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Triple Homicide
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

TRIPLE HOMICIDE

 

 
SIOUX CITY COLD CASES

Horror of triple murder lingers 30 years later

May 20, 2004 | The Weekender
By Jody Ewing

A snowy haze covered the city the morning of Dec. 3, 1974, as Harriet Isom and her next door neighbor drove across town to her son’s home at 1117 Morningside Ave. Something wasn’t right: For the second day in a row, neither 27-year-old Ernest “Billy” Isom Jr. nor his roommate Jesse Hanni, 26, showed up for their jobs at Port Neal Station where they worked as boilermakers.

Billy’s father, Ernest “Big Ernie” Isom Sr., who worked at Port Neal as the boiler supervisor, called his wife and asked if she would go check on the home where the two men and Billy’s girlfriend Freta Bostic lived.

As Harriet entered the front door of the large two-story frame house, it was dark and eerily quiet. Walking through a hall and into the dining room, grim suspicions turned to reality when she discovered the 24-year-old Freta lying face down on the floor between the dining room and the adjacent living room, her arms tucked beneath her pregnant body. Barefoot and clad only in a flower-print robe, the swinging door between the rooms stood half open between her legs. She’d been shot once in the back.

Looking through the doorway and into the adjoining living room, Harriet discovered another gruesome scene: Jesse, fully clothed and still wearing his winter jacket, was propped up against a door to the hall. He’d been shot once through the back and once behind the left ear.

Then came Harriet’s most unsettling discovery – her son lay naked and face down on the floor, his legs across a mattress that he and Freta used as a bed. He’d been killed in a hail of gunfire, shot twice in the back and three times in the head.

Saturday, November 23, 1974
Jesse Hanni

Jesse Hanni

After an exhausting drive home to Red Lodge, Mont., Jesse aimed to clear his head. Under a vast blue Montana sky, he took off walking and then ventured across a field to where his father and brother Ray were working. Jesse seemed tired and nervous.

“He said they were after him,” Ray said of the last time he saw his brother alive.

“The man” was on his trail, Jesse told a close friend that same weekend, referring to a drug dealer who Ray believes he crossed in a deal.

“He tried to tell me what was going on, Ray said. “But he didn’t tell me enough.”

The mystery still haunts him today.

Thursday, November 28, 1974
Billy Isom

Billy Isom

That warm afternoon, Big Ernie treated Billy and Freta, as well as Jesse and his girlfriend, Susan, to a big Thanksgiving celebration. Harriet had gone to California to be with her ill brother. Big Ernie was excited to have his only son and future daughter-in-law home for the holiday. The couple, along with Jesse, had just moved to Sioux City the month before and rented a house together.

Freta Bostic

Freta Bostic

As they enjoyed a traditional meal complete with Jesse’s homemade gravy, they talked with excitement about the upcoming birth of Billy and Freta’s child. With just a few months to go until the birth, the couple was counting the days.

The next day, the group would say goodbye to Susan, who was traveling back to Colorado to wrap up some personal business and then rejoin the others in Sioux City.

Saturday, November 30, 1974

New friends from The Jet, a downtown pub known for live music, bikers and an open culture, had partied hard with the three, leaving the home a mess, police said.

Sunday, December 1, 1974

During the quiet evening hours, a friend stopped by, but left when no one answered the door. Two plates at Big Ernie’s home sat cold that night when Billy and Freta didn’t show up for dinner as promised.

Monday, December 2, 1974

Kent Hansen of Bronson was concerned when he didn’t receive his rent check. He’d rented the two-story house the month before to the three newcomers, though strangely enough, Jesse’s girlfriend had put up the deposit. He knew the men had good jobs at Port Neal, and didn’t know why they hadn’t dropped off the check.

It’d been snowing for a while, and as he drove up Morningside Avenue he noticed the blue Chevy parked in their driveway. Snow covered the vehicle and there were no tire tracks behind it. No footprints led toward or away from the house. They must be out of town, he thought, and quietly drove away without going to the door.

Tuesday, December 3, 1974

After they discovered the bodies, Harriet and her neighbor Dorothy Stewart fled across the street to use a phone.

When the call came into the Sioux City police station, off-duty Officer Norman Kronick, who was closest to the scene, arrived first and secured the scene while waiting for on-duty officers. Among them were Lt. Melvin Lafrenz and Sgt. Ron Shuck of the detective bureau, Capt. Lester Zerschling, Sgt. William Peterson of the identification bureau, and Sgt. Tony Bilunos. Few shifts had gone by before every detective on the Sioux City police force had some assignment connected to the case.

‘They Knew the Perpetrator’

“When you have a situation like this, a thing in a house in the middle of the night, that narrows the field tremendously,” said Sioux City Police Chief Joe Frisbie, an officer at the time who worked as a lead investigator on the case. “The people that we were focusing on were people that they knew. There’s no doubt in my mind they knew the perpetrator.”

Sioux City Police Chief Joe Frisbie

Chief Joe Frisbie

Authorities believed from the beginning the killings were drug-related. Both men, Frisbie said, were shot “very much in execution style,” something typically associated with a ‘hit.’

“They were partying with some pretty well-known folks that we knew were involved in narcotics traffic at that time,” said Russell White, Jr., the other lead investigator on the case. “Marijuana and traces of harder drugs had been found in the house, and someone already had come forward and admitted to ‘ripping off’ some pot from one of the victims the night of the party.”

The way they were shot added credence to the theory.

“In addition to being shot multiple times, they were shot behind the left ear,” said White, now a vice president with MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company in Des Moines. “It wasn’t a crime of passion, and robbery wasn’t a motive. The only motivation we believed for the actual killing was that somebody wanted them dead.”

“We think that they were expecting some kinds of problems, too,” Frisbie said. “They were going armed all the time, pretty heavily. They actually were carrying high caliber handguns in their lunchboxes and things like that.”

Russ White

Russ White

Police found Jesse’s .357-caliber revolver in a lunchbox inside his 1968 blue Chevrolet that he had parked in the driveway.

Theories abound: an unsuspecting Jesse brought home the killer after a night of partying at The Jet on Sunday; the hit was ordered by a drug dealer in Colorado or Montana; the men had created anti-union sentiments at the Port and co-workers were unhappy.

“They’d also been involved in some anti-union activities at the plant… That was rumored to have not gone well with some of the co-workers,” said White.

Though it wasn’t determined if there were one or more assailants, more than one caliber of handgun casings were found at the scene. The victims had all been killed with a .380-caliber semi-automatic weapon. No one in the neighborhood saw anything unusual that night and no one heard the gunshots.

Tracking down suspects entailed a lot of teamwork and travel. The victims had lived in Sioux City only a month and had permanent addresses from three different states: Isom from Arkansas City, Kan., Hanni from Red Lodge and Freta Bostic from Greensboro, N.C. The three additionally had worked in Steamboat Springs, Colo., shortly before their move to Sioux City.

“These young people were very traveled and they were from all different parts of the country,” said White. “They dropped out of sight for about six weeks before they showed up in Sioux City. So we theorized that maybe they were hiding out and then just reappeared up in Sioux City, thinking they could blend in with the woodwork up here and not be found.”

It’s now obvious that they didn’t.

Wednesday, December 4, 1974

An afternoon press conference holds promise for Sioux City police officers, Capt. Frank O’Keefe of the SCPD Detective Bureau tells an excited crowd of local media. The first lead has already taken officers Frisbie and White to El Paso, Texas, and on to Carlsbad, N.M., where a Moville couple is being held in jail for questioning in connection with the killings.

The man — a former co-worker of Isom and Hanni — also had been employed by Ebasco at Port Neal and had abruptly quit his job on Monday, Dec. 2, the same day that Dr. Thomas L. Coriden, Woodbury County medical examiner, said the victims died.

O’Keefe said the man and his girlfriend left the Sioux City area with little or no notice at 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, approximately 10 hours before the murder victims were found. “They were friends of the victims,” said O’Keefe.

And while there had been recent labor trouble at Port Neal, “I don’t think the slayings were labor-related,” O’Keefe said at the conference.

Running out the leads

“This case took us all over the country,” said Frisbie, who spent his 30th birthday in Carlsbad, where the couple from Moville were given polygraph tests. “We thought the gentleman might have had knowledge or was somehow involved, but that didn’t pan out exactly the way we thought.”

Nor did a phone interview with Hanni’s former girlfriend — who had returned to Colorado shortly before the homicides — conducted by Lt. Melvin Lafrenz of the detective bureau.

“Melvin Lafrenz was on the phone with an officer in Steamboat and the officer was with the woman,” White said. “I recall Lafrenz, who’s now deceased, telling us that they had found the woman and she ‘didn’t know anything.’ I never believed that and still don’t today.”

No doubt the threesome had developed some bad relationships in their travels; Freta was “involved with some credit card scams. They’d been using phony credit cards and were involved in buying and selling plastic,” White said. In addition, according to an anonymous telephone call allegedly placed to a Sioux City television station, Hanni had earlier that year testified in federal court in Denver against a major drug kingpin.

Shortly after Frisbie and White returned from New Mexico, the phone rang at Sioux City Police headquarters. Someone from eastern Iowa had seen a report of the homicides on the evening news. They said they had information.

“There were some people from eastern Iowa that had witnessed the falling out of one of these [victims] with this person we wanted to interview out west,” Frisbie said. “There was some bad blood between them and this other group of people.”

‘Affront to our sworn oath’

Officers and detectives continued to run down leads, conducting hundreds of interviews with friends and family members from Montana to Kansas to Oklahoma and North Carolina. The exhaustive investigation forced Sioux City Police to contact an FBI agent in Colorado to conduct a follow-up interview with a “person of interest,” who they believed knew more than she gave up in the earlier interview via phone.

Lisa Claeys

Lt. Lisa Claeys

If the case took place today it would be handled differently, said Lt. Lisa Claeys of Sioux City’s Investigative Services Bureau.

“It’s risky because you’re missing information that only the officers who worked the actual case would have,” Claeys said of courtesy interviews. “When somebody lies to you, you’re going to know because you have the details of the case, whereas somebody who’s doing a courtesy interview has no inclination. They have to base it on face value, and it’s just not a good idea.”

But the Sioux City officers already were running ragged.

“I just lived it for weeks at a time. And you couldn’t do anything else,” said Frisbie, who in addition to serving as Chief of Police teaches criminal justice courses at University of South Dakota and University of Bellevue, Neb. “So basically the bureau was without two people, because the workload went on and we had to run this thing down. Every lead we had, we worked to its end until there was nowhere else to go.”

When the case started to become an anniversary thing, Frisbie said they’d run something in the paper. Someone usually would see it and call, and new detectives assigned to the case went out for additional follow-up work.

“It took an awful long time to follow all the leads out,” said Frisbie, who, like many others, has strong suspicions about Hanni’s girlfriend.

The case — never resolved to his satisfaction — is still open and reviewed on a regular basis. And, the state also has the new computerized file that can search through the DNA database.

“We collected a lot of physical evidence at the time – all kinds of things,” Frisbie said.

Police still have all the evidence, including bloody clothes, bullets, blood samples, carpet pieces and crime scene photographs.

“There is no statute of limitations on murder,” Claeys said.

White, who left the police department in 1980 and served as Woodbury County Sheriff from 1981 to 1988, said the case is very much prevalent in his mind and he believes it eventually will be solved.

“Joe Frisbie and I were about as dedicated as two young detectives could have been and worked every case we were assigned to the max,” said White. “We took this case especially serious because we had determined early on that someone had come into our city and committed these murders, and that was a personal affront to our sworn oath.”

Read more about the victims, their lives, their deaths.


This article first appeared in the Weekender on May 20, 2004, and inspired the founding of the Iowa Cold Cases website the following year.

Police Chief Joe Frisbie retired from the Sioux City Police Department on March 31, 2009.

On Dec. 3, 2014, the Sioux City Journal published a story marking the 40-year anniversary of this still unsolved triple slaying.

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Information Needed

If you have any information about this unsolved triple homicide, please contact the Sioux City Police Department at 712-279-6390.

 

Copyright © 2024  Iowa Cold Cases, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

15 Responses to Jesse Hanni, Freta Bostic and Billy Isom

  1. Brian Force says:

    I wash my hands of this filthy world. They will never clean this filthy world. I’m connected to this case somehow. And it is my believed hunch that the murders are unsolved due to it being sanctioned. It just feels that way. I’m alone in this world with nothing and no one and I know the root of all of you myself included and if the future is now? But it’s all in the past? Then time is of the peasants.!! Yours truly, Brian Force

  2. Brian Force says:

    I may be freta bostiks kid. I’m having a hell of a time and I have secret society members and authorities I do different organizations oppressing me terrorizing me and I know it is not solved because it was sanctioned. I know it in my heart. But my heart is stupid alone I. This world with nothing and no one. I wash my hands of this dirty world. Sincerely up yours everyone. It must feel good to be the center of the universe, Brian Force

  3. Bernard Fife says:

    Didn’t it state that Hanni brought back a guy with him from the Jet where the two had been drinking? How does anyone know this. Who else was at the home that night that can positively identify or state that the 2 men showed up at the home together or maybe hanni came home alone and this other guy could have tailed him to the home and shot them all stole their dope and took off in the dead of the night. Or wait his new girlfriend was there and how ironic she decides to up and leave in the dead of the night after 1am to drive back to where she’s from? Now how long was she here in sioux city with him? Why she leave so abruptly and at that time. How was she going to get back home drive? What made her decide to go back home. Or did she leave with the other man that came home with hanni? Talk about a lucky gal. And what about the wild bunch that the cops said were known to use drugs that came home with them and trashed the house or left it in a mess? And what about the little rat who goes and tells the cops ” oh by the way I swiped some weed from one of the guys earlier in the night at the house. Who does that?? Only an idiot who wants to implicates himself in the home the night of the murder and now as a thief and possibly something more. What was his follow up interviews like? The 3 were no good that’s for sure. Hanni eats out a big dope dealer in Denver’s prolly because he couldn’t pay his weed bill and was most likely told he’d pay with his A$$ so he decides to be a SNITCH. WHAT HAPPENS TO A SNITCH IN JAIL. YEP HE DON’T LIVE TO SEE TOMORROW. Now anti union views wouldn’t of gone over well back in the 70’s either. Ibp had some bad strikes where houses were blown up back in 70’z and 80’s n animals were even killed hung up on clotheslines they said?? Now the old ladies or mother n friend entered the home they see the pregnant girlfriend first, as she was shot dead and her leg is stuck in the small swinging doors they used to separate rooms back then. Where was she going? Now Hanni was all dressed and still in his winter coat out in another room or the room where the pregnant gal lay and he was face down shot execution style in the back of the head behind the ear and in the back. And lastly the woman find her son Billy in another room he shared with his pregnant g/f, and he’s naked prolly because him n his girl were what done having sex and she went out to get him a beer or her something to eat or drink, and now let’s figure out who’s shot first? Billy is in their makeshift bedroom where the mattress was and he’s naked, she’s in her robe barely made out of the bedroom, and Hanni is fully dressed laying face down fully clothed. I’d say the wild bunch who came over and trashed house and drank with them and they were known to be bad news on dope, probably made hanni think he could ride along with them so he got popped 1st, she come running out and she got popped 2nd, and Billy awakes to all this noise and standing there naked one of the no good bunch slips behind him puts gun to his head and says good night sorry to wake you but you just laid on us so bang your dead but you were still moving so a couple more for good measure , they steal their dope and leave and collect the ransom money from the colorado dope dealer that hanni ratted on and anyone who talks will be next. I seriously doubt it had anything to do with anti union b/s. They came here to hide and work not sit out on an upcoming picket line. They never stayed in one place long enough. So naturally when asked if they will honor the strike they prolly said hell with the union I came here to work. Sure that didnt go over well them being new guys. I’m sure it didn’t garner and murder scheme over it. They carried guns in lunch boxes cause they were snitches, petty thieves and credit card buyers prolly purse snatchers too. But when you owe the dope dealer money and rat him out to avoid paying him and he gets jail time he’s gonna tell the boys you find those little bitches and snitches and see to it they don’t have the chance to snitch again. I’m surprised their tongues weren’t cut out. That was mafia style for a snitch in the 70’s. They came up here because mom n dad hot the hell out a dodge where they were from so g/f is knocked up cant just leave her let’s go to iowa see mom n dad for a bit then leave. Problem was they stayed too long and talked too much because I bet hanni was a talker. Prolly talked all kinds of crap like they were big time criminals, thieves, pot smokers and dope dealers themselves, so they had to get a job because they couldn’t all 4 stay with Billy’s mom n dad. So Hanni’s girl prolly says ” you guys said we were only going to iowa to visit and go back to her hometown but they lied to her so she says I need to go take care of a couple things and I’ll be back. Well she had no plans to come back. She was gonna rat out their butts soon as she got home but someone already beat her to it and in the dope world a bounty on a snitch’s head travels fast and back then those biker rough crowd that did them in prolly was getting their weed from colorado or California and bikers transported that stuff back then. So word of mouth travels like wildfire and they got wind of the bounty on these 2 clowns and they collected. If they’d a visited mom n dad and left they might a lived another week a month. But I still bet Hanni talked too much or to the wrong guys and someone found out about the hit the dope dealer in colorado prolly put on them and they couldnt pass it up. Cruel fricken world. But anytime you get involved in drugs and snitch out a guy instead of paying him and this is back in the 70’s. Mafia killings were going on, mafia was in the labor unions then too, Hoffa style but that didn’t cause these deaths. Snitching on a dope dealer did. That’s my opinion only. I played detective and I like my theory. Can’t stay in one place too long fellas. You knew that. A gun in the lunchbox in the car can’t do much for ya now can it. Remember when grandma or grandpa said watch the company you keep. When your new in town, you keep your mouth shut, you don’t tell where your really from ever. And never bring strangers into your home. And don’t go in there’s remember. Nope you forgot. Bang your dead, and so us she and so is he. It was coming soon anyway because you guys lied to hanni’s new girl so she bailed on you and by the skin of her teeth did she make it home in the nick of time and able to to tell about it to her grandkids. She would of been your snitch just someone beat her to it.

  4. Steve Moberg says:

    I’d also be curious about the identity of the mysterious Denver drug kingpin. How come nobody can tell us a name?? If one of the victims had rolled over on this guy—- well he’d be looking at a long prison sentence and that’s definitely a motive

  5. anon says:

    From the Billings Gazette, November 9, 1973: “DIVORCES GRANTED Karen L. Hanni from Jesse J. Hanni. ” Interesting!

    From the Billings Gazette, Wednesday, February 27, 1974: “Jesse J. Hanni. 25. of 125 Broadwater fined $25 for shoplifting.”

    From the Arkansas City Traveler, May 22, 1973: “Four Youths Are Held On Dope Charges.” An early morning call reporting a disturbance at 111 North B St resulted in the arrest of four youths on charges of marijuana possession. The class A misdemeanor
    charge in addition to disorderly conduct was made against Ernest W. Isom II, Frieda Bosick (sic), Frazier R. Brown, Jr., and Juanita S. Hay early Tuesday by City Attorney David Lord. Lord also serves as deputy county attorney. A call to city police at 1:20
    am by James Sanderholm, owner of the apartment building, was made because of the excessive noise in the basement apartment Upon entering the apartment, police notified the odor of marijuana and Lord was called to the scene. A search warrant was obtained from .Judge David Mills and a search yielded a small quantity of marijuana seeds, hypodermic needles and other narcotics paraphernalia. The four appeared before
    Judge Mills Tuesday morning and bond was set at $1000 each. A request by the four for a court appointed attorney was taken under advisement and the court date set for May 24 at 9 am.”

    So at least 2 were using hard drugs intravenously, also.

    3 days later the paper reported: “Ernest William Isom II, 111 North B, pleaded guilty to possession of marijuana and was sentenced to six months in the county jail and fined $300 plus $16.70 court costs. He was paroled for one year. Freida Bosick (sic), 111 North B, pleaded guilty to possession of marijuana and was sentenced to six months in the county jail and fined $300 plus $16.70 court costs She was paroled for one year. Frazier Brown Jr ., 124 N. Fourth St., pleaded guilty to possession of marijuana and was sentenced to 6 months in the county jail and fined $300 plus $16.70 court costs. He was paroled for one year. Juanita Sue Ray, 102C South Fifth, pleaded guilty to possession of marijuana and was sentenced to six months in the county jail and fined $300 plus $16.70 court costs. She was paroled for one year.”

    From the Billings Gazette, May 23, 1970: “Army Pfc. Jesse J. Hanni, son of Mr. and Mrs. Eddwin L. Hanni, Route 2, Roberts, has been awarded the Combat Infantryman badge while stationed near An Khe, Vietnam, as a rifleman in the 4th Infantry. He is a 1967 graduate of Roberts High School.”

    From the Billings Gazette, September 20, 1970: “Army Spec. 4 Jesse Hanni, 21, son of Mr. and Mrs. Eddie Hanni, Roberts, has been promoted to specialist four near An Khe, Vietnam, as a rifleman with the 4th Infantry. He entered the Army in April, 1869.”

  6. anon says:

    “…Hanni had earlier that year testified in federal court in Denver against a major drug kingpin.” Who was that kingpin?

  7. John Wells says:

    I have always wondered about this case for a long time, 40 years to be exact ! My interest was jogged when I was surfing through the internet about murder cold cases, the 1974 triple murder in Sioux City caught my eye. Reason being, I saw these victims possibly hours before they were ruthlessly killed. I was born and raised in Sioux City and 22 yrs old in 1974. I also grew up in Morningside and knew exactly the location of the crime. Eerily the house was very close to the Nelson Burger Funeral Home on Morningside Ave. near Cecilia Park. That Thanksgiving week-end, I was playing drums for some friends of mine at the Crosstown Tavern, down at the stockyards when the bar was across from Swifts Packing Plant. One of the members of the band who was a very good friend of mine was a boiler maker at Port Neal. He knew the two men well and all three victims including the lady came to hear us play. I don’t remember if it was a Friday or Saturday night, but I do remember meeting all 3 and everyone was having a great time. I obviously could tell the young lady was pregnant, and she was very quiet and sweet. The men were getting a little wild and I think there may have been a little pot smoking going on, but other than that they were nice time. Later after the murder, my friend told me that the 2 men and he were having labor disputes at the Port Neal site, and a strike was brewing. His belief was that the 2 men were killed because of union differences. Shortly after the murders I moved away and never gave it much more thought. It is a little disturbing to know that I was having fun partying with folks that would end up dead from a ruthless killer(s), only days or possibly hours after just meeting them.

  8. Tracy says:

    Would like to know if there is anything new on this case?

  9. mph122175 says:

    There seems to be endless people who wanted these 3 dead.

  10. Becky Fender says:

    All the links tell me bad domain and won’t let me open another friend is having the same issue just wanted to let you guys know

    • Same happens to me as well

      • Jody Ewing says:

        Becky and Heather, I spoke with BlueHost again tonight to see why this was still happening, and the tech support guy said he discovered the SSL certificate was installed but was missing the “Authority Bundle.” (They’d ended up in different files during the migration to the upgraded server.) He deleted and then reinstalled the SSL and said everything should now be in the proper files. I apologize for the inconvenience, and please let me know if you are still having any problems.

        All best,

        Jody

    • Becky Fender and Heather Arenivas, I spoke with BlueHost last night about this and they said the Authority Bundle was missing from the SSL; they reinstalled and everything should be working fine now. So sorry for the inconvenience!

  11. Diana Wilson says:

    I hope this case can be solved!

  12. Renee Cellmer says:

    I knew Jesse Hanni, briefly dating him when I was 18 and he 23.
    He was a quiet, mild-mannered fellow who was proud of where he came from. He was involved in drug activity, as it seemed everyone was at that time.
    I found out about Jesse’s demise five years ago and hope the winds of time will blow new and relevant information toward solving the crime.
    Sincerely, Renee Cellmer

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