Norma Jean Horgen
Norma Jean Horgen
18 YOA
DOB: February 15, 1948
Case Number: 66-01036
Mason City, Iowa
Cerro Gordo County
September 10, 1966
The body of Norma Jean Horgen, 18, was found near the northwest shore of Iowa’s Clear Lake on September 10, 1966. The St. Ansgar teen had been a cosmetology student in Mason City.
Twenty-six years after her death, authorities arrested Las Vegas veterinarian John Rea Wallace, 44, and charged him with first-degree murder. Wallace, a decorated Vietnam war veteran with no known criminal history, owned and operated the Spring Valley Animal Hospital in Las Vegas but returned to Iowa after learning a warrant had been issued for his arrest.
Wallace was a student at Mason City Junior College in 1966 when Horgen was a cosmetology student, and had been living in Las Vegas since the mid-1970s.
In July 1992 Wallace pleaded innocent to the charge and was freed on $100,000 bond. His trial was scheduled for September, but Cerro Gordo County District Court Judge Gilbert Bovard granted a defense motion to delay the trial.
Wallace’s attorney, Randall Mainor of Las Vegas, accused Cerro Gordo County Sheriff’s Lt. Larry Mason of “outrageous conduct” and challenged the completeness of the state’s evidence, arguing that evidence had been lost or withheld. Mainor also said the state withheld from the grand jury evidence about other suspects in the case.
Bovard dismissed the murder charge in February 1993, ruling that evidence had been withheld from the grand jury and that Mason took part in grand jury deliberations, which is against the law.
The case remains unsolved.
Norma Jean Horgen was born February 15, 1948.
Funeral services were held on Tuesday, September 13, 1966, at the Immanuel Lutheran Church in Saint Ansgar with the Reverend Norman Betke officiating. Burial was in the Immanuel Lutheran Cemetery in Mitchell County.
Miss Horgen was survived by her mother, Mrs. Leona Horgen of rural St. Ansgar; four sisters, Mrs. Keith (Karen) Jaspers of Solon, Janice of Anaheim, California, and Dorothy and Sherlyn at home; and three brothers, Russell, Keith, and Darwin, also at home.
If you have any information about Norma Jean Horgen’s unsolved murder please contact the Cerro Gordo County Sheriff’s Office at (641)421-3000.
I went to school in St.Ansgar, and I grew up in Otranto, Iowa and I am very interested in this case, because I know the family of Norma. I’m curious to know if when they found her on the shore of Clear Lake was their any sign of struggle, gunshot wound, any indication of possible drowning?
Was John Rae Wallace a aquaintance of hers, friend?, or just knew her from going to the college?……..Was their anyone else with a possible motive to have her hurt or killed? Any markings on her or her body?? I take it nobody knows or if they do know something that happened to her just don’t want to come forward with the information…
Why was their evidence in this that was lost??? What happened to it??? Why would the state withold evidence of other suspects in the case????? Something sounds a little fishy here………….