[ phone ringing ] jodi huisentruit was a morning show anchor. she was working at a station called kimt in mason city, iowa. >> the morning of june 27th, about 4:10 a.m., jodi's producer called her, woke her up because she was over an hour late for work. >> she quickly grabbed her stuff and rushed out the door. she never made it in. >> it's been more than 24 hours now since the mysterious disappearance of news channel 3's morning and noon anchor, jodi huisentruit. >> at about 7:10 a.m. when the officers arrived, they found a lot of her belongings were scattered across the parking lot. the mirror on her mazda miata was bent backwards. they found the car keys laying on the ground. the door key was bent. they started to walk between the

cars. they started noticing more things. her hair dryer. there was an ear ring over here, and there was some paperwork here. red high-heeled shoes. you could see drag marks. we've got a problem. jodi's been drug out of here. >> there's so many different theories in this. >> there are a lot of strange twists and turns. >> was this popular news anchor being stalked? could it be an obsessed fan? or was it because of a story she was working on? a shocking expose. >> there's been quite a few anchors who have either been murdered or stalked. it's not a safe job. >> we don't know where jodi is. we don't know who took jodi. >> as tragedies like this aren't supposed to take place in this quiet part of the world. >> if it can happen in mason city, iowa, it can happen anywhere in the country. >> some people want to let this case go, but we're not. this is somebody's daughter, somebody's sister. it's a very good possibility that somebody in this file cabinet is who took jodi huisentruit. >> from the news channel 3 team, news, weather, and sports, this

is news channel 3's "daybreak." ♪ >> good monday morning. welcome to "daybreak." it's june 26th. i'm jodi huisentruit. >> and i'm kevin skarupa. good morning, everybody. >> welcome back. it is wednesday morning. thank you for joining us. >> jodi was this vibrant, blonde, young news anchor. and she kind of stuck out. >> people don't just vanish on their way to work in a parking lot in mason city, and this happened with no witnesses, no trace. >> this morning, our morning anchor, 27-year-old jodi huisentruit, apparently disappeared. police began their missing persons investigation around 7:00 this morning. >> although it's believed that she could have been abducted a couple of hours before that. >> what you hear about now and ever since "serial," everybody's trying to solve crimes themselves.

but findjodi was created well before that. >> we created the organization to try to keep jodi's story out there and to just try to find as much information as we could about what happened to jodi huisentruit. >> findjodi is a group of citizen sleuths made up of journalists and a retired police officer who have always refused to let jodi's case go cold. they set up a website and started a podcast where people can provide tips. >> we receive tips or information on jodi's case every day. in 2003, two television news reporters created findjodi.com, a website dedicated to preserving jodi's memory and keeping her case alive. we encourage people in every podcast episode, in every web post. we're there in the event they want to come to us. in june 1995, a 27-year-old news anchor named jodi huisentruit hurriedly left her apartment in mason city, iowa, headed for work. but she never arrived. >> jodi huisentruit was someone who got up and went to work at 3:00 a.m. as a female journalist who has

worked morning shows most of her career, i can relate to that personally. i have been in her shoes. >> this case takes me back to the time when local news really was in its heyday. >> here's what's happening in the news this monday morning. a bloody and -- >> by june of 1995, jodi had been at kimt approximately a year and a half. >> coming up, a wild weather weekend. >> yes. a lot of rain. and much needed for the farms from what i've heard. >> she helped produce the morning show, which at that time was an hour from 6:00 to 7:00, and she anchored it along with a meteorologist. >> amy kuns was the producer, so it would be those three mainly, along with, of course, the production staff. >> the morning of june 27th, about 4:10 a.m., jodi's producer called her, woke her up because she was late for work. >> as someone who appears regularly on

"good morning america," i can tell you that oversleeping is a real fear. and in this case, jodi's producer, amy kuns, was looking out for her. >> we kind of had this unspoken agreement in the morning, you know. sometimes you oversleep. it's very easy to do. so if one of us wasn't there by 4:00, we'd give the other a phone call. and that happened a couple of times between the two of us. i gave her a call about 4:00, and she answered. and said, oh, what time is it? i'll be in in ten minutes. and usually when we'd give each other a call, she'd just shower and put her clothes on and do her makeup and her hair here. so she would be in within a matter of 10, 20 minutes. she sounded groggy, tired, worried that she wasn't there on time, and that was it. nothing out of the ordinary.

>> by 4:30, jodi hasn't shown up, and amy calls again. >> then i called her about 4:30 again and got the answering machine. i said, jodi, where are you? come on, i need you. can't do this by myself. just left her a message saying, come on, get in here soon. i thought maybe she was on her way. didn't give it a second thought. maybe i should have called the police sooner, because so many people asked me, why didn't you call immediately? >> the key apartments where jodi lived were not far from the station. i would say a mile, maybe a little more. maybe about a five-minute drive. amy thought jodi was on her way in. she had talked to jodi. she had done everything right. you got to take jodi's word for it that she'll be right in. >> after that, i called about 5:00, left her another kind of frantic message saying, jodi, come on, if you fell back asleep, wake up. come on, we need you here.

i basically -- i just had to put the show together because we couldn't sit in black the whole time. i went on the air at 6:00. >> after that "daybreak" show was complete, they made a call to the mason city police department. and asked for a welfare check to send officers to her house to make sure that she's okay because she hadn't showed up to work yet. jodi lived in the key apartments. she lived in a second floor which is -- had a balcony. she had view of the parking lot, sliding glass door. to the back of her apartment was a river called the winnebago river, and there was an east park on the other side of the river. several walking trails through the park. the main parking lot runs between all of the apartment complexes. when the officers arrived there, they parked in the parking lot and found her distinct mazda miata, her red convertible. it was in the parking lot. as the officers began to approach the stairwell to her apartment, they couldn't help but find -- and look down and see a lot of her belongings were scattered across the parking lot.

the drag marks through the silt is what set everything apart. they thought, you know, this isn't just somebody dropped their things and was in a hurry. we've got a problem. >> jodi was single, so she lived alone in her apartment, but when police went inside there were even more intriguing clues which might suggest she wasn't alone the night before she disappeared. ♪lobby♪ ♪join us♪ ♪sorry♪ ♪i'm dazzling, shining 24/7♪ ♪clouds rolling♪ ♪is this heaven?♪ ♪i be like sheesh♪ ♪sunset on the beach♪ ♪make me want to pull up on miami with the heat♪ ♪i don't know 'bout you♪ the first-ever corolla cross. ♪ toyota. let's go places. (buzz vo) big news america! back for a limited time, we've changed the shape of honey nut cheerios, because we want people to know that they're delicious and can help lower cholesterol. heart healthy! get it? a heart! haha!

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welcome back to "daybreak." it is monday morning,

november 7th, one day after my mom's birthday. i'm jodi huisentruit. >> well, happy birthday, jodi's mom. >> happy birthday, jane. i call her teddy bear. >> my name is maria awes, and i'm an investigative journalist from the midwest. in 1995, i was studying broadcast journalism in college, and that's when jodi disappeared. i remember talking about this case in classes i was having at the time. today i work on a lot of true crime programs, and i started working on jodi's case back in 2016. i think for me, her case feels like one that could be solved and that the answer is right there. but it's just a little bit beyond your reach. >> maria is someone that abc news has worked with before and someone we wanted to work with on this story because of the exclusive access she's gotten to some of the people connected to the case, including its lead detective in 2016. >> my name is terrence prochaska. i'm a criminal investigator with the mason city police department in iowa. it was right in late 2010 i was told that i was gonna be assigned the case. i thought, you know, what a great opportunity to do

something, you know, that maybe i can make a difference. so i said, yeah, let's do it. and in here is where we keep the actual physical files of the jodi huisentruit case. these files contain a lot of witness interviews. um, they contain different officers' reports. they contain different people that jodi was involved in personally or professionally. we've interviewed literally thousands of people in this case. it's a very good possibility that somebody in this file cabinet is who took jodi huisentruit. >> for most women, walking outside alone at night, there is always some fear. >> the distance between the door of the apartment complex and jodi's vehicle door is very short. i've walked it several times. it's about 12 of my paces, maybe about 20 feet, so it's a very short distance. >> getting up and working on a morning show, it's dark. you hear some birds maybe, some

creepy nighttime bugs, and that's it. there's the streetlights and then you. once you're in the door, you had this sense of relief. you're like, okay, i got through the scary part. >> police officers on the scene that morning couldn't find any trace of jodi. but there were clues, and a lot of them. >> the mirror on her mazda miata was bent backwards. they found car keys laying on the ground. the door key was bent. they started to walk between the cars. they started noticing more things. her hairdryer. there's an ear ring over here, and there's some paperwork here, red high-heeled shoes. they knew something was wrong. the officers then radioed to have a supervisor come to the scene right away. they secured the lots, shut down the parking lot, shut down everything, and they got on the -- on the radios and started calling every volunteer. >> about 20 local and state investigators are now involved in this case, and many were on the scene tonight within the last hour. they're dredging the winnebago river, looking for clues. >> there was a river with a large cliff embankment behind her apartment.

there's a campground within a hundred feet of her stairwell to her apartment. there's so many different places that needed to be searched immediately to make sure that jodi wasn't in need of help. >> jodi was single, so she lived alone in her apartment. but when police went inside, there were even more intriguing clues which might suggest she wasn't alone the night before she disappeared. >> there were some beer cans in the sink, and there were some wine glasses on the counter top. glasses that were drank out of. the problem is, we can't tell when one wine glass was used and the other. you know, there's always talk about the two wine glasses, like, she had somebody over, had a glass of wine. that simply can't be proven until we have jodi to ask because she could have had one glass and then had another glass the next day. >> the bedspread was pulled up. things were in order. nothing's screamed "crime scene." >> a lot of shoes, a lot of clothes. there was a toilet seat that was left in the up position, and

that bothers me even to this day. >> it's an open question as to who left that up. was it jodi? was it somebody else? we don't know. >> there was a partial palm print collected from the scene. it was sent in to the lab for any possible match. >> this case started like most others do. you know, you respond to the scene and you assess what you've got and you work on reconstructing the previous time period, you know, before somebody went missing. and that's -- that's almost always where these cases start. >> i'd like to borrow her blue eyes for a couple of days, test them out a little bit. they're gorgeous. >> her disappearance really shocked me, rocked me to the core. i was a former news anchor in the market where jodi huisentruit worked. >> you're watching kimt's morning show, "daybreak." the time, 6:32. 36 degrees here in mason city. >> she was beloved by everybody. >> i don't do the travel first? >> oh, yeah.

first i do the news. you're right. then i do the news. good thinking. way to go. >> i'm getting there slowly. >> way to keep me in check. >> she was a spitfire and a little spark plug since the time she was very small. >> jodi is my kid sister. she was born in 1968, and i was 18 at the time. >> she brought so much joy to our family. >> one of jodi's closest friends fondly remembered attending elementary school with her. >> i met jodi when i was 5 years old. you couldn't miss here because she was somebody who sort of lit up the room. and i -- i honestly don't remember after second grade not spending, you know, every weekend together, you know, growing up. she was my best friend. she always had an interest in broadcast journalism. she used to always admire connie chung who was very, at that point in time, was one of the prominent female anchors. >> just ahead, when doctors fail

to tell patients all they need to know. we'll take a closer look. >> jodi went to college at st. cloud state university, which is relatively close to her hometown. >> hi, and welcome to "st. cloud state today." i'm jodi huisentruit. >> one of jodi's professors told abc news about her passion for journalism. >> she was an exciting, interested, vibrant young woman who didn't just, you know, come to school and go to class. she -- she made her education an important part of her life. >> so, i'm not clowning around when i say our show has to come to a close. >> her aspiration was to be one of the top two or three women broadcasters in the country. >> okay, cut. >> in those days, the path that someone like jodi would take to get onto a major network would be to intern and then to start on air in a smaller market, and that's exactly what i did when i first broke into the business. >> jodi's very first job in television happened when she was named to be an intern in cedar rapids, iowa.

>> by having these feeder cattle weighed here in january, the 4-h members are steered in the right direction for the lynn county fair this summer. jodi huisentruit, channel 2 news, kgan. >> after jodi had done her internships, she went to alexandria, minnesota, at ksax. >> when we reached out to ksax looking for any old footage of jodi, the station had recently located a forgotten box of tapes. so a lot of the footage you'll see here hasn't been seen since it aired in the early 1990s. >> walking down the sidewalks of rural minnesota streets like wadena, personal safety is not a big concern. >> it's a little chilling to see some of the things jodi reported on, like taking safety for granted in a small town. >> there's no evidence specifically that jodi had felt threatened at any specific time. but at the same time, she was taking self-defense classes. and she reported an incident in october of 1994 to police.

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tonight." >> 1995. it was the year that "friends" was the number one show on tv. >> all right, your money's mine, green. >> your fly's open, geller. >> and the biggest story was the o.j. simpson trial. the entire country was glued to the coverage. >> if it doesn't fit, you must acquit. >> but for the small town of mason city, iowa, the big story was the disappearance of their beloved news anchor. it sent fear throughout the town. >> joining me now from mason city, iowa, is mayor carl miller. can people still feel safe in small towns like mason city? >> penny, i don't think there's a safe haven anywhere in ink everyone has tbe constantly vigilant. >> jodi got a job in '94, the fall of '94, in mason city. we thought it was okay and it seemed safe. >> i've been a radio personality here in mason city for a number of years. jodi worked in tv here at the same time. so we ran into each other

different places. there were some rough spots then. there were places i would not even drive through at the time. >> when you look at mason city, which is a smaller city, you know, jodi was a big name. people who started the day would see her on tv. she became part of their routines. and so when you're in a place like mason city, you're pretty recognizable. >> people think they know you personally, when really, you may not have met them. >> some people think her local fame might have been a contributing factor if someone had been targeting her. so many of us on television have had stalkers. it is unfortunately one of those things that just seems to come with the territory. but did jodi take safety for granted in a small town like mason city? >> i did see her rollerblading once outside her apartment complex. and i pulled over and said, what are you doing? and she said, i'm rollerblading.

i said, right outside your apartment complex? go do that in the park somewhere. she said, you worry too much. i thought, i hope i'm worrying too much. guess i probably wasn't. >> but on at least one occasion, jodi wasn't quite so cavalier. in fact, a police report filed just nine months before she went missing would reveal that at one point, jodi did feel unsafe. >> she did make a report to the mason city police department in october, and she reported that she was being followed by somebody. it was simply that she was being followed by a white truck. she didn't elaborate much more. >> she was out jogging one afternoon, and she was extremely concerned because she was being followed by someone. it really did, you know, shake her up quite a bit. >> she got very, very nervous and was even crying when she called my mom on the phone. i've followed up on a lot of cases, and there's been quite a

few anchors who have either been murdered or stalked. it's not a safe job. >> kathryn dettman, a waco texas reporter, was brutally attacked experts say a stalker can feel especially close to a news caster because they're in our living rooms every day. >> there was one stalker who broke into my house and riffled through my clothing drawers. that was pretty creepy. i -- i was always, as a result, really conscious of stalkers and people who might just see you as a target. >> colleen devine says she didn't report her incident to police because she was afraid of facing her stalker in court one day, and that isn't all that uncommon. working on jodi's case, i became curious. did anyone else report being stalked? were there any other assaults that took place near jodi's apartment at the time she vanished? so i requested police reports from mason city. i was looking for reports on assaults, sexual assaults, stalking, suspicious persons. the mason city police told me

it would take a while to pull the records, so i would have to wait for answers. >> if anybody for any reason wanted to find her to harm her or otherwise, it would not have been hard. i mean, all of her information was in the phone book. that's unthinkable now, but back then, it was -- it was right there for everybody. >> if jodi wasn't being stalked, people started to wonder if her disappearance might be connected to something else she was reporting on in the news, like the midwest's growing drug problem, which was something that she covered. >> a town this size has some major drug dealing going on. a paid professional informant worked the area by becoming friends with the drug dealers. >> from one of our local dealers here, we took 7 pounds of marijuana valued at $7,000, plus 4 grams of methamphetamine. >> there was a high volume of methamphetamine use. at that time, mason city was lbeled as some sort of a drug capital. every town's got their problems. i think drugs was one of our

problems. >> more drug arrests in floyd county has investigators cracking down on drug trafficking. recently seven men have been arrested on drug charges. >> i've heard, whether it's social media or somebody else, coming up with the idea that jodi was an investigative reporter and she was looking into this meth ring or this drug ring. and she was looking into it all on her own on the side. >> there were a lot of rumors back at the time jodi disappeared that she might have been investigating somebody and that they -- she got too close to the -- to the flame, if you will. >> that was never, ever the case. she was not assigned any kind of story like that. she was not working on anything like that on her own. she had no interest in investigative reporting. jodi was a personality and an anchor who wanted to continue being an anchor. when she was done with her noon show at 12:30, she was out of

the station generally by 1:00. >> here's what's happening on the news this monday morning. >> this is the last most of north iowa heard of jodi huisentruit over the airwaves. this is the last many of us saw of jodi yesterday morning. >> one of the common techniques investigators use to try to solve cases is to put themselves in the victim's shoes to retrace their steps. >> let's do it in jodi's eyes a little bit. she -- jodi received a call, phone call from amy. she's awoken. she's in a hurry. so based on what the evidence shows us is she gathered her things -- and she has done this in the past -- has got ready for work at work. instead of sitting in front of her own mirror getting her own makeup on, she does it there. so she's got her hands full. she walks out of her apartment door to the stairway. she goes down. so, as she's got her hands full of stuff, she was coming down the stairs to the right and

exits into the parking lot. so it's a lit parking lot. it's not dead dark, but it is an eerie time of morning, you know at 4:00 in the morning, her mazda sits just to the right of her. my imagination at this point takes over from the evidence, is that she was beginning to unlock the car when she was approached by someone. on the morning of june 27th when jodi went missing, 1995, they did a neighborhood canvas. they knocked on doors and made phone calls. they began to discover people were actually surprised because they did hear a scream. >> sat down to read my mail about 4:30, and shortly after that, i heard all these screams out in the parking lot. i didn't see anything. i heard it happen. >> unfortunately, those screams were unreported to the police, therefore giving whoever did this a lot of lead time to get ahead of us. at those screams, some even

reported hearing her say, "leave me alone." i've seen the evidence myself, and i know she was drug away from that scene. so those screams, unfortunately, were most likely jodi. and they were most likely jodi being taken from us. sorry, i get a little choked up about it. >> it turns out someone else would come forward to find jodi, saying they too heard yelling. but what's interesting is that this person claims it was the evening before jodi's abduction and right outside jodi's apartment door. >> somebody knocked on the door and said, jodi, i know you're in there. answer the door. ♪ don't you tell me that i'm crazy. ♪ ♪ don't you say that i'm losing my mind. ♪ ♪ i'm in love. love. love. love. ♪ ♪ it's everything i've been dreaming love ♪

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wee just coming up to kentk. right up here is

jodi huisentruit lived. this is the key apartments. to determine who would take jodi huisentruit, what i like to do is take it with the circumstances involved to try to narrow down somebody that would have the ability. yes, it could be a stalker, but if you're a stalker, you know where she drives. you know where she goes. i mean, think of the other opportunities that would be less obvious. and those weren't met. that morning when jodi was late was sometime between 4:15 and maybe 4:20 in the morning where jodi would have walked outside of her apartment. nearly 45 minutes later than her normal routine. somebody that's gonna kidnap, take jodi, is gonna have a hard time sticking around an hour later waiting for that right moment to walk up and grab jodi. the only person that would do

that was somebody that knew jodi. >> my name is gary peterson. i started working the find jodi case and really have gone through a lot of the different theories. there are several things that i asked when i first started working on this case. why did it have to be today? why was it this morning that she was abducted? >> that's the million dollar question, and that's why we're still here today. because we have covered so many theories on how this could have happened. >> now, remember, neighbors told police they heard screams in the early morning hours the day jodi disappeared but didn't call 911. but one neighbor said she heard commotion outside jodi's apartment the evening before she disappeared. >> joan horan, i spoke to her, and she lived right across the hall from jodi. at approximately 8:00, 8:30, in that neighborhood somewhere,

joan horan had heard male footsteps coming up the stairs and then somebody banging on jodi's door saying, open the door, jodi. i know you're in there. open up the door. and this went on for three or four minutes according to joan horan, who said that he then turned and left and went -- went someplace else. >> so, everything that joan said to gary peterson is extremely compelling, but the problem is, it's not the story she told police who interviewed her on june 29th, just two days after jodi's abduction. gary's interview took place much later. >> witness accounts on things sometimes do vary over the many, many cases i've worked on, and even homicide cases. >> what police really have to do is rely heavily on accounts made by people at the time of the crime to establish what happened, when it happened, and where a victim was last seen.

one of the first things they learn is that jodi was representing kimt at a golf outing at the mason city country club on the day before she disappeared. this was after she anchored the "daybreak" morning news. >> i don't like that forecast. >> i'm sorry. i'll do my best to change it in, like, the next 20 minutes or so. >> i do have a mason city chamber golf outing this morning, so -- >> after the golf tournament was over, there was a dinner held in the evening at the country club. jodi went home and changed and then came back for the dinner. >> the last time i saw jodi was at the mason city country club monday night, june 26th, after the golf outing. >> i talked with two of the three people who were with her on the team. they remember she seemed very happy. and then shortly before 8:00, according to one of her golf partners, she said she had to leave. >> most witnesses at the country

club say they saw jodi leave at 8:00. >> what we do know is that she was home and made a long distance phone call from her apartment at approximately 8:24, and that phone call was to her friend kelly. >> kelly was not home, so jodi ended up talking with her husband for a few minutes. she talked quite a bit about a waterskiing weekend she had just had a couple days earlier. >> this weekend of waterskiing took place just days before jodi's disappearance. it's actually something that jodi had written about in a journal she was keeping at the time. in fact, what she writes in that journal are some of the last words we have from jodi before she vanishes. >> the very last entry in her journal was written that sunday, and she talked about what a terrific time she had waterskiing and the fun she had. >> it turns out that part of the fun jodi and her friends had that weekend included bar

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police, whether it be the mason city police or the fbi or the iowa dci, have talked in total to a large number of people that knew jodi. jodi had different circles. >> there was a whole group of people that socialized pretty widely at the other place. >> "the other place" is the name of a local sports bar that used to exist in mason city. >> now, there were two men that jodi would sometimes socialize with at the other place. one of them was named bill pruin, and the other was john vansice. in fact, vansice was one of the people who went with jodi on that waterskiing weekend. >> they took john's boat. they stayed at john vansice's son's house, and they went out basically bar hopping friday night. >> john vansice, jodi huisentruit, and billy pruin were very familiar faces at the other place. >> naturally, if jodi had been socializing or spending time with either of these two men just before she went missing, they might be part of the

investigation, so it's important to understand more about each of them. >> john vansice is a seed corn salesman from newton, iowa, and he had just recently moved to mason city and lived for, like, a month in the same apartment building that jodi was in. and then he left that. >> billy pruin was a farmer, and jodi and billy knew each other. and billy would see jodi out. they were cordial. they would talk when they saw each other. >> bill pruin lived in the mason city area, and he would have been in his early 40s. he had two daughters. i believe they were ages 12 and 10 at the time. and he was divorced and he was living on a farm. >> both john vansice and bill pruin's names come up time and time again in jodi's case, each for a different reason. in bill pruin's case, he was found shot to death just a couple of months before jodi

disappeared. >> his death was originally ruled a suicide, and just nobody bought that. i mean, when you hear about the way he died, there's just nothing that rang true about that. >> on april 6th, 1995, bill pruin was found deceased with a bullet wound in his chest. >> it's believed he actually died two days before he was found. >> pruin's death was initially listed as a suicide, and then about a year later was changed to undetermined. >> one of our findjodi podcast episodes focuses on billy pruin because a lot of people still have questions about how he died. >> bill pruin was our dad. >> he was just a great dad. he was always at all of our school events, and he always made it a point to, like, even if he was busy in the field, like, do something fun with us, like go chase after storms or just go check on the fields with him. >> he had just bought a new tractor that very same day and

driven it home. that doesn't -- nothing fit together with the possibility of it being a suicide. >> none of it really made sense. like, he was just so happy-go-lucky, so involved. like, it just really did not add up. we have heard that jodi and our dad were friends. i think that they frequented the same locations. >> our dad's very good friends say, well, yeah, i think they kind of knew who each other were. >> it was linked to jodi's case in speculation because jodi disappears not too far after that. here's billy pruin dying under mysterious circumstances or suspicious circumstances, and jodi huisentruit disappears within months. >> krystal and scarlett wanted to unravel the mystery of their father's death, so they hired a private investigator. >> some people speculated that billy pruin may have been murdered, so we went through and worked every scenario possible. we had an entrance wound and exit wound and then a hole in the ceiling. the gun that billy pruin had --

there was a .44 magnum. the barrel length was 7 inches long. the overall length was 14 inches long. and if you actually took the weapon and tried to position it to shoot yourself, there's no way you could get that type of a trajectory coming through the chest, through the back, up into the ceiling. it didn't look like it was going to be a suicide. >> our dad passed away on april 4th of 1995, and jodi went missing in june of that same year. and some people think that she was investigating his death and he was murdered and it put her life in danger. >> there's just one problem. by all accounts from family, from jodi's boss, from bill pruin's friends, there's no evidence of that. >> when bill pruin died, it was not a blip on the radar for her in the newsroom. it wasn't like she was talking to all kinds of people like, "this friend of mine," or "this acquaintance of mine died." she never came to me and said she's very concerned.

we need to look at this. it's not a suicide, doug. it's something else. that -- that never happened. >> there's also no evidence bill pruin was murdered. >> there was no forced entry at all. i mean, there was no broken windows, no nothing. there was no evidence anybody else had been inside the house. >> the medical examiner considers the cause of bill pruin's death undetermined. though the police still have his death classified as a suicide. that's something that the p.i. and bill pruin's daughters disagree with. >> it looked like he had run inside and he had his wet shoes on and he slipped on the tile floor. >> and when he lost his footing and when he was going over, it was still cocked. when his hand went forward, it had to be his watch that brushed up against that trigger and caused it to discharge. bill pruin's cause of death, 100% concrete, no ifs, ands or buts, it was an accidental discharge of the weapon. it was not a homicide. it wasn't a suicide. it wasn't a burglary. it wasn't a home invasion. it was accidental.

>> what police, the private investigator, and bill pruin's daughters all agree on is that there is no connection between bill pruin's death to jodi's disappearance. scarlett and krystal want the rumors to stop. >> it is hurtful that it's still being tied to the jodi huisentruit case. >> they're very hurtful because people can hide behind a keyboard and they can kind of say whatever they want, but when it's your father that they're talking about -- >> i think it's unfortunate that billy pruin's daughters have had to go through this random association with jodi huisentruit. their families are real people attached to those accusations, and they -- inevitably, they end up seeing a lot of that. >> we are people with emotions and people that miss our dad. >> let his legacy be what it is instead of turning it -- dragging it into her case. and then give jodi huisentruit what she deserves, too.

>> for frustrated police, all of this constitutes yet another false lead that goes nowhere. >> people call us often with a lot of theories, and they're long on theories and short on facts. basically, what this case is is taking many pieces of puzzle and trying to make a final picture. >> but what about that other friend of jodi's, john vansice? how does he fit into that puzzle? it just so happens that on the morning jodi vanished, as investigators scoured the scene, john vansice showed up there with a surprising revelation. >> as the officers were still trying to gather information, a red vehicle pulled up. it was a red truck, and it contained john vansice. he was in the vehicle. he was the passenger. they parked just right there, just right off to the right of the driveway. and the officers approached and asked what they could help him with, and john vansice said, i

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thanks for joining us. i'm jodi huisentruit. >> june 27th, 1995, is a day most of us will never forget. >> jodi huisentruit was abducted at 4:20 in the morning. >> it was a huge story that an anchorwoman had been abducted and disappeared. >> this is the last most north iowa heard of jodi huisentruit. >> she was beginning to unlock the car when she was approached by someone. i think it was somebody that very well knew her. >> jodi's friend john vansice showed up at the parking lot. according to police, he seemed quite upset. >> there are several people who the police look at closely in connection to her disappearance. >> all i can tell you about jodi huisentruit is that she has become a central part of my life since i've been incarcerated. >> someone knows something, and someone is going to have to say

something. >> just recently the findjodi team wonders if that one elusive tip has come in. >> what's in the freezer? how many reasons are there to bury a freezer? >> in 1995, jodi huisentruit was a morning show anchor. she was working at a station called kimt in mason city, iowa. >> in case you're counting, today marks the 6th consecutive day of hitting 90 degrees or better. iowans haven't seen a streak like this since 1991. >> on the morning of june 27th, she needed to be at the station around 3:30 a.m. she never made it. >> her belongings were found in the parking lot. drag marks were at the scene. but there were no signs of jodi. >> police were on the scene about 7:16 that morning. n e rk lot. they knew jodi was missing. but what was going on? >> as they're still collecting evidence, a man rolls up to the

scene, a friend of jodi's named john vansice. >> the officers approached him, asked what they could help him with, and john vansice said, i was the last person to see jodi. >> the story john vansice tells police begins with him saying that he was with jodi the night before she disappeared. he appears very cooperative with police. >> john vansice says that jodi stopped at this apartment to watch a video tape of a birthday party that john actually threw for jodi at a place called sully's bar in clear lake. >> now, pay close attention to the timeline of that night. remember, the evening began with jodi attending a charity golf event. >> most witnesses at the country club say they saw jodi leave at 8:00. >> john vansice says jodi came to his house to watch the video of the birthday party right after she left the country club. >> it's a short drive from the country club, less than four miles. so that means she would have

been to his house by about 8:10 p.m., and the video is 15 minutes long. >> we watched video, and then after the video was over, we talked about a few things. talked about my daughter who's in italy this summer. and then she -- we talked about water skiing this week. and then from there on she went down the stair steps and went around the back got in her car and went home. that's the last i seen of her. >> people who've studied the case have good reason to think there's a problem with this chain of events, and that's because we know the time that jodi was back at her apartment. >> she was home and made a long distance phone call from her apartment at approximately 8:24. if in fact john and jodi watched the video together to its entirety -- the video lasts just over 15 minutes. >> factoring in the 10-minute drive from the country club to vansice's place, then 15 minutes to watch the video, we're already at 8:25 p.m. and because we know she was back at her apartment to make a phone call at 8:24, that timeline just

doesn't seem to work. it doesn't allow for any time for jodi to make it back to her apartment, which takes three to five minutes, get settled, and then dial up her friend. >> there's something definitely wrong with this story. do the math. >> police haven't divulged whether they confronted vansice with issues in the timeline, nor what he said if indeed they did, leaving it hard for the rest of us to know what to make of it. >> well, it seemed fairly early on as though the police were focusng in on john vansice, and they had good reasons to. the age difference. his showing up the morning that it happened. >> she was 27. he was 49. >> i'm trying to keep my composure and trying to keep calm about this thing. but i'm very, very bitter. i'm very bitter to the person who did it. and if they find him, don't bring him around me. >> he was a seed corn salesman. he was also a bit of a showoff type.

he had a fancy boat. >> and there's something interesting about that boat which had a lot of people raising their eyebrows. the name of john vansice's boat? "jodi," as he told a local news station. >> she just meant so much to me, and we had so much fun together, her and her friends. and i even named my boat after her just because she's jodi and she's been such a big part of my life here lately. >> there has been some speculation on whether he named that boat prior to her disappearance or immediately after. >> the last few weeks before she disappeared, she writes extensively in her journal and mentions him quite often. and he's characterized his relationship as father/daughter. others think he had more interest. >> there isn't anything in the journal entries that i've read, that have been made public, that suggest jodi has anything negative to say about john vansice. she talks about them having a good time, going waterskiing. everything's always very complimentary. >> police start looking at john vansice's whereabouts the

morning jodi went missing. >> john vansice. >> he would often go on a walk every morning with a friend of his named ladonna woodford. both told the police that they -- that they went for a walk that morning. >> i always tell people i knew where john was between the 6:30 and quarter to 8:00. >> ladonna says she took that morning walk with john at 6:30. police think jodi was abducted around 4:30. so where was john vansice then? >> john had stated to the police and to the media that, you know, he was sleeping. there was no alibi for john at that time of her disappearance. >> vansice himself has repeatedly denied having anything to do with jodi's disappearance. >> about three days after this happened, john calls me up. and he says, i don't have any friends, ladonna. they all think i did this. i think it's important that people understand that john was

persecuted right from the get go. um -- it's so hard. the part that agitates me is that people think that john was so infatuated with jodi, which he liked jodi. and i always say, was he infatuated with her, or was he protecting her? and i come up with the conclusion that he was protecting her because he saw all the stuff that she was doing, and she was young and beautiful and in the limelight. she'd been stalked. he never talked like, i want to sleep with her, or anything sexual. >> john vansice also said he had a girlfriend at the time jodi disappeared. >> according to ladonna, that relationship ended after vansice's name began to surface in connection with jodi's disappearance. >> i talked to his girlfriend,

and she said, i'm not seeing him anymore. i can't. and i said, do you really believe he did this? enter and she goes, i don't know. >> was he ever given a polygraph test? >> he was. i can tell you that he was polygraphed on two occasions. >> did he pass? >> i'm not allowed to talk about it. i wish i could. >> polygraphs are a tool that investigators have in their tool kit, and they do use them, but polygraphs are not admissible in court because of concerns over their reliability. police wouldn't tell me if john vansice passed the polygraph, but john vansice has made it a point to tell people that he did. >> john vansice even volunteered the information to us that he passed a lie detector test twice. >> we know that a grand jury met on this case in 1997 and did not return an indictment on vansice or on anyone else. and by the time investigator prochaska got involved in the case in 2010, even though he was cooperative with police, john vansice had by then stopped talking to them.

>> we've had investigators, including my supervisor, asked him, and he refused. so, i would love to have the opportunity someday to sit down with john and at least give him the opportunity to tell me his side of the story. i would just say, where's jodi? if i had a chance. you know, maybe he knows. maybe he didn't do it. maybe he knows who did. maybe he has nothing to do with it. >> a few things have happened in recent years. vansice was issued a subpoena in 2017 to appear before the grand jury. >> vansice was subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury in iowa on march 2nd, 2017. >> we know that he was asked to provide finger and palm prints as part of those grand jury proceedings. the grand jury proceedings themselves are not public, so we don't know much more than that, other than it's safe to assume he was not indicted. in april of 2019, john vansice came forward and issued two statements by an intermediary. in the first one, he says he's

been living in suspended hell over the accusations. he says he had absolutely no involvement in the apparent abduction of his friend jodi huisentruit. >> the second statement gives the impression that time may be running out for investigators to ask john vansice any more questions about the case. in it he disclosed that he had recently been diagnosed with moderate and advancing alzheimer's disease and said that's part of the reason he issued the statement adamantly denying he had any involvement in jodi's disappearance. >> police say vansice remains of interest to authorities today, but he's definitely not the only person that's been looked into. >> in fact, another tip that more than piques the interest of the findjodi team would take the investigation in a whole new direction. >> he's a stalker. he's a rapist. lo and behold, we find out he lived in mason city. he lived in mason city at the time jodi huisentruit disappeared. could he be responsible for jodi's disappearance?

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29-year-old jodi huisentruit vanished june 27th, 1995. the iowa anchorwoman was on her way to work at a mason city tv station. this former mason city man, 24-year-old tony jackson, lived just a few blocks away from that station. >> i started covering jodi huisentruit's story two years after she disappeared. i first heard of tony dejuan jackson in may of 1997. there was a series of rapes in the twin cities where i was covering crime. >> jackson was convicted this month of raping a cottage grove teenager. the jury could not decide whether he raped another woman here in woodbury. >> jackson was accused of rapes in the minneapolis/st. paul area back in the spring of 1997. he was accused of rapes in the cities of woodbury, cottage grove, inver grove heights,

minneapolis, and st. paul. all of these places are about 2 1/2 to 3 hours north of mason city, iowa. >> a fanny pack was seen in two of these cases. the fanny pack contained what we called a "rape kit." he had handcuffs. he had rope. he had a mask. he had duct tape, and he had a gun in there, too. >> the fanny pack described by victims had a distinctive logo on it and was found in tony jackson's car. that and dna would prove critical to connecting him to the rapes. >> in one assault on may 17th of 1997, a woman comes home and sees a man sleeping on her couch. she thinks it's somebody who was a friend of her roommate's. she goes to take a shower, and he rapes her when she comes out. jackson's m.o. often involved getting into victim's apartments. but in one instance, he was convicted of assaulting a woman in her car. as we know, whoever approached

jodi did so outside of her mazda miata. >> we started thinking that this is not the first time he's been on a rape spree like this. there's got to be other victims, because you just don't wake up some day and in a few months you go rape this number of women. lo and behold, we find out he lived in mason city. he lived in mason city at the time jodi huisentruit disappeared. >> tony jackson moved to the north iowa area in about 1993, 1994. he moved in -- moved here from chicago. he actually lived on north connecticut which is just a block from the police department. it's also a block from kimt. his name was brought up based on his living status in mason city. >> i was aware of the huisentruit case just because of the media coverage, so that sparked my interest right away. it's like, wow, here we've got a guy that's a predator. he's a stalker. he's a rapist. could he be responsible for

jodi's disappearance? i was in law enforcement for 28 years. in my career, and from what i have heard of other detectives, it's rare that you're gonna have somebody go on a spree of rapes in that amount of time, that many rapes. >> tony jackson was convicted of four of the five rapes he was charged with. all of the rapes took place two years after jodi disappeared. things get even more complicated in 1998 when a jailhouse informant comes forward. according to caroline lowe, the informant told her that he met tony jackson behind bars while jackson was awaiting trial for the rapes. and she says he claimed that jackson told him some chilling information. >> he claimed that tony jackson claimed that he had murdered an anchorwoman and he also had heard him reciting this rap rhyme. >> the informant's name is dennis goff. goff is now deceased, but both he and jackson served time in

the ramsey county jail back in 1998. >> the rap that this inmate put together goes as -- "she's a stiffin' around tiffin in a pileage of silage in a bylow low below, off a highway by a grave road." >> tiffin, iowa, is located near iowa city. it's a very small community, very small town. >> tiffin is roughly 161 miles from about where jackson lived, so 322 miles round trip. we found that he bought a car the day before jodi disappeared. >> he put on a lot of miles. is that conclusive? no, but it caught our attention. >> the question became, could this serial rapist have killed jodi huisentruit and are those alleged rap lyrics directions to her body? >> i decided there was only one way to find out -- ask tony jackson myself.

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a minneapolis tv station linked rap lyrics supposedly written by tony jackson to where huisentruit's body might be found. >> tony jackson was alleged to have written a rap song called "stiffin' in tiffin." >> a law enforcement source told us that one of his informants, who's now dead, had said that he was in the same cell block as tony jackson and that tony jackson had admitted that he had abducted and murdered an anchorwoman. and he also claimed that tony jackson had recited a rap rhyme. the guy wrote it down and he gave us a copy. >> i was able to verify that tony jackson and the informant, dennis lee goff, were both held at the ramsey county jail for 6 days in may of 1998. but there is no record that they ever spent time together in a cell or elsewhere. >> the rap that this inmate put together goes as -- "she's a stiffin' around tiffin in a pileage of silage in a bylow, low below, off a highway by a grave road."

>> the theory caroline has is that tony jackson drove the car hundreds of miles from mason city to tiffin, iowa, the city she investigated as a location for jodi's body. all this came from the rap she was told tony jackson allegedly wrote. >> caroline had got this information, and she's a digger. went down to tiffin looking around. they find a site that's off of a cemetery. >> could the road that runs along the cemetery be the reference to the "grave road" in the rap? >> she sees in the distance, looks like an abandoned farm. it has some silos there. she's able to get some cadaver dogs and agents to come over and search the silo. the dogs do indicate on something. >> these are cadaver dogs trained to detect human remains. we watched the dogs reacting and alerting on two -- two of the three dogs alerted inside the silo. >> ultimately the only thing that was found was, uh, animal

bones. i believe it was a raccoon. when i spoke with one of the investigators, they said it was raccoon bones that they had located. >> even with the search of that silo becoming a dead end, findjodi.com posted jackson's name and their theory on their website, fueling speculation that he was involved. i wanted to hear his side of the story, so i went to interview him behind prison walls at minnesota's stillwater prison. and i started by asking about the rap and tiffin. what can you tell me about this rap song allegation? >> i'm telling you right now, i'd never been to tiffin, iowa. never travelled to tiffin, iowa. i would imagine that tiffin, iowa, is pretty much kind of like all of the other small towns in iowa. that if a black male introduced himself in tiffin, iowa, somebody would remember that. i have to stop and get gas. i'm not invisible. somebody would have seen something. >> let's talk a little bit about jodi. >> all that i can tell you about

jodi huisentruit is that she has become a central part of my life since i've been incarcerated. it's been something that i've been, for many years, hoping will be resolved so that that stigma can be taken away from me so that i can -- so that i can rest. >> jackson never denies to me that he was a rapist, but he insists he is not a murderer. >> it's unfortunate that people try to take rape and murder and put it all together as one -- as one big, heinous act and say that if you had did this, you would have done this. >> i was surprised at how forthcoming tony jackson was about the rapes that he committed. tony told me that just prior to the rapes in 1997, he was mourning a breakup with one longtime girlfriend and wrestling with the loss of a baby with a current one.

with these counts of criminal sexual conduct, what happened? >> when people ask me that question, what happened, all i can say is that i was not myself. even though i felt bad about doing it, i couldn't stop doing it because it was like a vice that was taking away the aggression and how i felt at that time. i had exploded. it wasn't about sex or anything like that. all that stuff that was just bottled up is coming out. and so now you don't want to stop. and i remember, i prayed at my last victim's home. i said, hey, you know, god, please, please stop me. i did. i prayed. i told him. i said, god, please stop me. and he did. he did. >> when's the first time that you heard about jodi huisentruit? >> the first time i heard about

jodi huisentruit was when i was in washington county jail and i had received a -- a letter from caroline lowe. she sprung it on me about the jodi huisentruit situation. and i immediately said to her, i said, oh, my goodness. i said, please. please do not try to associate myself with that case. i said, if you do that, you will take away any chance of me ever having a fair trial on anything that i got going on now. >> tony jackson went on to sue caroline lowe, findjodi and others. he believed that a plea deal was taken off the table as a result of his name being in the media potentially connected to jodi huisentruit's disappearance. those suits ultimately were thrown out, although he's recently filed another one related to findjodi's continued portrayal of him in the media as a person of interest, despite the fact police ruled him out

as a suspect back in 1999. >> we keep a neutral stance on our reporting. we make sure we're unbiased. we focus in on the details that we know. we're just putting out what we know into the public, and if that upset him in any certain way, there's nothing we can do about that. >> i have full confidence in tony jackson's investigation. i've interviewed tony jackson myself. he's been very cooperative during our investigation and i'm comfortable with what we found out. it's circumstantial evidence. he did purchase a car, um, the day before she went missing. putting the mileage on the vehicle, that i can't substantiate. tony jackson's dna has not matched any evidence of ours. we've had no reports or indications that he had anything to do with jodi huisentruit's disappearance. >> did you have anything to do with the disappearance of jodi huisentruit? >> no, i have never had anything to do with the disappearance of jodi huisentruit. >> did you kill jodi huisentruit? >> i did not kill

jodi huisentruit or in any way had anything to do with whatever is going on with her demise. >> do you know anything about her disappearance? >> no, i do not. and i wish i did so i can get -- stop this nightmare. the problem about theories is that they're not facts. >> so with tony jackson ruled out, authorities are once again at square one, until another sex offender in the area makes a shocking statement. >> he had been interviewed by authorities. when they said, "well, jodi's missing," and he said, "oh, jodi's dead." >> in my mind, at that time, i thought we had the guy. i honestly did. m getting vaccind with prevnar 20. so am i. because i'm at risk for pneumococcal pneumonia. i'm asking about prevnar 20. because there's a chance pneumococcal pneumonia could put me in the hospital. if you're 65 or older

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thomas gary corscadden was a sex offender who lived in the austin area. >> austin is a city in southern minnesota. it's close to the border. it's about an hour away from mason city, where jodi disappeared. not long after jodi vanished in 1995, corscadden's ex-wife put him on investigators' radar. she wondered if he might be involved. >> he had been in and out of custody on a number of sexual misconduct charges, rape charges, that sort of thing. >> thomas corscadden became known to law enforcement back in 1970 when he perpetrated a sexual assault on a female in her apartment by pretending to be there to check phone lines. but then had a long history of perpetrating abuses against people all the way up until

i began dealing with him on a relabas t early 2000s. i was informed from mason city police that there may have been a connection directly to him being within mason city at the time jodi huisentruit was abducted and disappeared. >> thomas corscadden drove a white van at some period of time around 1995, which has been referred to in the media as a porn palace. >> he had a mattress in the back of his van, which he admitted he used with prostitutes and others. >> that's key to how corscadden gets connected to jodi's case. someone saw a white van just hours before she disappeared, and investigators were aware that the convicted sex offender was someone who spent time in mason city. >> police officials also announced they were trying to locate a mysterious white van that was apparently seen near jodi's apartment complex the morning she disappeared.

>> i just saw -- i was going by the key apartments there, and there was a white van parked there. had it parking lights on. >> randy lindermen had driven by jodi's apartment complex on his morning commute. he had witnessed a white van parked in the parking lot. putting two and two together, once he saw that jodi had been reported missing, made the report to the police that, you know, seemed odd that the van was parked there. the investigation turned towards, let's be on the lookout for a white van. >> so, you have a guy with this kind of criminal history who's in the area, somebody who clearly deserved a close look. >> we do believe that corscadden had an interest in jodi huisentruit, and again, that's based on claims by his ex-wife. according to her, he even got angry when he couldn't get tickets to an event at kimt, which is the station jodi worked at, where he might have seen her. >> then, in march of 1996, a court services official was speaking to corscadden and

happens to mention mason city in a conversation with him. the officer was quoted as saying that corscadden smiled and said, "jodi huisentruit, she's dead." later, during a court hearing and while under oath in 2004, he admitted he bragged about being involved in her disappearance, before changing course and denying any involvement. >> all of these remarks aroused the suspicion of mason city police. they wanted to explore a possible connection between jodi's disappearance and thomas corscadden. in 2004, they asked police in nearby austin, minnesota, to collect his prints. as we know, there was a partial palm print found at the scene of jodi's disappearance, and we can presume they wanted to try to connect those two prints. >> and i crafted the search warrant based on that information to obtain his finger and palm prints to see if we can match evidence. initially he thought it was funny people were thinking about it.

he talked about people not knowing what happened. when he thought evidence was going to be collected that could tie him to it, he was vehemently opposed to participating with the search warrant. he suddenly became vulgar and almost violently oppositional to anything to do with that. in my mind at that time, i thought we had the guy. i honestly did. you don't have that kind of reaction unless you think this is going to get you. >> but even so, in 2004, investigators didn't end up charging corscadden in relation to jodi's case and told abc news he'd been cleared and at that time, there was not concrete evidence to consider him a suspect. >> investigator stearns and i went up and, you know, he was

interviewed. he was polygraphed. that lead ended there. >> as far as we know, no one's prints have been a match to the partial palm print taken at the scene. >> when i reached out to corscadden, who is detained in a facility for sex offenders, he first agreed to an interview, but then backed out. >> i very much felt that mr. corscadden had the capabilities to be very much a viable or a prime suspect in this case. >> is this an emotional case for you? >> scary. started my career. um -- put me on a path to protect victims, protect communities, to strive to learn to be better as a cop. to know that there are men and women out there doing this every day on every new case and every old case, we're never going to give up. >> we have a handful of good stuff, but we just need that one -- that one lead, that one

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it still is a mystery to me how anybody could do this kind of crime and how they could get away with it so long. >> the absolute best ending to jodi's story would be to find her alive somehow, if by some miracle. i think the next best thing would be to at least close the case -- find her remains and figure out who did this. >> jodi huisentruit was declared legally dead by the court system in mason city. i believe it was june of 2001.

>> we did declare jodi legally dead. it was very difficult to do, but that didn't mean that we gave up. >> jodi's family made the difficult decision to declare her legally dead in an effort to settle her estate. >> we're still trying to find her, and certain cases that have been in the media where these people have been found alive, you know, does give you a flicker of hope. somebody out there knows something. >> i think this case is something that's on the community's mind, that i think people want resolved. >> billboards like the one behind me have been set up around mason city. members of the findjodi team are certain someone knows something that could help solve the decades old case. >> the billboards were actually an idea that we'd been kicking around for a while and finally had some funds to do it. and we put it out in four different billboards across mason city at the time, and we got some solid leads from that. >> in the fall of 2020, findjodi got a web tip about a freezer that was buried somewhere in iowa.

we didn't know much about the freezer. supposedly it had been buried there for a certain period of time. theoretically, the dates lined up to when jodi might have disappeared. >> the man who sent the tip to find jodi lives near new hartford. that's about an hour south of mason city. this man's grandfather had told this story on his deathbed of being tasked with burying a freezer that was taped shut. it was padlocked shut with instructions not to open it. burying an old appliance is actually not something all the strange in rural parts of the midwest. you don't have the pay for it to be hauled away. that being said, this one was sealed up pretty tight. i think the question is, what is inside the freezer? why would you seal it shut so completely? >> it was more the suspicion of this tipster that the freezer might be associated with jodi's case or maybe any other case that he reached out. it's kind of one of those family things for him. so, um, we decided that when they dug, we would observe the unearthing of the freezer.

in the spring, they indicated they were going to be digging up the freezer on their property. and would we like to be a part of it? and i said, absolutely, we'll just be there to film. and i contacted the mason city police department. sent chief brinkley an email letting him know that we were going to be down here documenting a dig that these two people were going to be doing on the property. prior to the weekend of the dig, i got a call from an iowa dci agent who said, i'm at this property and we're digging up this freezer right now. what can you tell me about this lead? and so, of course, told him what we knew about the lead. >> the dig was in the spring of 2021, and we sent our camera crew to observe, but, by the time we arrived, law enforcement wouldn't let findjodi or our crew get close to it. >> anybody that hasn't found us yet needs to start with us. come see us first. that's kind of been the battle.

some of the other people that are interested in getting this done that doesn't work well with our police investigation in terms of getting a statement first, and then getting it recorded the way we need it recorded and, you know, some of those other kinds of things that need to happen to pass muster when we get to court. >> when we asked the iowa division of criminal investigation about what was going on with this dig, about what was found, our producer received an email stating, there was nothing of note discovered during the search, and beyond that we do not wish to participate. >> this was another dead end in a case that has had hundreds, if not thousands, of them over the past 26 years. >> you never know where the next lead is going to come from. and as we were in the final stages of putting this program together, i did finally get back all of the stalking reports and assault reports and things i had requested from the mason city police department. three of them piqued my interest, but what the chief told me about one of them made my jaw drop.

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from the news channel 3 team, this is news channel 3's midday with jodi huisentruit. >> good afternoon, and welcome to your local midday news. i'm jodi huisentruit. >> i look at this photo of jodi where she's so happy and vibrant, because so much of when we talk about it, we're talking about crime scene and things in the parking lot. and i don't ever want to lose sight of, this is jodi. this is somebody's daughter, sister, aunt. not forget, it's a lot more than just the investigation. this is jodi. >> in this nation it's back to square one in the desperate search for two missing south carolina toddlers. >> she was just the best kid sister anybody could ever have. i mean, and i'm not just saying that. she really was. she was just perfect in my eyes.

i -- i'll never recover from this, especially if it has the bad -- the sad ending that has been anticipated. >> the age of the case is probably the biggest challenge. you know, we're 26 years later, and people's memories aren't getting any better. >> but there might still be stones unturned, and in this case there was a stunning revelation from my own freedom of information act request. sifting through the reports on assaults, sexual assaults, suspicious persons and stalking in the years surrounding jodi's disappearance, there were three that i decided i wanted more information on, two assaults that were at or within blocks of the key apartments where jodi lived. and then there was a report by a woman who said she was being followed by someone, again, near the local mall. the two assault reports that were at or near the key apartments didn't turn out to be related. i spoke to the police chief about these reports.

the stalking report turned out to be very interesting. the police chief told me that the woman who reported being followed was being followed the day that jodi disappeared, and she was being followed by a white truck. that's the same vehicle description that jodi gave to police of the car that followed her in october of 1994. could this be the same stalker? >> jodi had reported to police about her concerns that a stalker was following her. she had often expressed to her family and friends about concerns that she might have been followed. >> white trucks are very common, and the chief was very quick to point out. that's true. we asked the iowa department of transportation, and it turns out there's thousands of white trucks registered in iowa. unfortunately, the chief said there's no way to track down the person who actually made the report today because he says the record is incomplete. so there's no way of knowing if this suspicious truck that she reported is the same one jodi reported was following her.

but for me, i think what this discovery did is sort of inspire me to believe that there's still new information about this case that we need to look for and that could be found. there's always new leads. >> i don't know how we can rule out a stalker until we know what happened to jodi. >> either someone is going to have to come forward, or we're going to have to find some new detail, but you have to have hope. >> jodi was one of ours, one of the media, and i feel this extra we have this extra obligation. i feel it personally. >> hmm. so you're listening to me? okay, i got it. >> i think people woke up and had their coffee with her. that's how they started their day. she got them up to date what was happening in their community, up to date with what was happening in the world, and sent them off on their way to do whatever they had to do. >> it was such a terrible thing that happened. and it's not something i like reliving or revisiting. we just need to focus on what is the truth. what really happened?

>> without a doubt, somebody knows. and, you know, that's why we apply the pressure, and i think that's why we're here. >> i don't like the word closure. you're not going to close something. i mean, we're always going to think about jodi. we're always going to miss her. >> anybody that has information and that hasn't talked to law enforcement already, we'd ask you to reach out to us. >> i have a person that i believe is responsible for jodi's disappearance. i'm not gonna disclose that to anyone until i'm there to put handcuffs on him -- or her. but what i am gonna do is continue to pursue any and all leads. technology's getting better. um, you know, i hope the bad guy's listening today and realizes i'm coming after you with every bit of technology i can get, because i'm gonna find something. it's gonna -- it's gonna help break the case someday. and we should point out that

the mason city police chief says his team continues to meet and discuss any possible new angles in jodi's disappearance. >> and that he and jodi's friends and family will never give up hope. if you have any information, please contact that website, and you can find out how op our website. that is it. i'm amy robach. >> i'm david muir. from all of us here at "20/20" and abc news, good night. ama: the 49ers get a big sendoff from fans tonight.

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