Researching unsolved homicides is a cheerless process by definition. As I pore over Iowa cases going back as far as 1893, what is even more saddening is the sameness amongst victims, killers, and motives.

Greed, jealousy, alcohol, love triangles, fratricide, anger, lust, and insanity wove through the dismal fabric of murder 120 years ago as they still do today.

And yet much has changed. Most obvious is how we get our information. As we receive minute-by-minute breaking news on our cell phones and laptops, it’s difficult to recall that large-city newspapers once printed several daily editions that readers eagerly waited for.

And other things are different as well.

Discreet exterior photos of murder scenes have replaced graphic interior pictures showing blood stains and chalk outlines of bodies and, even sometimes, shroud-draped victims.

Words like “berserk,” “bloody-thirsty,” “Negro,” and “gory” no longer shout from headlines to incense the public and, in some cases, incite lynching attempts.

Nor is the word “divorcee” used in accounts of crimes against women who had once been married, as though that fact were somehow relevant to the crime, even when it was known not to be.

Dorothy Coon was murdered in late August of 1960

“Clues Scarce in Slaying of D.M. Divorcee.”

That was the headline in the Cedar Rapids Gazette above the story reporting 36-year-old Des Moines resident Dorothy Coon’s 1960 murder. And every other newspaper covering the homicide mentioned she was divorced.

In the fifty years since Dorothy’s murder, divorce is no longer regarded as a social stigma or an index to character.

But in 1960, the media felt it was permissible to use a word which then was weighted with the suggestion of misconduct on the victim’s part, seeming to imply she deserved to be murdered or had brought it own herself.

The facts of her death are stark.

On Thursday evening, August 27, 1960, Dorothy Coon waited until her teenage children Nancy, 19, and Dennis, 17, were asleep.

The house at 2017 61st Street in Des Moines where Dorothy Coon was raising her children (photo courtesy of Google Street View)

She put on a dark green dress and white shoes and left the house she shared with them at 2017 61st Street.

Dorothy disappeared around midnight. Heavy rains during the next few days seemed to wash away all traces of her.

On Monday, August 29, a farmer mowing weeds found her body in a county road ditch 12 miles north of Chariton in Lucas County — 47 miles from her home. Her purse was discarded along the road a mile from her body.

An autopsy showed Dorothy was dead for several days, and throat bruises and broken neck bones suggested strangulation.

As with contemporary homicides, authorities had to rule out spousal involvement. Dorothy’s ex-husband Richard, whom she divorced in 1950 and who was living in Albia and running a business there, was interviewed and proved to have an alibi for the time of Dorothy’s death.

Dorothy held a job in the business office of a Des Moines department store and raised her two children on her own.

Instead of the headline she was afforded in 1960, today we might read: “Hard-working Single Mom Murdered.”

As times passes, news communication modes and language are modified.

Unfortunately, the gloomy facts of murder seem never to change.