Waverly, IA

Waverly in Bremer County

Bremer County in Iowa

Bremer County in Iowa

Cold Cases in Waverly, Iowa

 

 

 

 

Valerie Klossowsky

Valerie Klossowsky

Homicide
Valerie Lynn Klossowsky
14 YOA
Waverly/Denver, IA (Bremer County)
Case # 71-00549
June 13, 1971

On Tuesday morning, 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 on a lonely country road three miles west of Denver, IA. The Waverly-Shell Rock Junior High School student had been strangled.

 

Tammy Rachel Nitcher
2-1/2 months old
Rt. 1.
Waverly, Iowa
Bremer County
Date of Death: Friday, January 7, 1972

First it was 2-1/2-month-old Tammy in January 1972. Then, two months later in March, 2-year-old Sarah. Fast forward four years — and to another state — and it was 3-month-old Crystal. And finally, almost a year to the date after Crystal’s death, it was Misti, just 5 weeks old. One by one, Helen Nitcher’s four daughters died under mysterious circumstances.

 

Sarah Marie Tenery Nitcher
2 years old (27 months)
Rt. 1.
Waverly, Iowa
Bremer County
Date of Death: Wednesday, March 15, 1972

On March 15, 1972 — just two months after her 2-1/2-month-old sister Tammy’s death, 2-year-old Sarah Nitcher was found unresponsive in the family’s rural Waverly, Iowa home. The girl’s mother, Helen Nitcher, said she found Sarah “dead after a nap.”

 

Julie Benning

Julie Benning

Homicide
Julie Ann Benning
18 YOA
Disappeared from Waverly, IA (Bremer County)
Body found in Shell Rock, IA (Butler County)
Case # 76-00382
November 28, 1975

Julie Ann Benning, 18, disappeared from Waverly, IA, the day after Thanksgiving on November 28, 1975. A Butler County road maintenance worker found her nude and decomposed body in a roadside ditch along a quiet country road about a mile northeast of Shell Rock on March 18, 1976.

 

Marie "Lisa" Peak

Marie “Lisa” Peak

Homicide
Marie “Lisa” Peak
19 YOA
Waverly, IA (Bremer County)
September 7, 1976

On Tuesday, Sept. 7, 1976, the nude, beaten body of 19-year-old Marie “Lisa” Peak was found lying face down under a lone cottonwood tree in a ditch a quarter mile north of Waverly’s city limits. Peak had been sexually assaulted and died of suffocation and a broken neck.

 

3 Responses to Waverly

  1. Jen says:

    If you look at findagrave.com, there have been quite a few infant deaths in Iowa with the last name Ritcher. Assuming they are related somehow, it makes you wonder if there is a congenital issue.

  2. Matthew Connell says:

    I wonder: did anyone ever interview/investigate Helen Nitcher herself?

    • andrea says:

      I called the coroner of the day (who was still alive, in his 80’s) a few years back when I first read about the 2YO dying in an old newspaper article. He didn’t remember it.

      In Iowa, autopsy and coroners records are not public records. Therefore I could not get the file and see who said what.

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