Snapped: Women Who Murder - Kimmi Hardy

Episode Date: October 19, 2025

When an Iowa mother and her newborn son are reported missing, police are in a race against time to rescue the pair.Season 32, Episode 22Originally aired: Sep 24, 2023Watch full episodes of Snapped for FREE on the Oxygen app: https://oxygentv.app.link/WatchSnappedPodSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A mother of four vanishes. It's like she ceased to exist. Also missing was her infant son. You get a dependable person and they disappear. You know something's wrong. The search dredges up a host of small town secrets. Maybe the relationship wasn't as good as he was reporting. An anonymous female caller said you ought to take a look at these

people. A tip leads to an outlandish claim. She proceeds to tell me that she used to mule drugs. Her drug boss had gotten a hold of her. She said two fellas show up and they hand me this baby. The truth will reveal a scheming killer and a deadly obsession. When he got there, she had the baby in her arms. She presented me as newborn, but I looked maybe three, months old. She's deceiving, she's manipulating. It's a matter of getting attention. I don't remember how long was missing, but kind of often why did it have to be my family? With a population just over 10,000, residents, in the Riverside Town of Kiakuk, Iowa, feel a sense of security in their tight-knit community.

But on August 29, 1996, that small-town comfort is rattled with one alarming phone call. At approximately 10 a.m., Charlene Heskey calls the Keukuk Police Department, saying she's worried about her friend, 34-year-old Teresa Lund. Charlene was concerned that Teresa had not picked up her children from school the previous day. I was five at the time, and all the teachers left, and then finally the principal came out and took us to my grandmother's house. But Teresa's absence isn't the only thing that makes this report so worrisome. This was unusual because also missing was her infant son, who was approximately six weeks old. They must have been together.

I got a phone call to respond to an apartment building where I took a missing person's report. While I was speaking to Charlene, Belva Green, the mother of Teresa, showed up. Teresa was last seen dropping off her children at school at pretty close to 7.30 in the morning on Wednesday, August 28th. Velva tells the investigator she went looking for her daughter and her infant grandson, Paul. Velva had discovered her daughter's car, parked beside the county market store, and thought maybe the car had broken down. That's what she was hoping. But when Velva used her spare key to look inside, her worry grew. A pocket book, checkbook were under the front seat.

That was concerning, unusual. Why would somebody take off and leave their checkbook and their purse in the car? Velvet did tell me that there was a car seat that would be routinely in the vehicle for her infant son. But the baby seat was missing. Where did the baby seat go? Was Teresa with the baby? What's happened to this mother and her new baby? They take it seriously.

These are two people who are missing. One of them is a six-week-old baby. She's left those kids, and that's not like her. You get a dependable person and they disappear. You know something's wrong. Teresa Green was born to parents Velva and William on January 9th, 1962 in Iowa City. She was raised alongside three brothers.

They did a lot of stuff outside. They rode bikes, they played in the creek. She was a tomboy. She got married pretty young. She married when she was 18. She went straight from kid to married life. Then shortly after, they had my older sister. She would have been born in 81.

Following the birth of their daughter, the young couple struggled to support themselves, and it wasn't long before they divorced. My mom moved back to the small town area where she grew up in Kikik. And she met Randy, and my other sister would have been born in 86. But my mom and Randy just didn't work out. By the time Teresa met Terry Bell in 19. She was twice burned by love and a mother to two girls. My mom met my dad and then they had got to talking.

When she was in her room, all attention would go to her because she just had a love of life. My dad made my mom laugh. He could be funny. My dad was also a big personality. After a whirlwind romance, the happy couple announced that they were expecting, were expecting, and they moved in together.

My dad liked a woman that was happy to be a statero mom, a homemaker, because my dad had a pretty decent job, and he made good money. He was a crane operator, and he would travel quite a bit. After years of doing it all on her own, Teresa was happy to focus on motherhood. Her third daughter, Tressa, was born in 1991. When she was born, they were both. excited. And he was a good dad. You could tell he loved her. She was very much a very hands-on mom. She would play with us, help us with things. She shared her love of music with us.

In 1996, the family received good news. Terry gets a promotion, what she's excited about, but it requires him to travel to Gary, Indiana. With him working so far away, Teresa didn't get to see Terry a lot. We didn't have texting. You didn't have the Internet. So if you didn't catch someone at home, you pretty much didn't get to talk to him back then. The family settled into a groove,

but more change was coming. I remember, like, my mom getting a little bit bare, and they kept talking about a baby being in her tummy. On July 16th, 1996, the family was overjoyed to welcome a fourth child, a son named Paul. Teresa was happiest I'd seen her the whole time. You know, that new mom look. I know poor kids. She had her hands pull.

Yeah, she was tired, but she was very proud of those kids. So that my dad didn't have to continue to travel back and forth. We were actually supposed to move to Indiana with him. Over the summer, he was going to be able to be home a lot more and a little bit more stable, and that's what my mom was looking forward to. Plans for a future under one roof are thrown into turmoil when Teresa and baby Paul vanish six weeks after Paul's birth. Keukuk police officer Kevin Church

questions Teresa's mom on Terry's whereabouts. Terry actually was working in Gary, Indiana, as a heavy equipment operator, so he was not in town. Velva implies that her daughter's relationship with Terry is strained. He was gone so much. My mom was anxious about moving. She'd never lived that far for many of her family. Before filing the report, Officer Church makes an attempt to reach Terry.

I place a few phone calls trying to get in contact with him. I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt, but certainly we're going to look at him because they're involved in a relationship to see if there's a prior incident. Coming up, detectives find trouble at home. We were hoping that that polygraph would put him on the sidelines. It didn't happen. And a cryptic tip offers hope. The baby is older than they claim it is.

This is not a new boy. Authorities in the small town of Keukuk, Iowa, are in the midst of an urgent search for Teresa Lund and her six-week-old son, Paul, who have been missing for just over. 24 hours. We had a mother that was missing, her infant son that was missing, still trying to hang on to hope that she had taken off.

But as time went on, the thought that something bad had happened was growing. Teresa's daughters are taken to stay with family. My grandmother called my sister's dad, Randy, and he came and picked her up. And my aunt Charlene actually came and picked me in. While waiting to hear back from Teresa's partner, Terry, investigators look for answers at Teresa's home. When they were able to get into her residence,

nothing appeared to be missing. I discovered that no banking activity had been done on any of her accounts. It's hard to move about without money. It was like she ceased to exist. With concerns mounting, investigators are eager to speak to Teresa's partner and father to missing baby Paul, Terry Bell. We all know that when a wife goes missing, the number one suspect is the husband, and they can't get a hold of him. Maybe he doesn't want us to find him.

Just a few hours later, Terry. returns their call, to let them know he just returned home. When he learned that Teresa was missing, he got in the car and drove all the way back five hours to Keukuk. When investigators meet with Terry on September 30th, he says he last saw Teresa and Paul on Sunday, two days before she went missing. Teresa and the children had just come out to spend the week with him at Gary, Indiana. they were planning on moving out there.

After the week in Gary, Terry and Teresa spent the weekend back in Keukuk before Terry returned to work on Sunday evening. He called her on Tuesday and spoke to her at 7 p.m. that night, and everything was fine. Terry says he didn't speak to Teresa on the day she went missing, which wasn't out of the norm. We're talking 1996 before cell phones, and the level of communication between Terry and Teresa consisted of a long-distance phone call every other night from Terry.

Terry insists he has no idea where Paul and Teresa might be. He was not physically present in Lee County, Iowa, when Teresa disappeared. With Terry claiming to be nearly 300 miles away when Teresa disappeared, investigators retrace the new mother's steps through Kiakak. The children were dropped off at 8.15 that morning. Teresa had stopped over at the Department of Human Services Office. She was there for some business. We confirmed that through another witness.

That occurred sometime before 10 o'clock. and that was the last notice we had of her being in town. It's now been 48 hours since Teresa's last known whereabouts, and concern over the missing mother and baby spreads quickly through the small town. Everybody knows everybody. It just sends these ripples. It affects the whole community. We asked the public to get involved.

and ask them, please help us. I entered her as a missing person, August 29th. But reaching out to the news media and the local newspaper would have been the first part of the next week, September 1st. It rattled this small community of Keekug. Most definitely, you got a mother and an infant

that's gone, just vanished. It's a small town, everyone's talking. After reaching out to the public, investigators begin to hear more murmurs about trouble at home. I started asking around and interviewing Teresa's friends and so forth. And there were some reports that maybe the relationship wasn't as good as he was reporting it. My partner and I decided maybe it would be a good idea just to rule Terry out. And the best way to do that would be to offer him a polygraph test. We were

hoping that that polygraph would put him on the sidelines. It didn't happen. The results were very worrisome. After the polygraph results came back, we were unable to rule him out as a suspect. But there was nothing that pointed to him as being involved in this. Despite the inconclusive polygraph results, Terry's airtight alibi is quickly confirmed. We spoke to a few people there at the scrapyard where he worked. He got back there a Sunday evening after he had left Teresa and the kids. So his whereabouts were documented. He was in Gary, Indiana.

That was confirmed through his pay records and also from his. supervisor with Terry officially ruled out investigators find themselves at a dead end she'd been missing for about a week we had no idea where she was we had no evidence we'd run out a leave in a surprise break a tip comes in almost two weeks after Teresa's disappearance on On September 14th, an anonymous female caller contacted the FBI office in Kansas City. And she said that there's a woman and her baby missing in Kiakuk, Iowa. You ought to take a look at these people. The tipster says that a married couple in Keukuk has been celebrating the birth of their son.

This baby was born on August 28th, the same day that Teresa Lund and her baby went missing. They say they just had a baby, but the baby is older than they claim it is. This is not a newborn. Something's not right here. Coming up, a strange tale unfolds. She said, I'll just tell you straight up, the baby's not mine. A standoff leaves a life hanging in the balance. I jump back, draw my weapon, and shirt yelling.

Nearly three weeks into the search for Teresa Lund and her baby Paul, Kiakuck investigators get a tip that a local couple is parading a newborn around town. The anonymous tipster had said, Kimmy and Bob Hardy had a baby on August 28th, and the baby is older than a newborn, and the baby has no birth certificate. So then at that point, we knew that it was a real tip, and we needed to check out Kimmy Hardy and this baby that she had immediately. Kimmy was born and raised in Keekuk, and she was popular among the men in the small community.

She was real skinny, she's kind of tall, she got red hair, blue eyes. Kimmy had four husbands. The first was a fellow named Gary. She had two children with Gary. She was then married to Doug, and she had a son with him. The next husband was Wendell Smith, and she had a stillborn child. In 1996, Kimmy married Bob Hardy. It seemed to everyone in Keuk that the 35-year-old had finally found the love of her life.

They got married before the judge. They seemed to be a perfect couple. They used to go in their truck and go for rides, and they set home, watch movies. That same year, Bob and Kimmy announced they were expecting. She said she was going to have a baby, and she went shopping for baby clothes. She was just happy.

But just weeks after Kimmy and Bob announced the birth of their son, a tipster sounds an alarm. On September 17, 1996, Keeakuck investigators pay the Hardee's a visit. Kimmy does come to the door. She, very cordial, very polite. They explained what the anonymous tipster had said, and Kimmy's first remark was,

this is insane. She didn't want to let them look at the baby at first, but she conceded. So she let us upstairs. the baby was laying on the bed. We told her we were satisfied, and we left. Detective Church, he and his wife had just had a baby. The first thing out of Detective Church's mouth,

when they get outside us, that ain't no three-week-old baby. I said, that baby's just as big as my daughter. And my daughter is four months old. So we tried to get a warrant, but we had difficulty. After their visit to Kimmy Hardy's place, the county attorney said, well, okay, but I'm not sure we're there in terms of probable cause for a search warrant. I think we need some more meat. We needed a little bit more evidence.

So we spent the next four hours trying to get us a witness or two. Detectives get in touch with Kimmy's sister-in-law, Teresa Maness. She had seen the baby the day that Kimmy purported she delivered the baby. She had me hold the baby, and I changed the baby's diaper, and it had no umbilical cord, and it's always been just born. The baby had been circumcised. That was completely healed. The baby seemed pretty big for it's, you know what I mean, for being just a newborn. During the visit, Kimmy also made an uncomfortable request. Kimmy had asked Teresa to be a witness on the birth certificate, essentially the lie that she'd witnessed the birth.

I did not want to be a part of that. I actually wasn't there, so I really can't, you know, be a witness. She seemed like she was really worried about something. She wasn't even as happy as I thought she would be after, you know, having the baby. that proved very valuable in getting that ward to have that child taken to the hospital for footprint comparisons. We head straight over to Bob and Kimmy Hardy's residence, but Bob and Kimmy had left. Carl Blackburn answers the Hardy's door. He explains that Kimmy and Bob asked him and his wife

to babysit their older children. He said they took the baby and we don't know where they are. Agent Klang says, well, okay, Do you think that Bob will call you? And he said, you had to check on the boys. Investigators asked the phone company to trace all calls to the Blackburn home. I had to wait until the next morning

for the company to tell me if there'd been any traffic the night before. And there had been. The phone company was able to give the address to us. The traced address leads investigators to a home north of Keacock. Armed with the search warrant, that next morning they all go out there.

Bob Hardy comes to the door, and Bob takes the warrant, crumbles it up, throws it, and grabs a big piece of angle iron, and he says, you're not taking my baby. I jump back, draw my weapon, and a shirt. yelling for him to put the pipe down.

And now he's screaming. Amid the commotion, Kimmy emerges from the home. Kimmy says to the agents, let me talk to him. She's able to calm him down. Everything is okay. Bob is actually cuffed up and taken into custody. They explained the warrant to Kimmy, and they said, we're going to take the baby to.

the hospital. And she says, may I accompany you? And they said, yes, you can. She was still very cooperative, polite. I drive Kimmy and the child to the Kiakak area hospital where some footprints were done by the hospital staff. And eventually we bring her and the child back to the police department. Once we got to the police department was the first chance we had to actually interview her. She just looked at us and said, I'll just tell you straight up, but baby's not mine. Kimmy then begins a baffling tale that no one could have predicted. Kimmy believed that her husband Bob wanted a son.

She told him she was pregnant and she wasn't. It was then that someone from her past stepped back into her life. This old associate Anthony Matrona, her drug boss had gotten a hold of her. She proceeds to tell me that she used to mule drugs. When Kimmy confided in Anthony that Bob believed she was pregnant, he offered to help. He said, I know a lady that doesn't want her baby boy, and it'll cost you $3,000. Anthony agreed to do this for her, but she had to do some things for him. He said, you have to start mule and drugs for me again.

For months, she secretly waited for word from Anthony. She'd fake the pregnancy. Bob really believed that she was pregnant. He would see her wearing maternity clothes, getting baby items, and she has had children before, so I'm sure that she used that experience to somehow figure out how she was going to pretend to be pregnant. Until August 28th, when Anthony finally made good on his word.

She said on August 28th, about 9 o'clock in the morning, two Mexican fellas show at my door in a car with Florida license plates, and they hand me this baby, and they wish me luck in Texas. got. They said, well, how can we get a hold of this Matrona? She doesn't know his address. She doesn't know his phone number. She says, he calls me. Though Kimmy's story seems far-fetched, investigators must consider whether Anthony Matrona and his underlings kidnapped Teresa and Paul. Meanwhile, they get news from the hospital.

The footprint analysis is back and they've confirmed that the baby is Paul. If this was the lung baby, what happened to Teresa? Where is she? Investigators take the information to Kimmy.

They ask if she knows Teresa and she said no. She told the same story that she had told us earlier. Nothing different. Did I believe the story that she was. was telling, no.

Even with lingering questions about how baby Paul was abducted and Teresa's welfare, investigators have enough to arrest her. My charge her with child stealing, purchase of an individual and kidnapping in the second degree. Relief rushes over the Bell family when authorities reunite them with baby Paul. I don't remember how long I was missing, but I was found with Kim Arty. She kidnapped me and presented me as newborn, but I looked maybe three months old.

She had a whole baby shower and everything. She was crazy. Paul is safe, but concerns over Teresa's whereabouts grow by the minute. We found Teresa, and we don't have a lot of evidence here. We had to do something. Coming up, investigators find an unsettling trail of evidence. She was asking the salesperson if this gun would blow their head completely off. And old loyalties start to crumble.

I said, we'll work something out, but we need to know where the body is. Kimmy Hardy is behind bars after telling police a wild story concerning a missing baby. Kimmy reported that she didn't know. Teresa Lund says that she bought the baby from Anthony Matrona. She can't give us a phone number or an address. All she can tell us is he's from Florida. Unable to locate Anthony Matrona in Florida, investigators turn back to the community of Kia coverage.

for answers. They start with Kimmy's neighbor, Kim Steele, who reached out with a tip. Kim Steele, who spent a lot of time with Kim Hardy, she told us during late July or early August, she went shopping for a handgun with Kimmy Hardy. She purported to Kim that she wanted to target practice. Kim quickly got to do that. the impression her friend was planning for more than a new hobby. She was asking the salesperson how close she had to be to somebody for this gun to kill

them. And whether it would blow their head completely off or just make a little bit of a mess. The salesperson became so alarmed that they wouldn't even sell her at the gun. So she had to try a second pawn shop where she was successful. She actually did purchase a 380 Larson handgun and took it home. We've got Kimmy in possession now of Teresa Lund's baby. We don't know where Teresa is, but we know Kimmy has purchased a firearm well before Teresa's gone missing. Well aware that Kimmy's recent gun purchase doesn't bode well for Teresa.

Investigators turned back to Kimmy's husband, Bob, for answers. Bob Hardy was charged with going armed with intent, a class de felony, and the bond was set at $100,000 cash only. After Bob Hardy was charged, he was appointed a lawyer to represent him. Bob is in jail, so is Kimmy. From his erratic behavior, investigators believe Bob may know more than he's letting on. We really believe that Kimmy was the main player here, and Bob was a participant, but we had to reach out

and see if Bob would be willing to provide evidence to us. I said, you better get a hold of your guy, and we'll work something out, but we need to know where the body is. We cut kind of a plea deal with him for his cooperation. Within the hour, the lawyer calls me back at the police station and tells me where Teresa's body is. He told us that they had taken it to about a mile southwest of the purple cow bar. In the ditch by the railroad tracks in a beanfield.

That was the description. Investigators rushed to the area where everyone's worst fears are confirmed. The body was recovered. It was in a pretty decomposed state. The Lee County Medical Examiner was able to positively identify Teresa Lund with her dental records. During the course of that autopsy,

Dr. Torres extracted two bullet fragments from Teresa Lund's head. They have Teresa's body, they've recovered Paul. there are still so many questions. Why? What happened? Although Bob is cooperating,

investigators aren't certain of the extent of his involvement. When they press for more information, he says it all started with what should have been a happy milestone. Bob told us that he went to work on that Wednesday, August 28th, that his wife, Kimmy, was pregnant, and that this baby's his. Kimmy was expecting any time, and that this midwife was going to come over when she went into labor. It was about 9, 30, 10 o'clock when a supervisor said, Bob, your wife just had a baby. Bob told us when he got there, she had the baby in her arms, and that was it.

It was just joy after that. The joyous occasion was marred by an unpleasant smell. There was this foul odor in the house, and he attributes it to sewer backup that they had trouble with before. But when the smell continued to worsen, Bob says Kimmy made a shocking confession. She said, Bob, there's a body downstairs. That's what that smell is. he says i don't believe it i i go downstairs and sure enough there's a body in that cross place i'm freaking out kimmy told him that anthony matrona sold her the baby he then stashed the body there telling kimmy it was up to her to get rid of it bob and kimmy are able to drag the body

out of the house. And they take it down to where we found the body. Bob says that Kimmy also brought along a gun. They threw it in a pond called Hart's Quarry. The next day, divers go out to Hart's Quarry and recover this Lorson handgun. And it was a Laurison 380 that Kimmy had purchased a local pond shop in town and And that, in fact, was the gun that killed Teresa. We had ballistics in the DCI to verify that. On September 30th, 1996, authorities charge Kimmy Hardy with first-degree murder.

A week later, Kimmy's ex-husband reaches out to investigators. His name is Wendell Smith, and he says he was married. to Kimmy from 93 to 95, and he says that she purported to me that she was pregnant three times during our marriage. The first time, she says, it ended in a stillbirth. He went out and made arrangements to have the baby, whom they named Zachary Smith, buried at the National Cemetery, and when they had the burial, they buried the box with the remains, a blanket, and a teddy bear.

On two more occasions, Kimmy said she was pregnant, and it never resulted in a birth. At this point, he's wondering if anything that Kimmy ever told him was real. We got a warrant to dig up the grave, And we found what was buried on that day. It was just nothing but bubble wrap and a teddy bear. Who thinks of faking a pregnancy?

She was willing to lie, to toy with people's feelings, to create all kinds of scenarios. She was living a lie so often. And the people that she was supposed to be closest to had no idea. Coming up. Lies are exposed. She underwent sterilization procedures back in 1984. And a last-minute witness

throws the case into chaos. We were able to find him and contact him. She lied to us the whole time. In February 1997, Kimmy Hardy's trial, begins. Prosecutors present Kimmy as a desperate woman who fabricated a tale about a former drug boss to misplace blame. At this point, we didn't even think Anthony Matroni really even existed to begin with.

She has maintained this charade that she's pregnant for months. I think she has this idea in her head that what would be the ultimate joy would be to produce a son for Bob. At some point, she begins looking for a baby. then she finds this person. They allege that Kimmy befriended Teresa with promises of hand-me-downs. She lured Teresa Lund to her house to give her baby clothes. A theory is that Teresa was shot in the back of the head

when she was down by that crawl space, most likely looking for baby clothes. And then just rolled into the crawl space. Prosecutors believe after the murder, Kimmy abandoned Teresa's vehicle before returning home to Bob and their new baby. It really is much more about a relationship with Bob than the baby. The baby is almost a means to an end. Kimmy takes the stand where she continues to make outlandish claims. She said that she actually was pregnant.

and she'd miscarried five days before Teresa Lund disappeared. It was then Kimmy says that Anthony offered to help. Kimmy said her drug boss had gotten a hold of her. She says, I gave them $1,500 in cash and a Larson 380 pistol. She says these guys took the stuff and said, go take a ride in the car. Kimmy testifies that she left her house for an hour and a half. When she returned, they handed over the baby.

They take off, and then she gets a phone call from Anthony saying, we ran into a little trouble. You got to look in your crawl space, and there's a body in there. Prosecutors have faith the jury won't buy Kimmy's story until a surprise witness is suddenly added to the defense. This witness is Gary Drummond, which is Kimmy's first husband. He was going to talk about Anthony Matrona, who was a real person that lived in Homa, Louisiana. He and Kimmy had actually lived with Anthony, who was their supervisor at a bakery.

Prosecutors reach Anthony by phone. I said, do you remember Kimmy? And I said, she's up here in trial for murder. And she's telling us, you're the guy who did it. And he says, well, that's some bull's shit there. He told us he'd never been to Iowa, never seen those people, Kimmy, or Gary, since they left. Prosecutors tell the jury that the man Kimmy claims, responsible for Teresa's death is a baker, not a drug lord.

She lied to us the whole time. Anthony played no part in this investigation other than in Kimmy's mind. Anthony Medrona is not all she lied about. Prosecutors call Kimmy's former doctor to the stand. She underwent sterilization procedures back in 1984. She had a tubal legation. She was married at the time and they decided they didn't want to have any more kids, so she had a tubulogation. It's really only after she has this tubilligation that she starts manufacturing pregnancies.

I do think there was some change in her psychologically. She wanted another child, but she couldn't be pregnant. And it's what really tipped her over the edge. She's deceiving, she's manipulating, and ultimately, she murdered somebody. She was convicted of murder in the first degree, kidnapping in the first degree in child stealing, and she was sentenced to life in prison.

At the end of the day, there's nothing that anybody can do to her on this earth. It's really going to make up for what she did. My dad loved my mom very, very, very, very much. And when he lost her, it changed a piece of him forever Mom was actually wanting his house next to the train tracks

and kick up. After Mom passed, Dad eventually went and bought it. That's actually where we live until he passed. Why did that have to be my family? Kind of often wonder what would be like if they were still together. Bob Hardy served

three years after pleading guilty to interference of official acts and possession of a firearm by a felon. He was released on September 25th, 2002. Kimmy Hardy serves a life sentence with no possibility of parole at the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women. Paul Bell and Teresa's other children were raised by family members.