WITH her blonde hair, bright smile and sunny disposition, Jodi Huisentruit was a classic, all-American TV news anchor.
The popular, young co-host of the 6am Daybreak show in the sleepy midwestern town of Mason City, Iowa, wrapped up her broadcast as normal at 7am on Monday June 26, 1995. The following morning, she vanished without a trace.
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“There has been a huge amount of speculation, suspicion and persons of interest, but no chief suspect,” reveals Caroline Lowe, an investigative journalist and one of the hosts of Find Jodi, a podcast attempting to shed some light on a 30-year-long mystery.
“Detectives are still treating Jodi’s disappearance as an active case, but no trace of her has ever been found,” she adds.
A rising star, Jodi, 27, was a natural in front of the camera. “From as far back as I can remember, she wanted to work in TV news,” says Jodi’s niece, Kristen Nathe, 41.
“She was down-to-earth, genuine and had a very warm, bubbly personality, which came over on camera. She was one of my biggest role models – I idolised her. She made you feel like you were the most important person in the world.”
Jodi, who was single at the time of her disappearance, had big dreams of making it to prime-time news. On the morning of Tuesday June 27, she was due to begin her shift at 3am. However, by 4am, she still hadn’t turned up, so her producer called her at home.
“She said she had overslept, but would be at the studio within half an hour, as her apartment was only a mile away,” says Caroline. Over an hour went by, and there was still no sign of her.
It appeared she had been dragged from under her arms with her heels making two distinct trails.
At 7.13am, a call was made from the TV studio to the Mason City Police Department, asking them to carry out a welfare check.
“Officers found clear signs of a struggle by Jodi’s red Mazda parked just 12 steps from her apartment building,” says Caroline.
“The mirror on the car was bent backwards. The car keys were lying on the ground, so it appears she was putting the key into her car when the attacker struck from behind.”
At just 5ft 3in and nearly 9st, it wouldn’t have taken much to overpower Jodi, but evidence suggested she had fought back. Her car key was bent, as if it had been in the lock when the attack came, and she’d hung on desperately to try and anchor herself.
“Jodi’s red high heels, hairdryer and earrings were scattered on the ground nearby,” adds Caroline. “Then the officers saw marks in the silt near her car. It appeared she had been dragged from under her arms, with her heels making two distinct trails.”
Several witnesses reported hearing high-pitched screams between 4am and 4:30am.
The Mason City Fire Department began dredging the Winnebago River that ran behind Jodi’s apartment, and while investigators were still processing the crime scene that morning, they were approached by a man in a car who told them he was a friend of Jodi’s, and the last person to see her alive.
“John Vansice became the first person of interest,” reveals Caroline.
“He told investigators Jodi stopped by his home the night before to watch a video of the surprise 27th birthday party he’d organised for her on June 10.”
Vansice was more than 20 years older than Jodi, and the pair had a platonic friendship for around a year after meeting at a bar.
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As the story went national and news crews descended on Mason City, Vansice appeared in multiple interviews, presenting himself as a father figure.
In one TV interview with Jodi’s own station, KIMT, he said: “Jodi was like a daughter to me.”
He also made a phone call to KIMT on the morning of Jodi’s disappearance, asking for her and enquiring why she wasn’t at work.
Questioned by police, he had no alibi and said that he was sleeping alone at the time of the attack, but he was cooperative, and after two voluntary polygraphs and DNA testing, investigators had nothing to link him to the crime.
Police also announced that they were trying to locate a white Ford Econoline van. It had been seen in the car park with its lights on by a witness who had been passing Jodi’s apartment complex on his way to work at around 4.20am.
The previous year, on October 8, 1994, Jodi had called the Mason City Police Department to tell them she had been followed by someone in a white van, while she was out with a friend.
HIGH-PITCHED SCREAMS
As a result, she took self-defence classes and shared with friends how she was worried that being an early morning news anchor meant that someone could get to know her schedule, especially as she’d always leave for work in the early hours.
The police had provided Jodi with options, including a police escort to and from work, but she declined.
After her disappearance, extensive checks on registered owners of white Econoline vans in the area proved fruitless, and no further persons of interest were pinpointed.
“After that, there was very little movement in the case,” says Caroline.
“John Vansice was never charged, and he always professed his innocence.”
Jodi’s address, apartment number and home phone number were all in the Mason City phone book, and the fact that she was regarded as a local celebrity meant that she could have become a target for anyone with a fixation on her.
Kristen remembers this traumatic time only too well.
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“Jodi was my mum’s youngest sister, and both my parents worked hard to shield me from what was happening, but they couldn’t protect me from everything,” she remembers. “The worst was when kids or adults made thoughtless comments about what may have happened to Jodi. I was constantly looking over my shoulder in fear that what happened to her could happen to me.”
As the days went by with no sign of Jodi, the TV crews drifted away.
“We planted a tree outside the KIMT news station shortly after Jodi went missing,” says Kristen.
“It’s now fully grown, and a reminder of how much time has passed without a resolution. It takes such an emotional toll, and we’re haunted by the unanswered questions and not knowing where she is.”
Timeline of Jodi Huisentruit’s disappearance
News anchor Jodi Huisentruit, 27, went missing over 30 years ago. Below is a timeline of her disappearance:
June 27, 1995
4:00 am – KIMT producer Amy Kuns called Huisentruit after she didn’t show up to work at her usual start time. Huisentruit said she overslept and she’d be right there. She never arrives.
4:30 am – Huisentruit’s neighbors later report hearing a scream around this time.
7:13 am – A co-worker calls police to check on Huisentruit.
7:16 am – Police arrive at Huisentruit’s apartment complex and find her red Mazda Miata in the parking lot surrounded by her scattered belongings. The investigation begins.
July 3, 1995 – Police call off the search for Huisentruit but continue interviews.
May 2001 – Huisentruit’s family has her declared legally dead.
March 17, 2017 – Police execute a search warrant on Huisentruit’s friend, John Vansice.
December 2024 – Vansice dies.
April 30, 2025 – Police partially unseal the search warrant on Vansice, revealing GPS data from 2017 showing he traveled back and forth from Arizona and Iowa.
July 15, 2025 – Her Last Broadcast: The Abduction of Jodi Huisentruit premieres on Hulu, identifying Brad Millerbernd as a new person of interest in the case.
Source: FindJodi
In 2001, the family made the gut-wrenching decision to legally declare Jodi dead and settle legal matters relating to her estate.
Then, in 2003, Minnesota TV journalists Josh Benson and Gary Peterson established the website Findjodi.com to keep Jodi’s name in the public consciousness and to gather any tips relating to her case.
With funding from donations, they launched a billboard campaign on May 30, 2018, to mark what would have been her 50th birthday.
The billboards, which appeared around Mason City, had a series of appeals on them, including: “Someone knows something. . . is it you?” and: “Don’t sit in silence. . . the time to talk is NOW.” Alongside the words were pictures of a smiling Jodi.
Officers found clear signs of a struggle by Jodi’s red Mazda parked just 12 steps from her apartment building
Caroline
However, the high-impact campaign failed to generate any new leads.
It wasn’t until January 2020 that Jodi’s family were informed about another potential breakthrough, when police received an email from Patty Niemeyer – a childhood friend of Jodi’s – who told them her suspicions about her ex-husband, Brad Millerbernd.
COLD CASE ‘BREAKTHROUGH’
Brad, 53, lived about three hours from Mason City when Jodi vanished, but his ex-wife told film makers in a recently released documentary that her suspicions were aroused when he called her out of the blue in 2005.
“I remember him calling me on Jodi’s 10-year anniversary, saying: ‘Do you know what the day is?’” Patty said in the ABC News documentary Her Last Broadcast: The Abduction Of Jodi Huisentruit, which aired on Disney+ in July this year.
“It freaked me out. Between the time we’d separated and the time he gave me a call, I’d never heard from him.”
In the documentary, Patty recalls how her ex-husband always talked about Jodi after she introduced them at their wedding.
“He would always ask: ‘What’s she doing? Where’s she at?’ That always bothered me,” she said.
Patty didn’t think any more of her ex’s behaviour, until 2020, when she saw a news piece on Jodi’s cold case on TV, which prompted her to email Mason City Police Department.
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ABC News also revealed that a composite sketch of a man who witnesses saw hanging around Jodi’s apartment two days before she went missing, had been in the possession of the police since 1995, but hadn’t been matched to anyone.
When Patty is shown the sketch by police for the first time in the documentary, her reaction is caught on camera: “I just couldn’t believe my eyes. It’s the same structure, the jawline, nose. That sketch has haunted me in my sleep. It looks so much like him.”
Investigators found that Brad drove a white Ford Econoline van for work, and in February 2022 he was interviewed by the lead detective in Jodi’s case.
During the interview, Brad said that he did drive a white van at that time, and that he had a dinner date with Jodi in the autumn of 1994, after he and Patty divorced, but that was the last time he saw her.
He freely agreed to a polygraph and DNA testing, and denied having anything to do with her abduction.
An extensive search of a disused wooded area by police and specialist cadaver dog units behind where Brad lived at the time also found nothing, and he was released without charge.
Kristen reveals that it’s difficult to manage the hope and disappointment that come with every new lead. “After you’ve experienced the rollercoaster of emotions, you learn to manage your expectations. Unfortunately, with any potential new lead now, I’m sceptical rather than optimistic,” she says.
After initially courting the media, John Vansice eventually refused to give any more interviews, and he said in a statement in 2019 that the speculation surrounding him forced him to leave Mason City in 2017. He moved to Arizona, where he lived until his death in December last year.
“Having a key police person of interest, who knew Jodi, die, certainly doesn’t help the case find a resolution. Until the case is finally solved, it’s hard to assess how significant John Vansice’s passing may or may not be,” explains Caroline.
DNA COULD HOLD KEY
However, even though it might seem that Jodi’s case grows ever colder, there is hope that the huge advances made in DNA testing could hold the key to solving it.
The Mason City Police Department has confirmed that there are items from the original investigation that they are not revealing, which could be sent for DNA testing if a prime suspect is identified.
However, they only have one shot at it, as the items degrade after testing.
Jodi’s parents died without ever finding out what happened to their daughter, while the wait goes on for the rest of the family.
For Kristen, the ability to still be able to see and hear her aunt in KIMT’s broadcast archive is bittersweet. “It’s comforting to be able to hear her voice, see her smile, or hear her laugh in the broadcasts. She was on her way to accomplishing great things, but it’s also a reminder of how tragically it was all cut short.”
