she was driving. Jodi was actually trying out the car from a person she planned on buying it from, so the car was never in her name.
Moreover, in the fall of 2023, it was discovered that Jodi had a "blossoming" relationship with someone just before she went missing. Private Investigator Steve Ridge went to meet the secret man and photographed his back deck where the man says the pair had drinks together just 10 days before she went missing.
Jodi is described as being a 27-year-old Caucasian woman with blonde hair and brown eyes, who was 5'4-5'5 and weighed 110-115lbs at the time of her disappearance.
