Julie Benning
(Courtesy photo Benning family)
Gone Cold: Family of Julie Benning empty after her death, The Des Moines Register, Publication Date July 26, 2015 — Video by Brian Powers
Read the Story: 40 years after ‘Waverly Stranglings,’ a renewed search for answers: UNSOLVED MURDER OF JULIA BENNING HAS FAMILY MEMBERS, AUTHORITIES CONSIDERING NEW THEORIES IN HER DEATH, by Mike Kilen, The Des Moines Register
The Waverly Three
Case of the Month: Lisa Peak – Julie Benning – Valerie Klossowsky
A Defrosting Cold Cases guest blog post by Jody Ewing, November 1, 2014
She had a quick smile and a zany laugh. She was bright, beautiful, spunky, and ambitious. She loved getting out to meet people and making things happen.
She loved live music and the weekly Top 100 Countdown.
Her creativity spilled over into every aspect of her life; she not only designed and sewed her own dresses, but painted landscapes and portraits of all things closest to her heart.
Courtesy photo Benning familyShe also was an avid reader — Nancy Drew mysteries were a favorite — was already writing her own stories and had an interest in investigative journalism.
But the day after Thanksgiving on Friday, November 28, 1975, 18-year-old Julie Benning vanished without a trace after going to work in Waverly, Iowa.
Her father, Lowell Benning of rural Clarksville, drove to Waverly and reported her missing to Police Chief Clarence Wickham. Mr. Benning knew that Julie — the eldest of his five daughters — would never just disappear without a word, and asked police to contact area media about his missing child. Wickham, perhaps not fully convinced foul play was involved, suggested Benning contact the media himself.
The distraught father went to newspapers and radio stations in person, asking they alert the public about his daughter’s disappearance. KWWL Radio reported on the story, and a Bureau of Criminal Investigation (now Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation) agent was sent to work with the family.
Waverly in Bremer County
Initial reports stated Julie was last seen that Friday afternoon, walking on Bremer Avenue on her way to work as a waitress at the Sir Lounge in Waverly’s downtown business district, and Chief Wickham said he’d also heard reports that Benning had been spotted in a shoe repair shop Friday at 5:05 p.m. to get a pair of shoes she’d left there.
Julie had, in fact, arrived at work and went missing under mysterious circumstances while collecting cover charges in the Sir Lounge’s front entryway.
On December 12, Julie’s 19th birthday arrived, but there would be no celebration without her.
A missing person search that sometimes extended to other states produced no clues to Julie’s whereabouts until Thursday, March 18, 1976, when Roscoe Hulbert — a Butler County road maintenance worker — found her muddy body, nude and decomposed, in a roadside ditch along a quiet country road about a mile northeast of Shell Rock, Iowa.
Courtesy photo Benning familyJulie had been stuffed into a culvert, where her body remained all winter long in the cold and dark until spring rains washed her out and into the ditch.
“She’d been there a long time,” said then-Butler County Sheriff Marvin Barth.
An autopsy report established the cause of death as “homicidal violence, caused by injury to the throat area.” The hard-working teen had been manually strangled.
A 1975 graduate of Plainfield High School, Julie Benning lived on a farm near Clarksville with her parents and four younger sisters, but had been staying with her aunt and grandmother, Malita Benning and Mrs. Emil (Frieda) Benning, in northwest Waverly while employed in Waverly to be closer to work.
She’d barely dated at all in high school…had no date to prom…no date for Homecoming.
Shorter than many of her classmates, the 4-foot-11 teen’s only real concerns were occasional acne and a slightly crooked eye, but being self-conscious never kept her from being a friendly, talkative, bold extrovert.
Shell Rock in Butler County
She’d been gutsy enough to jump the fence at a rock concert and chat it up with The Eagles‘ lead singer, Glenn Fry. She and her sister Lori went to dinner with the London-based English rock band Foghat, and for a time Julie also corresponded with the drummer who played for singer Tanya Tucker.
She’d been active in Band, Chorus, and Declam, and quickly made friends with students from Alison and Dumont and other area schools.
Detasseling corn in the summer wasn’t so much work as an opportunity to ride the bus and get to know other kids.
The outgoing teen simply had no enemies, and officials struggled to come up with a motive for her murder.
As a senior at Plainfield High School, Benning had sharply criticized the taking of human life and life imprisonment. In a May 8, 1975 school newspaper editorial, Benning wrote:
“Murder is a horrible crime to commit and, of course the offender must be punished, but does that mean he should rot in prison until he dies? I don’t think so . . . nor do I think any person has the right to say someone should never be let out of prison, or give them the death penalty.” She urged her readers to “Put yourself in their shoes — the convicts are still humans, too. I hope people will be willing to help them and lend support in convicts’ efforts to rehabilitate themselves.”
Six months later, the outspoken teen was dead, though a high school editorial hardly seemed like a motive for murder, particularly given the months passed since its publication.
On Saturday, March 29, 1976, at about 8 p.m., Butler County Attorney Gene Shepard received an anonymous letter postmarked March 27 from Oelwein, Iowa. Authorities didn’t say how or where the note was found but said officers wanted to look further into the information contained in the note.
On Tuesday morning, Sept. 7, 1976 — less than six months after Benning’s body was discovered — the nude, beaten body of 19-year-old Marie “Lisa” Peak was found in a ditch a quarter mile north of Waverly’s city limits just six miles from where the road maintenance worker found Benning.
Lisa Peak
Peak had been sexually assaulted, and, according to autopsy findings, died of suffocation and a broken neck. Like Benning, none of Peak’s clothes were found at the scene.
Peak, the daughter of Knoxville veterinarian and former city councilman Dr. Frank Peak and Mary Peak, had just returned to the Wartburg College campus in Waverly the day before to begin her sophomore year with plans to major in journalism. Peak told friends she was going shopping Monday afternoon but never returned to the campus that night.
Investigators cited several similarities in the Benning and Peak slayings, and FBI criminologists were consulted to determine if the same person murdered both young women.
Both Benning and Peak were attractive and described as “outgoing” or “popular.” Both disappeared in broad daylight. Both women’s bodies were found nude, but due to decomposition, authorities never said whether they were able to determine if Benning had been sexually molested.
Valerie Klossowsky
Both women were interested in journalism and enjoyed reading about and writing mysteries.
Questions also emerged as to whether the Benning and Peak murders had any connection to another area homicide four years earlier.
On June 15, 1971, the partially clad body of 14-year-old Valerie Lynn Klossowsky of Waverly was found on a creek bank under a bridge three miles west of Denver, Iowa. The Waverly-Shell Rock Junior High School student also had been strangled.
In the months after discovering Julie Benning’s body, officers in the murder investigation released artist’s sketches portraying the likeness of how Julie Benning may have appeared on Nov. 28, 1975, the day she went missing.
Artist conception by Gloria Aleff and Associates / Courtesy Carol KeanGloria Aleff and Associates of Waverly prepared the drawings as a public service, and the press released them for distribution — along with a story by Assistant City Editor Lamont Olson — in an attempt to refresh the recollections of anyone who may have seen Benning on that date.
The Bremer-Waverly Law Center issued another public appeal asking anyone who may have seen Benning to contact officials.
Officers noted that though the artist’s conceptions were not actual photographs, they were “excellent likenesses” to the young Waverly woman.
Some statements made in the article, however, directly conflicted with information provided in later years to Iowa Cold Cases.
For instance, early in the investigation, Sir Lounge operator Jean Weston said she began to feel uneasy when Julie didn’t show up for work that day.
“I’d taken her home after work Thanksgiving night, and when she got out of the car, Julie said ‘I’ll see you tomorrow night’,” Weston told Olson. “When she didn’t come the first night, I thought maybe she’d planned to take some time off and I had just forgotten. But when she missed two nights, I talked with my husband and he said ‘Call her folks’.”
Courtesy Carol KeanIowa Cold Cases later learned Benning not only showed up for work on November 28 as scheduled but that fellow employees and lounge patrons witnessed her presence there as well.
Chief Wickham told the paper he knew Miss Benning and occasionally talked to her, but never did see her with anyone in particular.
In Olson’s story, Wickham, however, made a strikingly disturbing comment.
“I knew she hitchhiked an awful lot,” he said.
The blatantly untrue statement not only contradicted what family and friends knew about Benning but somehow seemed to infer the teen’s death could have resulted from hitchhiking the night she went missing. Even Jean Weston’s statements to the press contradicted the chief’s comment.
“She hardly ever took a night off. I don’t think she had a date in all the time she worked here,” Weston said. “In fact, I said to her: Julie, you’re only young once, get out and have some fun once in a while.”
Weston said Julie had shrugged her shoulders and said “I don’t have any place to go.”
In the years following Benning’s death, FBI profilers said they were almost certain her homicide was connected to Lisa Peak’s death.
Since 2013, a staggering amount of documented information has surfaced in the Benning and Peak murders. Ongoing information and details continue to be shared with the FBI, who serve as the primary investigating agency. Individuals involved with putting together the final pieces of these two puzzles are in close contact with officials, with on-the-ground eyes to ensure the safety of those so courageously working to solve both these heinous crimes.
Julia Ann “Julie” Benning was born on December 12, 1956.
Courtesy photo Benning familySurvivors included her parents, Lowell Henry and JoAnn (Demro) Benning of rural Clarksville; four sisters, Lori, Kelly, Carol, and Linda, all at home; and a grandmother, Mrs. Emil Benning of Waverly.
Memorial services were conducted at 3 p.m. on Sunday, March 21, 1976, at the United Methodist Church of Christ at Pleasant Valley near Clarksville, with burial in Pleasant Valley Cemetery in Clarksville, Butler County. Kaiser-Corson Funeral Home was in charge of arrangements.
When the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) established a Cold Case Unit in 2009, Julie Benning’s murder was one of approximately 150 cases listed on the Cold Case Unit’s new website as those the DCI hoped to solve using the latest advancements in DNA technology.
Although federal grant funding for the DCI Cold Case Unit was exhausted in December 2011, the DCI continues to assign agents to investigate cold cases as new leads develop or as technological advances allow for additional forensic testing of original evidence.
Courtesy photo Doug Beard and Benning familyThe DCI and the FBI remain committed to resolving the three Waverly murders and continue to work diligently with local law enforcement partners to bring the perpetrators of these crimes to justice for the victims and their families.
If you have any information about Julie Benning’s unsolved murder — or that of Lisa Peak or Valerie Klossowsky — please contact the Federal Bureau of Investigation at (712) 258-1920, or contact the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation at (515) 725-6010 or email dciinfo@dps.state.ia.us.
I find it interesting that Marie and an a writer were planing a book on John Joseph Carmody. Also, she may have worked for the Clarksville Star newspaper. Also she supposedly interviewed Mr. Carmody, under some dangerous conditions. So it sort of puts Julia and Marie, in a situation that they might have known each other in passing. But, Marie might have known about Julia working at the lounge.
It’s mentioned that Marie received threats from women, who wanted to marry Mr. Carmody, and blamed her for him being sent to prison.
I wonder who else might have been connected with what Mr. Carmody was doing in Mason City. Would they been upset with their activities being exposed.
Sheila Foley’s body was found by Simon Borntrager, an Amish farmer who told the court he was driving his horse and buggy along the desolate road when he spotted what he thought was a “skinned deer.” When he approached the object on foot, however, he discovered it was human. 4A / DES MOINES REGISTER • Thurs., May 6,1976 LAWYER: FLESH, BLOOD FOUND ON FRAZER’S AUTO ByJACKHOVELSON
Roscoe Hulbert — a Butler County road maintenance worker — found Julie’s muddy body, nude and decomposed, in a roadside ditch along a quiet country road about a mile northeast of Shell Rock, Iowa.
Delphine, thanks for looking at these cases, from long distance. Hopefully, someone will look at this Gary Lynn Frazier character. Who knows there are other links between these victims.
Your observations keeps people’s mind relooking at the details, and maybe someone will connect them. Who knows how many other murders of young women, in other states are linked.
Although I was not born during these tragic events that affected Waverly and its region, it is unimaginable not to feel sadness and compassion for Julie’s family and loved ones. I hope that the police investigation will give them the answers they have been waiting for so many years. Despite the distance between my native France and the United States, I’m haunted by this dark affair and the deep sense of injustice that this crime generates. As a journalist, I feel compelled to hunt down the truth wherever it is hidden, in order to honour Julie’s memory. Since I started studying this case, I have felt a deep sense of injustice and many questions…
Is there a link between Julia’s murder and the events of December 2, 1975 in Oelwein? In the killer’s process, there are many similarities with the murder of young Sheila Foley. Did the police go to the anamosa state penitentiary to question Gary Lynn Frazer about his schedule on the fateful evening of November 28? Is it a coincidence that the crimes have stopped on Waverly since his arrest? Anyway, I’m wondering. Like the famous letter sent to the police from Oelwein. Can’t we collect traces of DNA from the envelope? And the city of Oelwein which keeps turning our eyes away from Waverly; As if someone rightly or wrongly wanted us to turn our eyes towards this neighbouring city…
Of course, I don’t draw any conclusions, I am just trying to understand. Thanks.
Did you ever check to see what Gary Frazer from Oelwein who murdered Sheila Foley was doing at that time. I really think he is your guy.
Julie and Diane (Schofield) and Lisa and Valerie…..and so many others
your lives mattered!!!
see, people like me are still reading the comments too
and want justice
What about the chief? He said things that were contradicted. Maybe to throw off the trail…
She looked a lot like his high school girlfriend — and so did her shoes. The profile indicates shoes and holidays play upon the suspect’s vices and entice him to kill. So when he saw her walking with her shoes, he probably couldn’t resist.
He may have even admired her from afar when he went home over holidays and some weekends — Waverly isn’t a big town and since they were both from there, he knew her.
He took her pretty far out to conceal the crime and because he felt guilty and knew the family, but he also took her shoes. He most likely took her clothes for show, and burnt them later because it was her shoes he really wanted.
Oddly enough, she was found near Thanksgiving. I wonder if he had a friend in the Butler County road maintenance department and mentioned something about a dead body in a culvert. How would you know the body was in a culvert unless someone told you about it?
The Holiday Killer, AKA The Shoe Bandit, AKA The Quarter Moon Reaper is giving us his trail. . .
Herb Hunter? Interesting alias. You spin a good yarn here. The red herrings have been fried. Captain Ahab is closing in on the White Whale.
You’ve got that right, Carol, and Capt. Ahab has other sets of eyes across the sea, ensuring nobody gets between him and the White Whale.
Herb…
Its obvious to anyone with at least a semi-functioning brain that you have a foot fetish and project this into the cases you “sleuth”, and I use the word sleuth loosely.
These generic profiles that people like you post bring nothing to these cases. They say more about you than they do the actual cases.
Happy heavenly birthday Julie, until we meet again
Miss her. :-(
Such a beautiful face…what a peecious life to do such things too…it breaks me down
So terrible & sad
Awful! We have old cases unsolved in C.R. too. Too many of them from 50’s, 60’s
Ever notice how many of the unsolved cases in the Midwest from the 50s to the 70s involve the person being strangled and left in the ditch in the middle of nowhere?
It starts up out of nowhere in the early 50s, picks up pace into the 60s and tapers off in the mid 70s…
thats sad.
It’s hard to believe there’s this many unsolved mysteries. Wish John Walsh was still on TV and would showcase these.
Very sad and heart breaking.
You are very welcome, Carol Kean! Don’t feel bad about not seeing it earlier; you’d be surprised by how much I miss simply because there’s always so much going on and being shared through so many social media platforms. Trying to keep up can be mind boggling at times! :-) Jody at ICC
Jody, how did I not see this until now?? Thank you!
I believe the possible link to the Sheila Foley murder near Oelwein and the Waverly 3 needs to be explored further. A convicted murderer within a 30-minute drive of Waverly, a nude body found along a country road and the hopes and dreams of another young woman snuffed out. Tragic.
You point out the man who still remains to this day, one of the main suspects in this sad affair. Only a few days apart, in a very close geographical area, two terribly similar crimes, with the same kind of approach. Owner of a Ford pickup truck, Gary Lynn Frazer is not afraid to visit public nightlife venues (bars, strip clubs) to find an isolated target; On this evening after Thanksgiving, nothing rules out that Julia, who has just started her work day, has just found herself outside the Sir Lounge and at the mercy of making this kind of bad encounter. A witness (credible or not?) said that a fight broke out that evening when Julia was collecting the money at the main entrance of the club. The same witness said he saw Julia collapsed in the passenger seat inside a pickup truck. I am suspicious of the tendency of some witnesses to extrapolate, so I let you make your opinion on this testimony at the end of the article (source: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/investigations/2015/07/27/iowa-cold-case-murder-benning/30714443/ In short, the process is similar to Oelwein’s murder, except that Sheila Foley’s murder did not go exactly as Gary Lynn Frazer had planned. Indeed, if Julia’s murder left very few witnesses and clues, this is not the case with the one about Sheila Foley. According to my theory, I think Sheila even managed at one point to escape from her assailant’s grip to get out of the vehicle, forcing Gary Lynn Frazer to hit her and run her over with his car. Unlike Julia, he rushed to hide Sheila’s body, which was found a few days later. In both cases, the killer has the same obsession with naked bodies. (Source:
Delphine, thank you for your interest in my sister’s case. Gary Lynn Frazer was ruled out, but EVERYONE ever questioned in Julie’s case was “ruled out,” and we know the killer was hiding in plain sight, and likely tampering with the case files himself. (Carol)
You are very welcome, Shelly Ann Vincent Dillon. Julie was such a beautiful and talented young woman, and I’m certain there are still people out there who know exactly who’s responsible. They may hide (sometimes in plain sight), but at least we can serve as a regular reminder that these victims’ lives will not be forgotten and their unsolved cases won’t eventually just “quietly go away.” For many of these killers, the day will come when they get that dreaded knock on the door. I like to think of the wall plaque that hung on Warden Norton’s office wall (from Shawshank Redemption) proclaiming, “His judgment cometh, and that right soon.” The one(s) who “cometh,” however, will be bearing handcuffs and an arrest warrant.
Thank you for keeping the hope of justice alive for all the families involved in the cold cases.
Serial
Im so sorry
Yes Evelyn I am!
She was one of my best friends and classmates in school. I still have things in my home that I got from her. I have always hoped that her murder would be solved while her parents are still alive. April … we’re you a Medd?
Hope this becomes another one solved.
Knew her from school. She was a very sweet person. R.I.P Julie.
Just wondering if anyone out there remembers, a little girls body found near one of the following neighborhoods- Oak Park ,Riverview Park, Crocker Woods,Mchenry Park bike trail..Around the years of 1993-1999. She was mentally disabled from what I remember. I went to school with here for years and i have never forgotten after all these years. But im having a hard time finding any information online. Would love to know if her case has been solved. I do not remember her name. It was definatly not far from the Mchenry Park bike trail…please someone help me…she was maybe 13 years old but not certain!!!thank u
I’m not finding anything on a girl approximately age 13 found dead near a Des Moines bike trail around 1993-1999. If you find more please let us know. (Carol)
God’s blessings to you and your family, Lori. I pray someday very soon you have the answers you all need.