The Waverly Stranglings

Between 1971 and 1976, a trio of shocking murders would rock the small town of Waverly, Iowa. Now, nearly fifty years later, very few remember the victims that have since become known as the 'Waverly Three'...

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In 1971, Valerie Lynn Klossowsky was a 14-year-old living in Waverly: a small town in northeastern Iowa, with a population that hovered just above 7,000 during Valerie's youth. Known primarily as the seat of Bremer County, as well as the location of Wartburg College - a private Lutheran liberal arts school - Waverly is surrounded by dozens of miles of rural terrain.

The second of three daughters, Valerie would grow up alongside her older sister Denise and her younger sister Michele in a tumultuous environment; their parents, Harold and Jeanenne, would marry and divorce each other three times, before permanently ending things during the girls' childhoods. Their mother would remarry, while their father moved into a home along the 200 block of Waverly's Fifth Street. This home was located in downtown Waverly, just a few blocks away from Wartburg College, near the Cedar River. There, they had been joined by their widowed grandmother, Mae, who moved in about a year before to help keep an eye on the girls while Valerie's father worked.

Valerie attended Waverly-Shell Rock Junior High School, and according to the school's principal, James. W. McGrew, was an "average" student that was easy to get along with, despite not having many friends.

Valerie was a thoughtful and creative girl, who spent a lot of her free time writing poems or composing songs with her guitar. Quiet and friendly, Valerie was also very active, constantly hanging out with kids in her neighborhood, who she often towered over; despite being just 14 years old at the time, Valerie was already five-and-a-half-feet tall and weighed approximately 145 pounds, with an imposing and athletic build (which made her look older than she was).

Unfortunately, Valerie was last seen alive on the evening of June 13th, 1971, heading to a public pool with her friend, Cindy Beggs. Expected back home by 9:00 PM, the pair were dropped off by Cindy's parents at the pool at around 7:00 PM. But before going into the pool, Valerie handed her towel and swimsuit to Cindy, asking her to hold onto them for just a few minutes. She explained that she was going to meet up with a male friend of hers, telling Cindy that if she didn't, "he would be mad," she recalled. Cindy would head into the pool, leaving Valerie outside to talk to whoever she was planning to meet, but Valerie would never re-appear, leaving her swimsuit and towel behind.

A couple of hours later, Cindy was picked up by her parents and told them that Valerie had left her there. As soon as they got home, Cindy called Valerie's house and explained that she hadn't seen Valerie since approximately 7:00 PM. The teen's father would report her missing later that night.

It was later determined that after saying goodbye to Cindy at the public pool, Valerie had dropped by another friend's house at around 8:30, asking if the friend was able to hang out that evening. Unfortunately, this friend was gone at the time, and her family told Valerie as much. About twenty minutes later, at around 8:50 PM, Valerie would be spotted by her older sister, Denise, walking across Highway 218. Denise was sitting on the front step of a home in Waverly and saw her sister walking westbound across the empty highway, but thought little of it at the time; unaware that this would be the last sighting of Valerie while she was still alive.

More than 24 hours later - at around 10:30 on the morning of June 15th, 1971 - Valerie's partially-clad body would be discovered near a bridge just southeast of town. This was roughly ten miles southeast of Waverly - where Valerie was last seen - and approximately three miles west of the town of Denver. Valerie's body was discovered by a couple of young boys walking along the creek, who discovered the body lying beside a gravel road bridge. Investigators would state that the deceased teen might have been dumped over the side of the bridge, which had a three-foot railing, but there was not enough evidence to confirm or deny that.

The teen had been strangled to death, with her larynx being fractured during the commission of the crime (indicating a significant amount of force being applied). Police officials would not state whether or not Valerie had been sexually assaulted before her death, with Bremer County Sheriff James A. Leemon telling the press on June 16th:

"We're not going to say at the moment. More tests will have to be made."

Police would never clarify their position on this, but because Valerie was found wearing only her upper garments - which had been pushed up towards her shoulders - many would theorize that there had been some kind of sexual motive in the crime.

Because decomposition had already begun to set in, it was theorized that Valerie Klossowsky had been killed on Sunday evening - the final night she had been seen alive. She had likely been dumped near the bottom of this bridge shortly thereafter, remaining in that position until her discovery approximately 36 hours later.

Detectives initially believed that Valerie might have gotten into the vehicle of a stranger, which she had been known to do in the past. It was believed that the teen might have been too trusting for her own good and might have gotten into the vehicle of this unidentified male that she was heading off to meet. According to witnesses, she had been seen near a street corner in Waverly at around 8:30, and conflicting reports of her whereabouts after this would confound investigators.

In the weeks to come, police would report that they were following up on several leads: including reports that Valerie had been seen in the company of a motorcycle gang on the night of her original disappearance, as well as rumors of a prowler roaming around the neighborhood in question both on the night of her disappearance and weeks prior. But despite investigators interviewing more than 150 people over the next several months - dedicating hundreds, if not thousands of hours to the case - they would be unsuccessful in determining what had happened to fourteen-year-old Valerie Klossowsky.

Her case would become just one of three linked together in this small town in Iowa over a handful of years; a story that is remembered, decades later, as the Waverly Stranglings.

Julia Ann Benning was born on December 12th, 1956, to her parents Lowell and JoAnn Benning. The oldest of five daughters, Julia would grow up on a farm in Clarksville, Iowa: a small, rural town in northern Iowa, about 35 miles northwest of Waterloo.

Despite growing up in a relatively isolated environment - a farm in the middle of northeastern Iowa - Julia would begin to express herself as an independent thinker from a very early age. Growing up, she would correspond with penpals from Michigan and Scotland, writing to them regularly about her thoughts and ideas. She often wrote in defense of minority groups or those that didn't conform to the typical standards of the day and age; sharing ideas with her friends and penpals that were very progressive for her time and environment. She was also a very gifted artist; someone that was constantly painting and expressing herself through other forms of creativity, such as poetry or knitting. She even made some of her own clothing as a teenager.

Julia attended Plainfield High School, where she sang in the choir and performed in both band and on the speech team. While she made good grades and had an interest in pursuing investigative journalism as a career path, she didn't have the money needed to go to college after graduating from high school in May of 1975.

As a dedicated music fan, Julia hoped to work for a local radio station, but was told by the managers there that she needed to build up some work experience before she could apply. Having only worked part-time at a local hardware store during high school, Julia decided to look for jobs in the nearby town of Waverly, which - despite being a relatively small town itself - was a big step up from her hometown of Clarksville.

It was here, in May of 1975 - fresh out of high school - that Julia would apply for a waitressing job at the Sir Lounge: a gentleman's club in downtown Waverly, which hired her on the spot (especially since she was a well-spoken, attractive, and petite young woman). There, Julia would become well-known and liked among the patrons, and her manager at the club, Jean Weston, would later tell reporters with the Waverly Courier:

"She was a very outgoing girl. The customers liked her and the other girls who worked here liked her."

Here, Julia would begin to gather her first real work experience; which, as you might imagine, was a real revelation for her. Julia had gone straight from small-town rural living to working at a strip club in a much bigger town. In a diary that she kept, Julie would write:

"Everyone at school, home and everywhere else was duly shocked and amazed to think good ol' Julie was working in a 'strip joint,' as they inelegantly termed the Sir, which is really a fairly classy, plushly carpeted, dark-paneled club with a nice atmosphere. The dancers are pretty decent people, not the ten dollar whores most of the men think they are. It was a strange experience watching a chick strip and dance completely nude, but after the initial novelty, it soon became old hat and didn't bother me a bit."

Julia's conservative, Christian parents would react about as kindly to this life choice as you'd imagine, attempting to talk her out of working at the Sir Lounge. According to her mother, they were initially afraid that she would become a stripper herself in time, but she assured them that she wasn't interested in pursuing that as a career; to her, this was just a job that was a means to an end, and a harmless one at that.

However, despite reassuring her parents that things were kosher at the Sir Lounge, Julia would write to one of her penpals that year:

"A sleazy guy offered me $1,500 to go to bed with him and I turned him down. I saw the money and knew he had it, but the idea of it bummed me out... I just didn't think I could live with myself later."

In the Fall of 1975, Julia Benning decided to move in with her grandmother, Malita Benning, in Waverly itself. It seems like this was a decision made out of convenience more than anything, as her grandmother lived much closer to her work than her parents did, and she would remain on good terms with her parents throughout the year (despite her choice of employment, which still didn't sit right with them).

Julia would spend Thanksgiving at her parent's house, staying the night with them and her sisters. The following morning, however - November 28th, 1975 - Julia woke up and started getting ready to go to work. Despite her mother pleading with her to take the day off, Julia was not the kind of person to call out if she could help it. She would say goodbye to her parents at around mid-day, and would last be seen walking to work in downtown Waverly at around 2:00 PM, but seems to have never arrived.

The following day - November 29th, 1975 - staff members from the Sir Lounge would make contact with Julia's parents, informing them that she had not shown up for work the day prior, as well as earlier that day. The family would refrain from immediately contacting police - hoping that they could track her down themselves - and would begin unsuccessfully searching for Julia in the area, before finally relenting and filing a missing person's report.

Because of Julia's age at the time (18), she was labeled a missing person but police could not investigate her as an endangered person. It wouldn't be until about a week after her disappearance - December 6th, 1971 - that foul play would be feared for the first time publicly.

Despite this, however, it was not believed that Julia had run away. For starters, she did not have anything with her at the time, other than her purse and clothing, and wasn't believed to have had much money on her at the time, if any. Speaking to reporters, her mother JoAnn Benning would state:

"All the clothes and money she had were what she had with her that day. We checked her bank account and no money has been withdrawn and no checks have come in since she disappeared."

Trying to determine Julia's last known sighting would prove to be an issue of its own for investigators, with police received varied reports about when she had last been seen in Waverly. A witness would report seeing her on the afternoon of November 28th, at around 2:00 PM, walking along Bremer Avenue (Waverly's main street) - which would put her on the path to work, on schedule. However, another witness would report having seen her a few hours later, at around 5:00, at a shoe store in Waverly; where it's worth noting, she reportedly spoke about going dancing that night.

This second sighting would remain unconfirmed but would be paired with additional rumors about Julia attending a concert in Waterloo on the night she went missing. It was reported that Julia - an avid music fan - had attended the concert of a band called Hot Cotton, whom she was particularly fond of. A woman matching Julia's description would be seen with a band member, vacationing in the state of Colorado, in the weeks to come; leading some in the region to believe that she had simply taken up with him. However, no connection would be made, and a newspaper report from Christmas Eve would indicate that this lead had been a "dead-end" for investigators.

This case would uneasily linger at the edge of the region's consciousness, until roughly four months later, when a grisly discovery made miles away would kick it back into the news headlines.

On the afternoon of Thursday, March 18th, 1976, the body of 18-year-old Julia Ann Benning would be found on a quiet country road near Shell Rock, Iowa - just a few miles away from her old hometown of Clarksville.

The young woman's body was discovered by Butler County maintenance worker Roscoe Hulbert, who just happened upon the body, which was lying near a culvert. Investigators would later determine that her nude body had been hidden inside of the culvert, but had been washed out by the spring rains just a short time before Hulbert discovered it. None of her clothing or belongings would be found at or near the crime scene (and would not ever be recovered, as far as I'm aware).

Because her remains were so heavily-decomposed at the time of the discovery, Julia's cause of death was not easily determined; although one police officer would remark to reporters on that day of the discovery that "you don't take your clothes off in a ditch and kill yourself" - indicating, at the very least, that homicide had been the manner of death. Because of the heavy state of decomposition at the time - nearly four months after Julia's initial disappearance - it would take more than a day to officially ID the remains as Julia's.

The autopsy of Julia's body would take place at the Allen Memorial Hospital in Waterloo, and the initial report would come back inconclusive, simply because so much time had elapsed since the young woman's death. However, police would later be able to determine that she had been strangled to death, due to apparent trauma to her neck; but would refuse to state whether she had been sexually assaulted or not (likely due to the decomposed state of her remains).

Waverly Police Chief Clarence Wickham said that he knew Julia and had spoken to her on occasion, but "never did see her with anyone in particular." However, he also said that he "knew she hitchhiked an awful lot," implying that she might have gotten into a car with the wrong person (similar to what authorities had said in the case of Valerie Klossowsky more than four years prior).

It was reported in the weeks after the discovery of Julia's body that an anonymous source had written authorities a pair of letters, which they claimed offered up substantial evidence in the case but provided incomplete information that required further contact with the writer. Police would eventually state that these letters were nothing but a hoax, but provided no further details about them to the public.

In the months to come, speculation would be rife about who might have wanted Julia Benning dead. Some speculated that she had run afoul of someone at the club she worked at; while others speculated that she had been killed by the same person that targeted the Klossowsky girl half-a-decade beforehand. However, within months, these rumors would only become augmented when an incredibly similar case began to unfold... a case involving the third young woman to be strangled in this small town in just five years.

On the morning of September 7th, 1976, the nude body of 19-year-old Lisa Peak was found lying face-down in an area known as a quiet lover's lane. Like Julia Benning, it was determined that Lisa had also been strangled to death. Her body, which was found lying underneath a tree on a gravel road near a cornfield just north of Waverly, had similarly been dumped nearby a ditch. Unlike Julia Benning, however, it was easily determined that Lisa had been sexually assaulted before or during her murder, and an autopsy would note that her neck had also been broken.

Marie Lisa Peak - who almost always went by her middle name, Lisa - was the daughter of Mary and Dr. Frank Peak, a prominent veterinarian and councilman in Knoxville, Iowa. After graduating from high school, Lisa had decided to pursue journalism as a career and had spent her first year at Wartburg College in Waverly, about two-and-a-half hours away from her family. During her first year away at school, Lisa had become the victim of an extortion scheme (which I'll detail in just a few minutes, I promise), but the scheme had only emboldened her to persevere with her education, out of spite.

In September of 1976, Lisa had returned to Wartburg, feeling more assured of her choices than ever. She had just returned to campus on Sunday, September 5th, and would move into the woman's dormitory the very next day (Monday, September 6th). That same day, Lisa would make plans to do some last-minute school shopping - telling some friends that she was going to drop by a mall nearby to pick up some school supplies and maybe a new pair of shoes - but would never be seen alive again. Because she had planned to go on a date that night, her disappearance would be noted and reported by some friends at school, but not much time would pass before police figured out what had happened to Lisa.

The following morning - Tuesday, September 7th, the day before classes were set to begin - Lisa Peak's body would be found on a gravel road just north of Waverly. The clothing and belongings that she had with her at the time of her disappearance were missing, and investigators would later - unsuccessfully - attempt to link some bloody clothing found in a Goodwill donation dropbox as Lisa's.

While police began trying to figure out who would have committed a crime like this against such a promising young woman, some of Lisa's classmates began to suspect a connection to someone that was already incarcerated... an older man that had a pretty nefarious link to Lisa, which had been highly publicized the year prior.

In December of 1975 - at around the same time that Julia Benning's disappearance was making headlines in the region - it was announced that a man named John Joseph Carmody Jr. was taken into custody in nearby Mason City, Iowa. The 36-year-old used car salesman had been charged with three counts of rape and two counts of malicious threat to extort, but additional charges were expected to be filed later.

Carmody was alleged to have extorted dozens of women throughout northern Iowa, whom he would gain incredibly personal information about and then further entrap by plying with alcohol and photographing naked. From here, the man would begin to extort the women into providing him money or sex; allowing them the option of procuring other women to become pawns in their place. It was a nefarious and methodical scheme that ensnared more than a dozen victims over roughly a year, each of whom ranged in age from 19 to 26, and who came from cities such as Cedar Falls, Waverly, Mason City, Knoxville, Davenport, and even from out-of-state (one victim came from Minnesota).

After Carmody was taken into custody, it was determined that he had created dossiers on each of the victims, which included personal information about them (names of boyfriends, family members, friends, etc.) as well as sensitive photos he had taken of each. It was also discovered that when the blackmail had not worked on the victims, Carmody had threatened them with physical violence or death; and often hinted at having connections to the Mafia, which was later determined to be total bullshit.

Because the case was so insurmountable against him, John Joseph Carmody Jr. had pleaded guilty to two charges (each) of rape and extortion, and in May of 1976, he was sentenced to forty years in prison.

Nearly four months later, in September of 1976, Marie Lisa Peak's body had been discovered just outside of town. Almost immediately, suspicion was drawn to Carmody, despite him having been in state custody at the time of the murder. This is because the case against Carmody had only been solved because of Lisa Peak, one of Carmody's victims, who was described by Mason City's Assistant Police Chief Duane Jewell as "the key" in cracking the case.

In May of 1976 - as she approached the end of her freshman year - Lisa started working on a book about Carmody's blackmail scheme with Des Moines Register reporter Chuck Offenburger. On August 23rd of that year, Lisa wrote a letter to John J. Carmody Jr. himself, telling him of her intentions, and the following week would receive a letter from Ted Enabnit, Carmody's lawyer, which read:

"Mr. Carmody and his professional writer associates are and will produce the appropriate literary work to tell Mr. Carmody's story from the mass of accumulated materials."

Chuck Offenburger, Lisa's proposed co-author, would later tell investigators that Lisa had received death threats in the wake of this letter; including threats from one of the two women that had supposedly been "in love" with Carmody before his incarceration.

Police in Mason City would downplay any potential connections, believing that Carmody had acted alone in the commission of his extortion scheme, and stating that he had not acted alongside any known accomplices or conspirators. And because he had been incarcerated at the time of Lisa Peak's murder, and there was no evidence indicating any kind of connection, they did not believe him to be linked in any way.

Investigators in Waverly would repeat the same claims - that there were no connections between Lisa's death and the sex extortion plot from the year prior - and believed that these rumors would only make potential witnesses afraid to talk; fearing that Carmody had accomplices outside of prison, ready to do his bidding. However, that would not stop people in the region - primarily, college students from Wartburg - from continuing to perpetuate this rumor in the months to come.

John J. Carmody Jr. would be paroled due to overcrowding in July of 1986 but would re-offend in 1990 while living in Henry County, Iowa. There, he would be convicted for having sex with a 15-year-old girl, a crime that earned him another 25-years in prison. In 2001, he would get released again and would spend the next eight years living in a treatment center for sex offenders, before being released from that in 2009. His last reported whereabouts were Kingsland, Texas, where he was living as recently as December of 2017.

While these three murders took place in a rather small town - again, Waverly had a population between 7000 and 8000 when these crimes took place - it's hard to say whether or not they are linked. That's especially true when we factor in this being a college town, with Wartburg College being attended by roughly 1500 students a year, with a fluctuating population that reflects that (for example, the population usually lowers in the summer months and during holiday breaks). However, because of where and when these three crimes occurred - as well as their relative uniformity - I think we could all agree that these crimes could all be linked.

The first crime - the murder of 14-year-old Valerie Lynn Klossowsky in June of 1971 - happened during the school's summer break period. The young age of the victim seems to imply that the killer might have been younger, as well - or, at the very least, someone that confused Valerie for being a few years older than she was. Valerie was known to get into cars with strangers, and her body was found along a gravel road approximately ten miles outside of town. While police would never determine whether or not she had been raped, the circumstances surrounding her crime - her being found partially nude, with her upper garments pulled up towards her shoulders - leads me to believe that she was.

Then, we have the second murder - that of 19-year-old Julia Ann Benning from November of 1975 - which took place four years later. This crime unfolded on the day after Thanksgiving, and the victim was last seen in downtown Waverly on her way to work. Like Valerie, Julia was known to get into cars with strangers - being noted as a constant hitchhiker - who had been working as a waitress at a strip club for months prior to her murder (having been propositioned by men for sex in that span). Unlike the other two victims, Julia's body would not be found for some time after her death, and her remains were too decomposed to determine if she had been a victim of sexual assault (however, because she was found completely nude at the time, it's hard to write off the possibility). Her remains were found on a gravel road approximately seven miles away from Waverly, having washed out of a culvert after roughly four months.

Lastly, we arrive at the third and final murder - that of Marie Lisa Peak - who was killed in September of 1976. The day that Lisa disappeared happened to be Labor Day (another holiday), and her body was discovered the day before classes were set to start at Wartburg College. Lisa had just returned to campus a day or so before her death and was last seen heading out to go shopping. It's unknown if she had hitchhiked anywhere, but due to her involvement in the sex extortion case the year prior, it was reported that she had become incredibly wary and distrusting of strangers, so it's seen as an unlikely possibility. Her body was found less than a day after her disappearance, alongside a gravel road in Waverly's northern outskirts.

All of the three victims were strangled to death, and were found nude or mostly nude; with all or most of their clothing missing from the crime scene. It was believed that at least one victim (Lisa Peak) had been sexually assaulted, while it was undetermined in the other two cases. All three victims were found abandoned just off of gravel roads, in rural and obscure areas ranging from five to ten miles outside of Waverly. And, if you connect their ages, they seem to fit a pattern: Valerie was just 14 years old when she died in 1971, Julia was just 18 years old when was killed in 1975 (four years later), and Lisa was just 19 when she passed away in 1976 (a year after Julia).

To me, this seems to fit the pattern of a killer aging with the victims, targeting women that might have been the same age as him at the time. However, it is worth noting (again) that the earliest victim, Valerie Klossowsky, was reported as appearing older than she was, so this killer might have believed that she was closer to adulthood. However, because all of these crimes took place in Waverly, during summer breaks or holidays, it leads me to believe that this killer was a local who knew where to abandon the victims' bodies without being seen.

Authorities would attempt to use a psychological profile to identify the killer, tasking the Iowa BCI (Bureau of Criminal Investigation) to develop their first-ever psychological profile for a murder case. While the BCI would never release the details of this profile to the public, they would speculate that the killer likely struck around the holidays - days in which he or they believed themselves vulnerable - and that they were undoubtedly familiar with Waverly itself.

After the initial buzz began to die down after the discovery of Lisa Peak's body, months would begin to pass, and then years; during which time, the loved ones of the three victims pleaded for anyone with information to come forward, to no avail.

Police would continue to assert that they were still working on the three cases, hinting that they believed the final two murders - Julia Benning and Lisa Peak - to be linked. Speaking to the Waverly Courier in August of 1977, Sheriff Bill Westendorf would state that he believed there to be a "good possibility" that the two murders came at the hands of a single individual. Craig Beek, the director of Iowa's BCI, would repeat that with a claim of his own two years later, asserting in 1979 that:

"The Peak and Benning case(s) were identical. We definitely think they are related."

In 1979, it would be theorized that these three cases might be linked to Michael Moses, a 25-year-old that was arrested that April for killing two women in nearby Waterloo: 35-year-old Patricia Ann Kniss, who was found in similar circumstances (but had been run over by a vehicle), as well as 24-year-old Debora Lane, whose throat had been slashed inside of her home. Ultimately, however, this potential link would be tossed to the side.

The Waverly strangling cases would also be linked to the September 1992 murder of Rhonda Knutson from nearby Williamstown: a woman that was bludgeoned to death while working the overnight shift at a convenience store. This crime would resurface some long-dormant memories in the region, but would ultimately prove impossible to solve for investigators - as would the 1995 disappearance of Jodi Huisentruit from nearby Mason City, which also seemed to bear some similarities but remains unsolved.

In May of 2010, authorities in Bremer County would exhume Marie Lisa Peak's body - with the assistance of Iowa state officials - in the hopes of recovering DNA evidence that might ultimately lead to her killer. Unfortunately, the state of Lisa's coffin and her remains were too deteriorated for investigators to obtain a workable sample, and it was not believed that this exhumation led to the evidence necessary to pursue DNA testing.

An old lead would resurface over the past decade, which came from a man living in a small town nearby who has chosen to remain anonymous in the press: a former-felon who claims to have been in the Sir Lounge on the night of Julia Benning's original disappearance. He says that - contrary to the claims from the staff at the strip club - Julia had gone to work the day after Thanksgiving (Nov. 28th, 1975), and had been working the door. This man says that he saw a struggle take place in the hallway of the club, and a short time later, saw Julia slumped in the passenger seat of a pickup truck in the club's parking lot. He later told the police about this information - identifying a man seen in the pickup truck with Julia, whom he had seen holding a hand near her throat - but says that police never investigated it as thoroughly as possible.

Decades later, this man would provide this information to Julia's remaining family - as well as the website Iowa Cold Cases, which is a website set up to highlight cold cases throughout the state. While nothing concrete has arisen with this lead, Julia's family believes that it might still lead to answers, and they remain persistent in trying to raise awareness for this case.

As recently as 2015, law enforcement has insisted that these three cases might be linked and that if any of them are to be solved, it has to be now; as the offenders, if they're still alive, would now be in their 60s (if not older).

Speaking to Waverly Newspapers in 2018, Rich Greenlee - the retired Chief Deputy of the Bremer County Sheriff's Office, stated:

"Whoever this person or persons are that killed these [two] girls, you know, they've had to have told somebody that they murdered these girls, they can't go 40 years and keep that a secret... but they've got to have told somebody that they've killed one or two of these girls."

If you know anything about this case, you are encouraged to make contact with the Bremer County Sheriff's Department at 319-352-5400, or by contacting the FBI at 1-800-225-5324 (1-800-CALL-FBI).

As of this episode's recording, the stories of Valerie Klossowsky, Julia Benning, and Lisa Peak - also known as "The Waverly Three" - remain unresolved.

Episode Information

Writing, research, hosting, and production by Micheal Whelan

Published on on November 29th, 2020

Producers: Roberta Janson, Ben Krokum, Gabriella Bromley, Quil Carter, Laura Hannan, Damion Moore, Amy Hampton, Scott Meesey, Steven Wilson, Travis Scsepko, Scott Patzold, Marie Vanglund, Astrid Kneier, Aimee McGregor, Bryan Hall, Sydney Scotton, Sara Moscaritolo, Sue Kirk, Thomas Ahearn, Marion Welsh, Seth Morgan, Jo Wong, Alyssa Lawton, Patrick Laakso, Kevin McCracken, Meadow Landry, Tatum Bautista, Michele Watson, Teunia Elzinga, Ryan Green, Dawn Kellar, Stephanie Joyner, gravityheadzero, Elissa Hampton-Dutro, Ruth Durbin, Sally Ranford, and Sharon Manetta