JANUARY
On
New Year’s Day of 1873, 43-year-old farm wife Mary Rosette Coffin died of hypothermia and starvation after she was abused and neglected by her husband Eli. The Coffin family lived in Turkey Grove (Now Grove City) in Atlantic Township of Cass County. Exactly one month later, Eli Coffin was shot and lynched by unidentified vigilantes avenging Mary’s death.
Click here to read “Two Coffins.”
location of Atlantic, Iowa
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Edwin Harry “Eddie” Jacobs, a 55-year-old WWII veteran, was shot to death in the snowy woods of Clinton’s Izaak Walton League on
January 2, 1972.
Click here to read “Shooting at ‘Ike’s Peak.’”
photo by Pamela Moreno
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In Gravity in Taylor County on
January 4, 1921, 76-year-old spinster Jane Otis was robbed and bludgeoned to death before the house where she lived alone was set on fire.
Click here to read “Charred Remains.”
Location of Gravity, Iowa
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Wealthy Fayette County farmer, landowner, and cattleman Ashley Downing, 77, was robbed and shot to death on
January 4, 1933 in the Fremont Township home where he lived alone.
Click here to read “What the Poultry Men Found.”
Ashley Downing
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John P. Stickles, a 35-year-old Winneshiek County farmer, died of strychnine poisoning on
January 4, 1876 at his home near Decorah. His wife Helen, accused of killing him because of a love triangle, was tried twice and ultimately acquitted of the murder.
Click here to read “Strictly Strychnine.”
location of Decorah, Iowa
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On
January 8, 1869, 24-year-old farmer Edwin F. Hodges sickened and died of poison-like symptoms at the home of prominent community leader James McQuinn in Florence Township (formerly Cue) of Benton County. A preliminary hearing cleared McQuinn of murder, but suspicion continued concerning his involvement in the death — especially after McQuinn married Hodges’s young widow.
Click here to read “Poison Kiss.”
photo by Dawn & John Vesely
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Welio Tsnoff, a 35-year-old Chicago and Northwestern Railroad section hand, was struck with a hammer, robbed, and set on fire in an employee boarding car in the Marshalltown rail yard on
January 10, 1910.
Click here to read “The Dead Bulgarian.”
location of Marshalltown, Iowa
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Robert Lee Ruby, a 54-year-old farmer and coal miner, fell to his death on
January 11, 1936 at the Bidwell Coal Mine in Polk Township of Wapello County. His family believed he was pushed.
Click here to read “Coal Mine Plunge.”
Robert Lee Ruby
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George H. Geary, a 40-year-old attendant at the M&H Service Station at Keosauqua Way and Crocker Street in Des Moines, was robbed and shot to death on
January 13, 1963.
Click here to read “Below Zero.”
George Geary
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On
January 13, 1972, 85-year-old Edward A. Schmidt, a wealthy and one-legged eccentric miser, was stabbed to death at his home at 506 High Avenue East in Oskaloosa.
Click here to read “Stingiest Man in Town.”
Edward A. Schmidt
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On the morning of
January 18, 1925, the charred body of middle-aged bachelor Martin Cummins was found in his burned-out shack on the west side of Meriden in Cherokee County. The cause of death was undetermined, but the fire appeared to be set to cover up a murder-robbery.
Click here to read “The Burning Shack.”
location of Meriden, Iowa
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Samuel S. Cronk, a 23-Year-Old Jackson County Deputy Sheriff and Civil War veteran, was robbed and bludgeoned with a broken clevis on the night of
January 23, 1867 one mile south of Cottonville. His body was found the next day by school children. Four months later the body of his horse was found tied to a tree, where it had been left to starve by the killer. Three men were tried for the murder; two were acquitted and one found guilty — the latter was granted a new trial, which was never convened because prosecutors believed he was innocent.
Click here to read “The Broken Clevis.”
Location of Andrew, Iowa, six miles south of Cottonville
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On a bitterly cold
January 23, 1895, 23-year-old farmer James Edgar “Ed” Knotts was home alone near New Virginia in Warren County when someone bludgeoned him to death and left his body to freeze on the floor. Knotts was discovered two days later by his roommate, 23-year-old John J. McCuddin, who had been away from the farm. McCuddin and his brother, Charles R. “C.R.” McCuddin, 26, were tried twice for Ed Knotts’s murder but were freed on a paperwork technicality.
Click here to read “The Frozen Body.”
location of New Virginia, Iowa
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Thirty-six-year-old Town Marshal William Lawrence Meadows was shot to death on
January 24, 1961 while responding to a safe-cracking at the Hartmann Packing Plant in Plainfield.
Click here to read “Explosion in the Night.”
Marshall William Meadows
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On
January 24, 1981, 22-year-old single mom Angela Marie Altman was stabbed to death in her apartment at 215 S. 7th Street in Fort Dodge while her young child was present. That daughter continues to work for justice for her mother.
Click here to read “A Mother Never Forgotten.”
Angela Altman, courtesy Jessica Altman
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Seventy-six-year-old Gideon Hall, an eccentric hermit farmer, was found dead on
January 26, 1884 in his shanty on the Burlington and Iowa City Road in Yellow Springs Township south of Mediapolis in Des Moines County. He had died two days before of undetermined causes during an apparent robbery. Four young men were suspected of the crime.
Click here to read “A Miserly Life.”
location of Mediapolis, Iowa
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Iowa State University freshman Sheila Jean Collins, 18, accepted a ride on
January 26, 1968 in Ames from an unknown man who found her name on a campus ride-board. Her bludgeoned and strangled body was found in a ditch four miles west of Colo on January 28.
Click here to read “A Story Yet to be Told.”
Sheila Collins
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Forty-five-year-old Anne Marie Miller McGrevey, a socialite contract bridge instructor, died in a deliberately-set fire in her home at 6505 Forest Court in the Windsor Heights section of Des Moines on
January 30, 1948.
Click here to read “After a Game of Bridge.”
location of Des Moines, Iowa
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On
January 30, 1898, 35-year-old farmhand and ice harvester John F. Brennan was found dead in the Dysart home of “Shorty” Sweeney. Stomach bruising and Sweeney’s account of a rough scuffle between Brennan and another man at a drinking party suggested the victim died of a beating. However, a coroner’s jury ruled Brennan was killed by excessive alcohol consumption.
Click here to read “Drinking Bout.”
location of Dysart, Iowa
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