True Crime with Kendall Rae - Where Is Jodi Huisentruit?! News Anchor Vanishes…

Episode Date: July 27, 2023

Jodi Huisentruit was a TV news anchor for a CBS affiliate in Mason City, Iowa in the 90s. One morning, she called her producer to let her know that she had overslept and was running late, but never showed up to work, and was never seen again. https://findjodi.com/ https://www.facebook.com/jodihuisentruit/ Anonymous Phone Tips: If you would like to leave an anonymous tip via phone, please call +1 (970) 458-JODI Donate to NCMEC through my campaign! https://give.missingkids.org/campaign/kendall-rae/c438796 This episode is sponsored by: Smalls - promo code: KENDALLRAE Check out Kendall's other podcasts: The Sesh & Mile Higher Follow Kendall! YouTube Twitter Instagram Facebook Mile Higher Zoo REQUESTS: General case suggestion form: https://bit.ly/32kwPly Form for people directly related/ close to the victim: https://bit.ly/3KqMZLj Discord: https://discord.com/invite/an4stY9BCN CONTACT: For Business Inquiries - [e-mail]

Hey guys, welcome back to my channel. Today I'm going to be telling you about the case of Jody Huznichrude, which has become pretty much a cold case at this point, but they are really trying to ramp up awareness about this case and there isn't really much content about it on YouTube. So this is an older case. Jody went missing in the 90s. So this case takes place in Minnesota. Jody, who's in true, was born on June 5th, 1968 and raised in Long Prairie, Minnesota. And growing up, she was really active and popular. She had a pretty normal upbringing. In high school, she really liked golf.

She was actually on the golf team and won the state class at tournament in both 1985 and 1986. And like I said, Jody was really popular. She had a lot of friends and built a lot of strong relationships over the years. Friends that are still looking for her and fighting for her to this day. And they said that Jody was a big dreamer. And her biggest dream was that she wanted to be famous. After she graduated high school, she went to St. Claude State University where she studied mass communications and speech communication.

And during her time in college, she actually joined the school's TV news network and had a really big role in that and really really enjoyed it. Metsuari is among the top 20 years in the nation in total population. Jill, I'm not counting around. And I say our show has to come to a close. She was good at it. People on campus enjoyed watching her and it really confirmed her love for journalism, for being on the news and she knew that she wanted to eventually have her spot on possibly

even a national news television network. Jody actually graduated from St. Cloud in 1990 and then she actually began working for an airline but pretty quickly she got back into journalism and she started her broadcasting career with KGAN in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Jody Fuzin Trude channel 2 news, Cedar Rapids. After working in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Jody Fuzan Trude, channel two news, Cedar Rapids. After working in Cedar Rapids, Jody ended up returning to Minnesota for a job at KSAX in Alexandria. But shortly after that, she returned to Iowa for another position at KIMT in Mason City, Iowa.

And Jody actually landed an anchor job for the morning and afternoon shows. So she was very happy and producers were really excited about having her. They were a bit nervous that her Minnesota accent was a little bit too strong at first. President Clinton leaves this morning for the group of seven summit in Nova Scotia. Way to go Kevin. I'm getting there so I'm gonna keep you in check. They talked about like trying to give her speech therapy and try to get rid of the accent, especially, you know, she wanted to go on

to national news one day. But people in Minnesota really liked hearing the accent. People described her as like a morning cup of joke, a sunshine that everyone needed to start their day. She was on the 6 a.m. newscastle. A lot of people literally started their day out with Jody. So it was June 27th, 1995. Like I said, she was on the 6am newscast, so she had to be at work pretty early. You know, they have to run over a few things when they get there

plus do hair and makeup. So Jody normally arrived in station around 3.30 a.m. Now her producer at KIMT was named Amy Kunz and she would call Jody if she ever was there, you know, after four. Like if she wasn't there yet, she would call and sometimes there would be mornings where Jody had slept in or learned to go off for whatever reason so she would make sure that she got there with enough time to get on by 6am. it on by 6am. As most of you know, I love my cats. I have three cats. They mean the world to me. They're all over the age of 10 now,

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off your first order plus free shipping. That's the best offer you'll find, but you have to use my code. Kendalray for 50% off your first order plus free shipping. That's the best offer you'll find, but you have to use my code. Kendall Rea for 50% off your first order. One more time that's promo code, Kendall Rea for 50% off your first order plus free shipping. So Amy started calling her. She actually did answer the phone

and she said that she was running late for work because she had overslept, but that she would be right there. She was asking about the show. She was concerned about the showut, but that she would be right there. She was asking about the show. She was concerned about the show and she said I'd be right there. So they waited for her, however, by the time 530 rolled around, Jody still was not at the station and she was supposed to be on in 30 minutes. Amy called her apartment again, her landline, and there was no answer. By 6am, she had still not arrived, so Amy actually had to step in for her

and do her role on her show called Daybreak. She got it, her show, you know, she wouldn't miss it for anything. And then an hour later at 7am, there was still no sign of Jody. So the new station, of course, calls the police and lets them know that she did not show up for work that day.

So police went straight to Jody's apartment, and when they got there, they found her red and Mazda Niyada left out in the parking lot. And the scene that was left around her car definitely pointed to some type of foul play. Her personal items were scattered all over the ground around her car, including a bent key, her car key, her shoes, and her hair dryer.

She was probably running late, brought her hair dryer to work with her. Not only that, but there were drag marks near her car key, her shoes and her hair dryer. She was probably running late, brought her hair dryer to work with her. Not only that, but there were drag marks near her car, indicating that Jody was possibly dragged away from the scene. Maybe she had put the key into the ignition and someone had grabbed her and somehow the key bent, or maybe she used the key as a weapon, but something happened at that spot near her car. Let me clear this as a woman. I was just headed out to work. So it's clearly very active. Yeah, a woman.

Has everyone has told us? Police also found someone's palm print on the car. That same day, police also brought search dogs to her apartment as well as the Winnipeg of River. This was very close to where Jody lived and they searched the entire area, but they did not find any good clues. So that night, the K-I-M-T news team

had to break the news to their viewers that one of their own news anchors was missing. Police are investigating the disappearance but aren't saying much else at this time. Jordi, who's in truth was and still is a very dear friend of mine as well as all of us here at KMT and we're inviting all of you to join us and keeping her and her family in your prayers this evening. I don't know what it looked like to the viewer, but I just know inside it was a mess. I feel like that would be incredibly hard to have to talk about someone that you know personally

and report on them as if it's news. It's just such an awkward and terrible situation. The police did a full search of the newsroom. They could not find anything that was useful to them in this case. Jody's family and friends were just devastated along with the entire community. Fear is growing in one Iowa farm town. Someone is missing, not a face in the crowd,

but one of the most familiar faces in town. And a lot of people, including Jody's family and friends, were very worried that someone took advantage of Jody because she was so nice and friendly. She's one of those people who will talk to anyone, never manage strangers, she would strike up a conversation with someone at a grocery store and be there an extra hour.

She was that type of person who would take time out of her day to talk to you, get to know you, she was interested in people. She was a very nice person and very trusting possibly someone who would be taking advantage of. People also were worried that maybe she had some type of stalker. Eventually, it was discovered that a few months prior to Jody's disappearance,

she actually made a report that she had been being stalked. Back in October of 1994, Jody was out hiking on this trail, and there was this creepy black truck that kept driving really close behind her. And she reported it to the police, but despite her making the report, police were never able to figure out who it was. So police started trying to figure out exactly what was going on in Jody's life before she disappeared.

As they were investigating, a neighbor actually called in and reported that they heard a scream the morning that Jody went missing. Of course, they didn't call the police though, so nothing could have been done. So definitely chose you, you know, if you hear something, say something, if you're wrong, that's okay, but you should always call if you can. In addition to this, they also realized that there

were a few reports of a creepy white van in her apartment complex that morning. But it seemed like as far as evidence, that was really it. Police were struggling to paint a picture of Jody's life. So there are some suspects to go over here and some very possible scenarios. First, there's this guy named John Van Seiss. It's very odd, but Jody had this strange relationship with this man. He was a lot older than her. 22 years older than her, but they didn't have a romantic relationship. They had a friendship, at least in Jody's mind.

He claimed that he viewed Jody as a daughter and that's what Jody would say if anyone ever questioned it that he was like a father to her in a way. He was like a daughter to me. She was just like my own child. I treated her like my own child. He was a friend.

Jody would go water skiing on his boat a lot. She sort of brought him into her friend group. He was kind of around a lot. Now originally he met Jody in a bar, but it just so happened that they live in the exact same apartment complex. Now to me that's curious because I wonder if he actually knew that about her before he even met her at the bar. A lot of times, those stalkers, they'll set up situations for people that live near them, or they'll even move into apartment complexes to specifically stalk somebody. So, a place eventually figured out that the day before Jody went missing, she played in a golf tournament. And after this golf tournament, she actually went back to John's house because he was in the tournament as well.

According to John, they were just hanging out. They had spent the night looking at a video from a surprise party that he had thrown for her like a couple weeks before this. And they were watching the footage and laughing. He was laughing the whole time she was there and she laughed a lot of times she laughed. He watched the tape and we chuckled and we laughed, we we, we, we he hauled. We did everything. And so we're gonna cut this portion out of the tape. We got this portion out of the tape. Honestly, she's alive somewhere.

I just hope she's not hurt. I hope she's okay. I hope she'd come back soon. She went to set her out home and try and and saw if she'd want to be out having fun. Because that was her. It's her. It is. It is. Everything is. Eventually police realized that Jody had become friends with John at a time in his life

where he was kind of in a rough place. And they felt like maybe Jody just really had sympathy for him, felt bad for him. He was going through a divorce. His life was kind of just a mess. Not only that, he was court-ordered to have a breathalyzer test in his car, and no surprise, he had been arrested for drunk driving in the past. I guess he didn't really have a lot of friends at the time,

and like I said, Jody kinda brought him into her friend group, and he just started hanging around them. Her friends thought it was kinda weird, but they accepted it because she accepted it, and she would always play it down, and be like, he's just like, this guy's guy is like my friend it's just a friend thing but they all thought you know it seems like he wants more from her it seems like he is interested in becoming more than friends or wants more than jody's willing to give and maybe seems that they are not on the same page at one point he

even named his boat after jody her friends thought that was really weird and told her, you know, hey, like, hmm, that's kind of a red flag of a possible obsession or a stalker. But she played it off, thought it was kind of sweet, you know, just thought he was harmless, really. So some people thought that maybe they came to a point where John told Jody that he wanted more from her than just to be friends And that she said no and it triggered some type of altercation Which led to her death or maybe he was mad about it and then assaulted her later

So a lot of John's friends that was actually also friends with Jody and went to work with John every day Was actually with him that morning. She claims that she called John around 6 a.m. to confirm that they were going to work together like normal. And she said that John seemed totally fine and was acting the same as he always did. She basically said that there's just no possible way that between the hours of 4 and 6 a.m. that he abducted her and got rid of her body and was flying by the time she picked him up for work. In 1995, John Van Seiss actually passed a polygraph test, so there's that, you know, polygraphs aren't super reliable, but take it for what you will. In November of 1995, Jody's family was feeling so desperate

for answers that they actually traveled to California and met with three different psychics to try to help, and none of them ended up helping in any way. By May 4th of 1996, there still was nothing solid that had been found, and about 100 volunteers went out in search in the area of Saro Gordo County, and left little flags to mark everything

that appeared to be suspicious. We hope to find any type of evidence. Ooh, yuck. Any type of clues, you know, earrings, purse, anything that we can find. Each of these sites was then reexamined by law enforcement, but no promising evidence was ever found. But then two years later,

there was another person of interest that came up. On January 26, 1998, an investigative reporter at WCCOTV in Minneapolis, named Caroline Low, was reporting on a crime spree that was happening in area. She covered a man named Tony Jackson who was accused of sexually assaulting four women in 18 days and she thought that maybe it was possible that he had something to do with the Jody's disappearance. Tony actually had a history of stalking all his victims before he assaulted them And it was discovered that he was actually living in Iowa within two blocks of Jody's TV station

during the time that she went missing. Tony was actually a star college basketball player, but he had a tendency to randomly snap and would become violent. He eventually got kicked out of college and enrolled in North Iowa Community College in Mason City. And during this time, he started becoming interested in broad casting. He was spending a lot of time watching the news and analyzing reporters. A lot of people believe that it's possible

that he had seen Jody on the news. Is there a chance that he could have stalked her and memorized her schedule? It would have been easy for anyone to figure out Jody's schedule because it was so regular. People knew where she was. She was live from a certain spot every single day. You could easily figure out what time she came in. In addition to all the suspicion, it was discovered that five days before Jody went missing, Tony and his girlfriend went through a really bad breakup and he became

very angry and violent. Not only that, but his girlfriend and Jody looked a lot alike. Tony and his girlfriend did eventually try to get back together, but at some point he ended up choking her, and he was arrested on domestic violence. Although, his girlfriend decided to not proceed with the charges, and he was let go. Four months after he was arrested, he actually left Iowa and went to Minnesota.

And that is where he committed for assaults. He was arrested again in 1997. Police had pulled him over and found a bunch of creepy stuff in his car, such as rope and duct tape, and all the signs just pointed to him being a predator. Eventually, they figured out what he had done and he was sentenced to life in prison. Apparently, while he was in prison,

he told another inmate that he had abducted a news anchor and killed her. The inmate actually said that Tony wrote a rap about the woman being buried in a farm near a silo in a town called Tiffin and Tiffin is only a few hours away from Mason City. So law enforcement decided to go to that town. They're ended up being that silo that he had talked about. So dogs were brought into the search area, and the dogs alerted that there was something on these wooden boards. So they were sent to a crime lab, but unfortunately, it actually came out to be nothing. On May 5th, 1995, the Mason City Police actually released a statement that they had conducted a full investigation on Tony Jackson,

and that he was not considered a suspect in the Jody Who's Intrude case. Jody's family still believes that there's a chance he could have had something to do with it and it is totally possible. But anytime he has been approached by any interviews or given any statements, he always says that he had nothing to do with Jody Who's Intrude. So years went by without any other good leads or any real movement in the case. On May 14, 2001, six years after Jody first went missing, the family made a very difficult decision to legally pronounce her dead, and that was done so that they could settle her estate. And it's a thing that a

lot of families have to do, I don't think it means that they fully believe that they're dead, but oftentimes it's to do something legally or something to do with money. And it's sad when they have to do that because sometimes they're worried that it will lessen the urgency behind people finding them and looking for them and just interest in the case. And you know, 20 plus years later, we still have no idea what happened to Jody. But her friends and family are not giving up. They've actually really reignited interest in her case. It was recently on 48 hours over the summer and they've now created a movement called Find Jody.

They're really trying to make her be known as Jody, not even just Jody who's in truth, probably because that's such a hard last name, but also just because Jody's so simple and she's just known as Jody in the community, everyone knows who Jody is around there. There has been one other weird thing that happened, but I'm not sure if this is considered really a lead or anything, but in June of 2008, some copies of Jody's journal, 84 pages of it actually,

were mailed to a local news station, and no one knows why or who it's from. There was no return address, and it was postmarked Waterloo, Iowa. Her actual journal is in possession of law enforcement and has been since the beginning. So a lot of people are like, how did someone end up getting that? Like is there someone in the police station who's leaked something or is someone there?

Possibly guilty? There was a lot of poor police work actually. The biggest thing that they did wrong, and I honestly can't even believe this, is at the crime scene, they never sectioned it off or taped it off to keep other people from stepping on the crime scene or possibly taking evidence out or adding something to the scene. It was just open, and so much evidence could have been tampered with. That was a huge mistake. In addition to this, police only held on to Jody's car for a few months, and they eventually just released it back to the family. If the car is pretty much the crime scene, why would you give it back to the family so early? A lot of people believe if they

had held onto the car, maybe they would have come up with something else by now. Especially because there's more modern technology, now, and better ways of processing evidence. So they should have just held onto the car. In March of 2017, it was announced that John Van Seiss is actually still on police radar. They actually served a search warrant for GPS info on two of his cars. And they have kept the findings of this secret. They say that they cannot update people on the case

because they don't want to compromise the investigation. So there could be more to come. It's possible that this case still could be solved. So if you know anything, they are still looking for information. I will have all of that in the description box in case you do have something that could be helpful in this case.

But that's really all there is as of now. You know, I know missing people can become like stories to a lot of us, but these are real people who are loved, who had families, who had whole lives, and they were just uprooted out of their life. You know, it's just terribly sad. She's gone every birthday, every holiday. I mean, her family has never gotten over the pain of losing her. There's a possibility that someone just has the answers to at least help them figure out what happened and give the family that closure that they need. That is going to be it for me today guys. Thank you for joining me for another

episode and make sure you follow the show on Spotify and Apple podcasts. It really does help me out. If you want to watch the video version of this show, you can find it on my YouTube channel, which will be linked, or you can just search Kendall Ray. I will be back with another episode soon, but until then, stay safe out there.