Courtesy photo Ancestry.comMildred Adaline Clemenson
81 YOA
Case Number: 98-12891
3926 Ironwood Avenue
Kensett, Iowa
Worth County
November 9, 1998
On Wednesday, November 11, 1998, an family member discovered 81-year-old Mildred Clemenson beaten to death in her rural Kensett, Iowa, mobile home — a home about seven miles west of Kensett and directly attached to the family farmhouse at 3926 Ironwood Avenue, where Clemenson’s only daughter, Marcia Patton, lived with her husband Ron and the couple’s two children.
An autopsy indicated the elderly woman had been dead for two days and died from a blow to the head with a blunt object.
“She died as a result of a head injury caused by a blunt object,” said Doug Krull, then Worth County attorney, in a Globe-Gazette article dated June 27, 2010. “It was not an accidental injury.”
Within one week, the Pattons spoke with Des Moines attorney Montgomery Brown, whom they would later retain as counsel.
Two months later, homicide investigators raided the Patton farmhouse, where they seized an undisclosed number of financial records.
In a Mason City Globe-Gazette article dated January 23, 1999, Brown said his client firmly denied any involvement with her mother’s murder.
“No one has told me she’s a suspect, but there are community rumors,” Brown told the Globe-Gazette.
The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation was brought in to help work the case, which remains unsolved.
Mildred was born February 1, 1917, in rural Klemme, the daughter of John S. And Hattie (Weing) Bitker. She moved with her parents to Clear Lake and Hanlontown. She graduated from Manly High School in 1936.
Mildred moved to California and married Gunder Clemenson on March 11, 1940, in Reno, Nevada. They moved to Norfolk, Virginia, and in 1945 to rural Kensett.
Courtesy Ancestry.comThey retired in 1976 and spent their winters in Texas and Florida; beginning in 1983 they spent winters in Mesa, Arizona.
Mildred enjoyed playing five hundred and cribbage. She was a member of Elk Creek Lutheran Church, Kensett.
Mildred was survived by her daughter, Marcia Patton and her husband, Ron, Kensett; two grandchildren, Lacey and Brandon Patton, Kensett; one brother, Johnnie Bitker and his wife, Dolly, Tuscon, Arizona, a half sister, Geraldine Kalaplastos, Lowell, Arkansas; and several nieces and nephews.
Mildred was preceded in death by her parents; her stepmother, Mabel Bitker; her husband, Gunner; one sister Gladys Dahl Urbatch; and one brother, Morrie Bitker.
Memorial services were held at 1 p.m. Wednesday, November 18, at the Elk Creek Lutheran Church in rural Kensett, followed by inurnment in the Elk Creek Cemetery.
Family greeted friends one hour before the service at the church. Ward-Van Slyke Colonial Chapel, 101 N. Fourth St., Clear Lake, was in charge of services.
Courtesy photo findagrave.comMemorials were to be directed to the Mildred A. Clemenson memorial fund.
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