Myrtle Zelda Cumpston
 Dallas County, Iowa |
 Redfield, Iowa |
Homicide:
Myrtle Zelda Cumpston
60 YOA
Case # 6500401
Redfield, IA (Dallas County)
March 9, 1965
Case summary by Nancy Bowers
At 10:00 a.m. Tuesday, March 9, 1965, Myrtle Zelda Cumpston, 60, was found dead at C & K Aqualand, Incorporated, her co-owned tropical fish aquarium business in rural Dallas County near Redfield, Iowa. She had been shot in the back of the head and 50 dollars was missing from the cash box.
Her business partner and neighbor, Mrs. Robert King, found the body when she came to help open the business for the day. Myrtle was robbed and murdered sometime during the previous two hours.
Myrtle’s 60-year-old husband Charles Cumpston, a former poultry farmer, left home at 8:00 a.m. to drive to Oskaloosa, Iowa, to examine farm animals. He was an inspector for the Animal Disease Eradication Division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The two women and their husbands met 10 years before through a mutual interest in tropical fish and operated a company together out of the King home in West Des Moines, Iowa. Because the operation grew so rapidly, the Kings built a house a half-mile from the Cumpston residence in 1961. The day-to-day operation was conducted by the two women at the Cumpston farm, located on an unpaved road a quarter-mile east of Redfield, where the Cumpstons lived for 30 years.
Dallas County Sheriff John T. Wright called in the Iowa BCI, who concluded that the death was a robbery-murder.
Because the in-home business was located in such a remote area, the act may have been committed by someone familiar with the operation. That person might also have known the general banking habits of the owners, as Myrtle Cumpston and Mrs. King deposited the 700 dollar weekend receipts in Des Moines the day before.
Myrtle Zelda Cumpston was born in 1905 in Webster County, Iowa, the only child of George Asa and Mamie C. Dickerson. She had three children--Dale Cumpston, Duane Cumpston, and Geneil Cumpston Mestad.
Sources:
IDPS Division of Criminal Investigation
“Probe Murder of Farm Wife in $50 Robbery,” Waterloo Daily Courier, March 12, 1965.
“Seek Clues In Slaying At Redfield,” Muscatine Journal, March 10, 1965.
“Woman Is Slain for $50 Loot,” Cedar Rapids Gazette, March 10, 1965.
Page last updated: March 10, 2010
