Thirty-nine years ago yesterday, Waverly, Iowa, resident Valerie Lynn Klossowsky was found dead after being missing for two days. The fourteen-year-old was strangled and left partially clothed in a rural area west of Denver, Iowa.

Valerie Klossowsky

For us, Valerie has stopped in time – still that shyly smiling junior high school student of the photos in 1971 newspapers. If she were alive, she would be 54 years-old.

As we mark the anniversary of Valerie’s murder, we are encouraged by the recent exhumation of Lisa Peak, who was found beaten and strangled in a ditch just north of Waverly on September 7, 1976. Bremer County Attorney Kasey Wadding hopes that something will be found that can be analyzed by modern scientific methods not available 34 years ago.

Some have long speculated that Valerie’s and Lisa’s deaths were related to each other and to that of Julie Ann Benning, 19, who went missing from Waverly on November 28, 1975 and whose remains were found in a ditch northeast of Shell Rock on March 18, 1976.

The three Bremer County murders have many similarities. Advancements in DNA may bring a break in the case of Lisa Peak which will help solve the other two.

Time marches on, but so does science; and those who murder are finding that time is not on their side.