Cold Cases in Linn County, IA
*Please Note: The cases listed below are within Linn County but may fall under a city police department's jurisdiction. They are included here for cross-reference purposes. More specific information may be found on each victim's individual page.
|
|
Homicide On July 17, 1931, while cooling off after work with friends in Van Vechten Park in Cedar Rapids, J.H. Peck and his friends were approached by a robber who demanded they turn over their possessions. When Peck resisted and struck the robber on the head with a bottle, he was shot in the heart and killed. |
|
|
Homicide: Between 12:15 and 12:30 a.m. on February 19, 1959, Marlene Padfield, 17, left the Kozy Inn restaurant in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, with 18-year-old Arthur Scott, Jr., a part-time Coe College student interested in community theater. Marlene was never seen alive again, and her remains were discovered April 29, 1959, by a farmer traveling an isolated dirt road between Cedar Rapids and Mt. Vernon-Lisbon. |
|
|
Homicide Frederick "Fred" Coste, 47, was found October 15, 1959, lying face-up in a pool of blood inside his loan interview cubicle at the Family Finance Corporation in Cedar Rapids where he worked. He had been punched in the left eye and then stabbed six times in the chest. |
|
|
Homicide: The nearly nude body of Mrs. Geraldine Maggert, 25, of Cedar Rapids was discovered in a wooded ravine near the Coralville reservoir on April 6, 1968. Mrs. Maggert — who was approximately three months pregnant — had been last seen alive on Friday, March 22, 1968, and an autopsy showed she died from a beating and exposure. |
|
|
Homicide Charles Gearhart was stabbed to death at his 422 First St. SW apartment in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, sometime during the evening of May 13, 1970. |
|
|
Homicide Paula Jean Oberbroeckling disappeared on Saturday night, July 11, 1970, after going out on a date and then later leaving her apartment in a nightgown. Her body was discovered November 29, 1970, in a ravine near the Cedar River six miles from the apartment she shared with Debbie Kellogg. |
|
|
Homicide: On Sept. 24, 1971, the body of 17-year-old Mrs. Maureen Farley was found atop the trunk lid of an abandoned car in a wooded ravine near the southwest edge of Cedar Rapids. The Linn County medical examiner ruled Farley had been dead no less than 48 hours and no more than 96 hours. |
|
|
Missing Person: Guy Heckle was reported missing to the Linn County Sheriff's Office in Cedar Rapids on February 3, 1973, after disappearing while on a Boy Scout camp-out near the Duane Arnold Energy Center. |
|
|
Homicide Dennis Stastny was reported missing to the Cedar Rapids Police Department on Tuesday, August 9, 1977, by his mother, Mary White. Two days later, Stastny's body was pulled from the Cedar River near downtown Cedar Rapids after two young fishermen discovered the body in the west spillway near the F Avenue bridge about 11 a.m. |
|
|
Homicide: On the evening of December 19, 1979, police found 18-year-old Michelle Martinko -- her face and chest stabbed repeatedly -- in her family's car in the Westdale Mall parking lot. She had been Christmas shopping. |
|
|
Missing Person: Naomi Wilson was reported missing to the Cedar Rapids Police Department in Cedar Rapids on April 12, 1981. She was last seen at her Cedar Rapids home located at 1618 13th Ave. SE, about 4 p.m. by her boyfriend. |
|
|
Missing Person: Denise Fraley was reported missing to the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation on September 12, 1982, by her family. Her husband David had filed for divorce in May 1982 and a judge granted a restraining order prohibiting him from contacting Denise or their child. The child stated she had seen her mother weighted down with rocks and thrown in a river. |
|
|
Homicide Dennis Chaffee, a 33-year-old Vietnam veteran, was shot to death in his Cedar Rapids home on Sunday, July 17, 1983, while his 1-1/2-year-old twin children were in another room. His parents discovered his body Monday evening. |
|
|
Homicide On Christmas Eve, 1983, Ronald Lee Novak, 24, was bound with his hands tied behind his back, beaten with golf clubs and firewood, shot in the chest, and then left in an unheated room of his rural Center Point residence. He was found deceased with his three golden retrievers lying with him in efforts to keep him warm. |
|
|
Homicide: Matt Pusateri, a cab driver for Yellow Cab in Cedar Rapids, Ia., was shot in the head while sitting in his cab about 3 a.m. in a parking lot in the 800 block of Sixth Street SW. |
|
|
Homicide: Brian Schappert, 22, of Cedar Rapids, was stabbed during an apparent robbery at the Kum & Go store in southeast Cedar Rapids on September 8, 1989. |
|
|
Missing Person: Barbara Elms was reported missing to the Cedar Rapids Police Department on August 25, 1993. The 50-year-old Cedar Rapids woman had a history of leaving for days at a time, but vanished without a trace on Aug. 25. |
|
|
Homicide Traci Evenson, 22, of Cedar Rapids was found beaten viciously in the face and suffocated in her Cedar Rapids Apartment on June 22, 1997. An autopsy revealed she died about 9:30 the night before. |
|
|
Homicide On April 5, 1999, the body of Judith Weeks, 44, of Cedar Rapids was found nude from the waist down in the back yard at 1319 Second Ave. SE in Cedar Rapids. Weeks suffered a wound to her forehead caused by a bladed object. |
|
|
Homicide Jamar Magett, 19, of Chicago, Ill., was shot in the head and chest while standing in the 1400 block of Fifth Avenue SE in Cedar Rapids on May 10, 1999. A Linn County jury acquitted Paul Gilbert, 18, of Cedar Rapids, in the slaying. |
|
|
Homicide On Nov. 27, 1999, Willie Junior Brocks, 49, of Cedar Rapids was shot in the head in the 400 block of 15th St. SE in Cedar Rapids. |
|
|
Missing Person: Fifteen-year-old Erin Pospisil was last seen at a friend's home in the 100 block of 12th Street SE at 8:45 p.m. on Sunday, June 3, 2001, getting into a dark-colored Chevrolet Cavalier with tinted rear windows. She hasn't been seen since. |
|
|
Homicide On June 21, 2001, Tyrone Gilbert, 28, of Cedar Rapids was found on the front porch at 412 15th St. SE in Cedar Rapids. Gilbert had been fatally shot in the abdomen. |
|
|
Homicide: The body of Joseph Harris, 23, was found dead of gunshot wounds to the head in the front passenger seat of a burning car in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on January 6, 2003. Harris, who was from Chicago, was found in a green 1995 Lincoln in the 3600 block of Wenig Road NE. |
|
|
Jay Grahlman, 38, and his six-year-old daughter, Jaymie, died from injuries suffered in a late-night fire set at their Cedar Rapids home on Saturday, April 5, 2003. Jaymie suffered brain damage and died Sunday after being removed from life support, and Jay died the following Wednesday morning from burns he'd sustained in the fire. |
|
|
Homicide Anthony Posley, 22, of 3333 Pioneer Ave. SE in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was shot in the 1600 block of Sixth Avenue SE about 2:27 a.m. on July 23, 2006. He was taken by ambulance to Mercy Medical Center and pronounced dead a short time later. |
Double Homicide: 
If you have any information about any of these cases, please contact the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation at (515) 725-6010 or e-mail dciinfo@dps.state.ia.us.
Page last updated: June 25, 2010
