Kimberly Ratliff
Kimberly M. Ratliff
22 YOA
1414 West Broadway
Council Bluffs, Iowa
Pottawattamie County
January 12, 1999
On Tuesday, January 12, 1999, Kimberly Ratliff, 22, was found in a car left in the parking lot of People’s Natural Gas at 1414 West Broadway in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Her throat had been slashed. An employee clearing snow from the sidewalk found Ratliff inside her white 1988 Plymouth Sundance at about 10:40 a.m.
The employee peered inside the vehicle and saw Ratliff sprawled across the front seat, her head nearly decapitated.
Ratliff fell in with the wrong crowd after graduation but was trying to get her life back on track. Courtesy photo WHO-TVPolice believe Ratliff was killed elsewhere because little blood was found inside her car, and there were indications someone else had dressed her. Authorities also believed the vehicle had been parked in the lot over the weekend.
Ratliff, who worked at Airlite Plastics Co. in Omaha, Neb., was last seen alive when she got off work about 11:30 p.m. on Friday, January 8. She lived in Council Bluffs with her mother and stepfather, Joyce and Leslie Kennedy, who spoke with WHO-TV reporter Aaron Brilbeck in January 2011 as the 12th anniversary of Ratliff’s unsolved murder approached.
Their daughter had been trying to find her path in life, the couple told Brilbeck, after working hard to keep up her grades so she could graduate. It hadn’t been easy for her.
“She goes, ‘I did it. I’m the only one in the family,’” Joyce Kennedy said.
Instead, Ratliff fell in with the wrong crowd and began hanging out with drug users and dealers. The last night they’d seen their daughter, Les Kennedy said he’d confronted her about what she was doing to her life.
“You might say it was like an intervention,” Kennedy said. “And when she left the house she kissed me and said, ‘Dad, I’ll be home tonight.’”
Ratliff never came home.
Ratliff’s parents, Les and Joyce Kennedy, said they feel if those with knowledge about their daughter’s death knew how much she suffered, they might come forward with information. Courtesy photo WHO-TVA few days later, her body was discovered in her car behind the Council Bluffs business. Police said it was one of the most violent attacks they’d ever seen. Ratliff had been stabbed and cut repeatedly and her head almost severed. Her frozen body made it difficult for investigators to determine exactly when she died.
When they arrived at the Kennedy home to break the news to her parents, they stepped inside the home and immediately noticed a picture of the 22-year-old.
“One of them looked up at the wall and looked at his partner and he said, ‘that’s her,’” Les Kennedy recalled.
Kimberly Ratliff, right
The Kennedys found it painful revisiting the details of their daughter’s death, but believe if those who know something about her murder understand how much she suffered before she died they might come forward.
“Nobody has any idea how nasty our daughter died,” said Les.
In 1999, Kennedy placed a signboard outside his tire repair shop announcing a $10,000 reward for “solid evidence” in Kimberly’s death. More than $100,000 was available in a fund set up in her memory if the killer was found and convicted, he stated at the time.
The sign is now gone, but the family hasn’t given up hope that someday, somehow, justice will be served.
WHO-TV’s Aaron Brilbeck reports on Kimberly Ratliff’s unsolved murder. Air Date: Jan. 6, 2011
Police said they have run out of leads, made all the more difficult by Ratliff’s body having been moved and later placed in her vehicle in the Council Bluffs parking lot.
“There wasn’t enough blood located in the car,” Council Bluffs Police Sergeant Chad Meyers told Brilbeck. “The crime scene where this probably happened — there would be an obvious large amount of blood there.”
Council Bluffs Police Sergeant Chad Meyers
Investigators do not feel Ratliff’s murder was a random crime.
Yet to this day, no witnesses have come forward and police have not been able to gather enough evidence to charge anyone with the crime.
“I carry her in my heart every day — think about her every day,” said Kimberly’s mother.
Anyone with information is asked to call the Council Bluffs Police Department at (712) 328-4765 or (712) 328-7876.
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