Amos Wesley Jellison
71 YOA
Blairstown, IA
Benton County
Case Number: 8104503
August 2, 1981
The Jellison brothers — Elmer, 71, and Amos, 75 — lived side by side on Prospect Street in Blairstown, Iowa. Elmer’s wife was in a nursing home and Amos was a widower, so the two spent a lot of time together.
They went fishing almost every day and sat in lawn chairs on front yards Amos tended with a riding mower.
Amos had no phone, so Elmer took and made his calls. Amos didn’t drive, so Elmer transported him. Elmer’s son Daryl lived close by and the two depended on him for assistance.
On Sunday, August 2, 1981, the Jellison brothers inspected a drainage tile together in a nearby creek. After they parted at 4:30 p.m., Elmer had supper at his son Daryl’s house and went home.
Elmer later told investigators that about 8:30, he was picking up nightcrawlers in the yard so he and Amos could fish the next day and heard his brother’s television but didn’t see any lights in the trailer.
That wasn’t unusual, he told reporters, because, “He never turned no lights on . . . there wasn’t anything different that I could notice.” Elmer went back inside, washed up, and turned in just after 10:00 p.m.
Elmer’s son Daryl said he received a startling phone call at 1:00 a.m. An anonymous voice — that sounded to him like an older man — said, “Daryl, your uncle’s hurt real bad, so you’d better come.” The man repeated the statement four times.
Daryl later speculated that the man called him because he was listed first under the surname Jellison in the phone book. That does not explain, however, how the caller knew that Amos was his uncle.
Daryl said he was frightened by the tone of the call and phoned Blairstown Mayor and part-time Town Marshall Wilbur Hartz.
Hartz strapped on his gun and told Daryl to pick him up. Wilbur lived only a half-block from Amos’s house, but later told newspapers, “I never heard a thing. It was probably one of the quietest nights of the year. It was just a quiet . . . night for a small town.”
Courtesy photo Mark E. Bowden, Cedar Rapids Gazette When the two men arrived at Amos Jellison’s trailer, they saw a light on inside and heard the television. Daryl opened the main door — Amos never locked it — and Wilbur Hartz shone his flashlight inside.
Amos’s body lay on the floor about six feet from the door. Hartz told Daryl, “Shut the door” and they drove to his home and called Benton County Sheriff Kenneth Popenhagen.
Amos Jellison died from wounds to the face and head from a blunt instrument. It appeared the assailant entered through the back door that opened into a bedroom at the rear of the home and found Amos in his chair, where he’d fallen asleep watching television.
When Amos was struck from behind, the chair turned over and he lay there long enough for a pool of blood to form. Eventually, he got up and walked towards the kitchen in a daze and then collapsed and died.
The motive for this murder was never clear, although Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation Chief Gerald Shanahan said his agents would investigate it as a robbery, although not all authorities involved agreed it was.
Many of the details made public about this case — particularly those provided by family members — were confusing and contradictory. Investigators admitted playing their cards close to the vest so any prosecution of the murder would not be hampered.
It was never publicly confirmed by law enforcement how much money Amos Jellison kept in his trailer or if he, in fact, kept any there or if he even had money at all.
Elmer said the only motive he could think of for his brother’s murder was robbery, but said he didn’t know if Amos had any money in his trailer, although he seemed certain he had money in the bank.
In a confusing public statement, Elmer told the Cedar Rapids Gazette:
“My son (Daryl) went to the bank that morning, but they (law enforcement officers) had told them (bank officials) not to tell anybody.”
Did Daryl go to the bank the day of the murder or the day afterwards? Did he go there to learn if there was any money in Amos’s account? If so, to what purpose did he do that? Did law enforcement order the bank not to divulge the amount, if any, to the family? Or did authorities tell the bank not to reveal that Daryl had been there?
Although acknowledging Amos’s money in the bank, the Jellison family — according to Sheriff Popenhagen — said, “The state will have to bury [Amos],” implying he was penniless.
The Cedar Rapids Gazette reported they had information that Jellison was robbed of $10,000 by someone he met a few months earlier when he was hospitalized for pneumonia at the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Iowa City, Iowa. The newspaper’s sources speculated that, while there, Amos disclosed to someone the amount of money he had and the fact that he felt vulnerable living alone.
Benton County authorities and Iowa Department of Criminal Investigation agents traveled to Iowa City, 30 miles southeast of Blairstown, to question potential suspects and witnesses there.
In a seemingly contradictory statement about Amos not having much money, Elmer said his brother used to carry a lot of money on his person, but after he went to the VA Hospital he started writing more checks.
The homicide stirred up Blairstown and frightened older citizens, especially because Amos Jellison’s murder was the second one in Benton County within a few years. Seventy-four-year-old Charles Albert Plucar, who also lived alone, was robbed and murdered in his rural home on June 22, 1977.
No one has been arrested in either the Jellison or Plucar cases.
Courtesy photo Dean Close, Vinton TodayAmos Wesley Jellison was born November 5, 1906 to Etta Mae Haskins and George Wesley Jellison. He had two brothers — Albert and Elmer Ray, and three sisters — Evelyn N. Jellison, Bessie Annie Jellison Blackburn, and Lucy Bell Jellison Young.
In December 1957, he married Elsie McCreedy in Cook County, Illinois. They had no children and Elsie died in Lisle, Illinois, in June of 1973. Amos was a railroad employee and later did maintenance work in two apartment houses owned by Elsie. After her death, he moved back to Blairstown to be near his family.
Amos Jellison’s funeral was held at 10:00 a.m. on Thursday, August 6 at Russell’s Funeral Home in Blairstown and he was buried without a stone in the Dunkard Cemetery at Midway, Iowa.
Questions and information about the unsolved 1981 murder of Amos Jellison should be directed to the Benton County Sheriff’s Office at 319-472-2337 or to Iowa Cold Cases through the Contact form.
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