Courtesy photo WebshotsPatricia Ann Jauron
Case Number: 98-06160
45 YOA
1516 Old Highway 141
Sioux City, IA
Woodbury County (Jurisdiction)
May 26, 1998
On Tuesday morning, May 26, 1998, sometime between 9 and 9:45 a.m., Patricia Anne “Pat” Jauron, 45, was viciously stabbed several times in the rural Sioux City home she and her husband, Eugene “Gene” Jauron, had just vacated.
The couple had just moved out of one home at 1516 Old Highway 141 and into another across the road at 1541 Old Highway 141, and had been selling off the last few items from the former home. According to Gene Jauron — who spent more than 40 years as a meter reader for MidAmerican Energy — the couple had held an earlier yard sale and a person who’d attended the yard sale allegedly called several times afterward inquiring about purchasing the waterbed and setting up a time to meet.
Patricia — who’d just retired from the Sergeant Bluff Middle School — went across the road at the scheduled appointment time and was supposed to be gone only for a few moments.
In a 2005 interview with KTIV News Channel 4 reporter Melissa Lanzourakis, Gene Jauron talked about his late wife — his second of three marriages — and said he believed he’d met her killer face to face. From his home across the highway, Gene said he saw a red car, and believed the car belonged to the man who murdered his wife.
When Pat didn’t return home, Gene said he went to check on her at the other house. He said he found the waterbed in the basement covered in blood.
“He’d hit her in the head, knocked her down and tied her up,” Jauron said. “She still had the twine on her one arm, but she got loose. He started stabbing. She got out the basement door and she got out into the yard and he must have stabbed all the way out.”
The stabbing was so forceful, Jauron said, that the blade broke off in Patricia’s chest.
The viciousness of the attack indicated what investigators often refer to as “personal in nature.”
Jauron said he found his wife’s body over an embankment.
Courtesy photo Sioux City Journal“And all I could do was hold her,” he told Lanzourakis.
Jauron contacted the Woodbury County Communications Center at approximately to 10:52 a.m. to request assistance.
The couple had been married 25 years and were just settling into retirement.
“She was the life of the party…never see her grumpy…always willing to help everybody,” her husband said.
Gene Jauron said he felt there were still many clues to be followed up on, and believed they met the killer at the garage sale before the murder. The man, he said, paid for a dresser that day but never came back for it. He said the same man told him he worked at an area packing plant.
Phone calls made before the murder were all traced to a pay phone near a local convenience store.
As for the alleged red car in the driveway, Jauron said they were clues he’d like to see tackled in a cold case crime unit. He also believed someone in Siouxland knew what happened.
“Somebody around here knows,” he told KTIV’s Lanzourakis in the 2005 interview. “He would have had to have been the most horrible bloody mess you ever seen in your life. All I can do is hope they get him.”
Courtesy photo Sandy Smith, findagrave.comPatricia Anne “Pat” (Kane) Jauron was born July 16, 1952, in Emmetsburg, Iowa, the daughter of Leo Michael and Phyllis (Gilchrist) Kane. She attended grade school in Cylinder, Iowa and graduated from Emmetsburg High School in 1970. She then attended Iowa Lakes Community College.
She married Gene Jauron on Aug. 8, 1972, in North Sioux City. She had been a resident of Sioux City since 1972. She was employed with the U.S.D.A. for a brief time and later was the librarian and then secretary for Sergeant Bluff Middle School.
She served on the Sergeant Bluff School Board from 1995 to 1997.
She died in Sioux City on Tuesday, May 26, 1998.
Services were held at 10 a.m. Saturday, May 30, at Sergeant Bluff Middle School, with the Rev. Gerald Feierfeil of Nativity Church officiating. Visitation was held at the Christy, Smith and Hockenberry Funeral Home on Friday, May 29, from 1 to 9 p.m., with the family present from 6 to 9 p.m. Burial was in Memorial Park Cemetery.
Survivors included her husband; her mother of Cylinder, Iowa; a daughter and her husband, Annette and Howard Simpson of Guymon, Okla.; two sons, Jason Patrick of Le Mars, Iowa and Kevin Andrew and his wife Sherrie of Cedar Rapids, Iowa; a brother and his wife, William and Ann Kane of Los Lunas, N.M.; three sisters and their husbands, Sherrie and Harlan Meints of Ute, Iowa, Ginger and Dale Hoffman of Graettinger, Iowa and Therese and Charles Duhn of Emmetsburg; and a granddaughter, Kayla Simpson.
She was preceded in death by her father and a son, Eugene “Buck” Jauron.
Pallbearers were Steve Jauron, Ron Brandl, Jim McCrystal, Roger Miltenberger, Larry Nabor and Ray Geary.
* Note: Gene Jauron married Bibi Gaznebbi in October of 2005. He passed away on Thursday, January 12, 2012, at a Sioux City hospital.
If you have any information about Patricia Jauron’s unsolved murder, please contact the Woodbury County Sheriff’s Office at 712-279-6010 or 800-352-6352, or Crime Stoppers at 712-258-8477 or 800-728-6401.
KTIV’s Melissa Lanzourakis contributed to this report.
Miss you Pat!!!
I can’t believe the Jauron phone records didn’t net any suspects with a red car.