Camille Njus
Camille Louise Njus
20 YOA
Des Moines, IA
Polk County
Case # 78-06827
August 4, 1978 (approximate DOD)
Camille Njus, a 20-year-old Grinnell College student and Department of Transportation intern, was reported missing by her mother on August 5, 1978, after failing to return home for a weekend visit.
On October 18th — 74 days after her disappearance — a city employee discovered her partially clad body buried beneath some brush and logs near the Des Moines River access area in a deserted area known as the Flint Access.
Due to decomposition, an autopsy failed to determine cause of death but officials said they believed foul play was involved. The body was identified through dental records.
Dr. Dale Grunewalk, [then] deputy Polk County medical examiner, said Ms. Njus may have died August 4, the last day she was seen leaving a hair salon in northern Des Moines. Upon leaving the hair salon, Njus reportedly was on her way to the Des Moines Greyhound bus station to return home to Grinnell for the weekend, but never made it to the bus terminal. She was last seen near Merle Hay Road and Douglas Avenue.
During her Des Moines internship, Njus would stay with a friend of her mother’s Sunday through Thursday evening, and return home to Grinnell on Friday nights via Greyhound bus. She’d been intent on getting home that particular Friday, as her mother was scheduled for surgery the following Monday and Camille wanted to be with her over the weekend.
When Camille hadn’t arrived by Saturday morning, her parents frantically began calling their daughter’s close friends.
One of those individuals was Camille’s best friend, Gabrielle Rose. Gabrielle had met Camille — “Cami” as she called her — a year earlier at the college, but they’d quickly developed a very close friendship.
Gabrielle said she found out something was amiss when Camille’s mother called her at her family’s home in Winnetka, Illinois, that Saturday morning. The Njus’s were hoping against hope, Gabrielle said, that Camille had suddenly decided to come visit her in Illinois instead of returning home to Grinnell. Camille had spent time there with Gabrielle’s family during the preceding winter break, and during the week-long visit, Gabrielle said her parents had come to adore Camille.
Though Gabrielle didn’t know where Camille might be, she cut her weekend visit short and returned to the campus to help facilitate communication with a German host family Camille knew. Njus had spent a year in Germany through a Rotary Club scholarship, and because Gabrielle spoke German, she agreed to speak to the host family with whom Camille had lived during the time she lived in Germany.
Detectives also asked Gabrielle to list the names of boys Njus knew at Grinnell, though all were fairly quickly cleared of suspicion or having any knowledge of Njus’ whereabouts.
“I did inform the police, though, that the week before she went missing, Camille had called me and told me that she couldn’t tell me all the details now, over the phone, but that she had met an older guy,” Gabrielle said. “There was some kind of romance budding there.”
The information was, in fact, the first thing Gabrielle said she’d shared with Camille’s parents and the police once she learned her friend had gone missing.
Des Moines police continued to interview other Grinnell College students, all of whom were cleared.
In May 1979, law officers seized a number of items from the residence of a 62-year-old man in connection with Njus’ slaying.
Polk County District Court papers showed that officers searched the home of LeMar C. Toppenberg and seized from the residence a typewriter, an envelope containing what appeared to be human hair, a calendar, typing paper, two newspaper stories about Njus’ death and four newspaper pages with handwritten remarks.
Toppenberg, who served in WWII and died in 1989, was never charged with her murder.
Michael Leeper, the senior policy officer handling Des Moines’ missing adults at the time Njus went missing, said that of Des Moines’ 67 missing adults in 1978, Camille Njus was the only one found dead.
On Friday, November 16, 1979, another young woman disappeared from the same busy commercial area near Merle Hay Mall. Carol Ann Donnelly, 18, worked part-time at the Village Inn Pizza n’ Pasta restaurant at 3600 Merle Hay Road, and one source stated she was waiting for her boyfriend to pick her up and was not there when he arrived.
On Sunday, April 6, 1980, a fisherman found Donnelly’s nude body floating in the Saylorville Lake reservoir upstream on the Des Moines River. Her hands were tired and she had a deep stab wound to her lower back.
Donnelly’s case, like Njus’, soon went cold, and both murders remain unsolved today.
If you have any information concerning either of these crimes, please contact the Des Moines Police Department at (515) 283-4864 or the Polk County Sheriff’s Office at (515) 286-3306.
Copyright 2012 Iowa Cold Cases, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Recent Comments