Page 7 - Clear Lake Mirror Reporter E-Edition 7-29-2015

Local NewsClear Lake Mirror-Reporter July 29, 2015 • Page 7

Unsolved murder of Julia Benning has family
members, authorities considering new theories

WAVERLY be a stripper. She made pottery and Carol, who was only 12 at the time, had also been strangled. Their parents’ garden is where Carol Kean has some of the best memories of her sister,
from page 1 chokers out of bear claws, feathers and was in her bedroom and heard the The three unsolved cases became Julia Benning, from growing up. Benning disappeared the day after Thanksgiving
beads, and sewed the dress she wore words “black fingernail polish” — known as the “Waverly stranglings.” in 1975 and her body wasn’t found until five months later in a rural culvert. Here,
job applicants. that last day on the way to work. the color Julia wore –— and “ID the Bremer County Sheriff’s Department Kean poses for a portrait on Tuesday, June 23, 2015, in the garden as her daughter
That’s when Julia, 18, walked into They didn’t know it then, but Ju- body.” Detective David MacDonald believes picks peas behind her on the Clarksville farm where she grew up. Brian Powers/The
the Sir Lounge in Waverly and was lia had been writing to pen pals the Her naked body was found by a they may be connected. Register
hired on the spot as a cocktail wait- month before, saying she’d grown up county maintenance worker in nearby “We do believe the possibility
ress. That it was a strip club pained her fast working at the bar and had al- rural Butler County. She had been exists that there is still a suspect out ter’s death, he was determined to tell his associates. He says he threw them
religious parents. This was a girl more ready learned not to trust anybody. “A strangled, and her body was stuffed there somewhere, which is one of the it again, and contacted Jody Ewing of away, not yet knowing Julia was miss-
likely to go to church camp than a sleazy guy offered me $1,500 to go to in a culvert, washing out with March reasons the case remains open,” he the website Iowa Cold Cases. ing.
party, one who had experienced only a bed with him and I turned him down. rains. A homicide investigation en- said. He later met with Kean, and both Waverly Police Capt. Jason Leon-
couple of dates in high school, despite I saw the money and knew he had it, sued. Lisa Peak’s body was exhumed in women believe his story. ard said he’s taken information from
her good looks and free spirit. but the idea of it bummed me out…I “I couldn’t feel anything,” Carol 2010, and other tips have been pur- “I’m not going to get anything the man, and police have looked into
Julia wrote in her diary: “Every- just didn’t think I could live with my- Kean said. “My other sister cried on sued through the years. But no charg- out of this. I have no reason to lie,” every new lead. But there hasn’t been
one at school, home and everywhere self later.” the floor. But for years, I didn’t think es have ever been issued in the three said the man, who spoke with the any “new information” in the past two
else was duly shocked and amazed to Deep down, her letters show, she about it.” cases. Authorities say the stranglings Register only on the condition he years, he said.
think good ol’ Julie was working in a was concerned that people didn’t ac- Then one day this past spring, have become urban legend among wouldn’t be named because he said Every day since she met with the
‘strip joint,’ as they inelegantly termed cept her and wanted to save money she started thinking about it again be- young people in the area. he’s been threatened by the men he man who says he witnessed the slay-
the Sir, which is really a fairly classy, to fix the “lazy eye” she had since cause of a man she met with in a park But in the 1970s, the disappear- saw with Julia that night. ing, Kean said she’s been on a mission.
plushly carpeted, dark-paneled club childhood. She wrote that she was who claimed to know what happened ances of young women who were later This is what he says happened, She wants to repair her sister’s reputa-
with a nice atmosphere. The dancers depressed and had a feeling that some and who did it. She hasn’t been able to found dead was all too common, said while acknowledging that he is a for- tion and shame the man who was in
are pretty decent people, not the ten drastic change was about to occur in stop thinking about it every day since. Susan Chehak, who authored the mer felon who had been drinking that pickup. She is researching, draw-
dollar whores most of the men think her life. website and book titled “What Hap- that night: He was at the Sir when he ing up theories and tracking down the
they are. It was a strange experience Julia loved Thanksgiving, her • pened to Paula?” about the murder of saw Julia taking money at the door, locations of people there at the time.
watching a chick strip and dance com- favorite holiday. After stuffing them- Paula Oberbroeckling, 18, of Cedar although authorities reported at the “It consumes me. For the first
pletely nude, but after the initial nov- selves around the family table, she got After a few months, state investi- Rapids in 1970. time that she was last seen walking time in 40 years, I have a name,” she
elty, it soon became old hat and didn’t up the next day and said she had to gators disappeared. After a few years, She said the sexual and cultural to work. A struggle ensued in the said. “To imagine this beautiful girl,
bother me a bit.” go to work. Her mother begged her to the Bennings quit checking in with revolution around civil and gender hallway. Men blocked his vision of it nude and stuffed in a culvert covered
On Nov. 28, 1975, the day after call in sick, but she left anyway. local cops. The case had gone cold. rights made it “a particularly danger- when he tried to look back there. in mud and leaves, the indignity of it.
spending Thanksgiving with her par- “She looked back and waved The Bennings were upset, too, ous time to be a girl of 18 or older… A short time later in the park- The man who did this is walking free,
ents, Julia was seen walking to work. at me, and I had a strange feeling,” about the damage to their daughter’s The rules had been removed, but safe- ing lot, he saw what appeared to be and I can’t live with that.”
But then, she disappeared. JoAnn Benning said. “It was the last reputation. It was as if because she ty nets weren’t in place.” Julia slumped in the passenger side of The family still notices one less
Nearly 40 years later, her parents time I saw her.” worked in a strip club, she got what the pickup. When the pickup door plate on the Thanksgiving table every
and sister Carol Kean sat in the din- The bar staff called her the next she deserved, despite their insistence • was opened, he saw a man he knew year.
ing room of the same rural farmhouse day to say Julia hadn’t shown up for that she never stripped and her diary with his hand near her throat, try- “I hate Thanksgiving now because
where Julia grew up, and where her work on Friday. They waited a day entries that she was a waitress there The Bennings had tucked away ing to cover the dome light with his that was her favorite holiday,” JoAnn
own father did, too. before going to police. The family only to save money for college. Julia’s lock of hair, snipped from her other hand. What he thinks were the said. “She’d say, ‘I’d walk all night to
Her father stood in the doorway, searched in fields and buildings in the They felt guilt about not provid- so her mother could always have a victim’s clothes were later planted in be there.’”
well into his 70s now, and his voice area. They contacted television sta- ing her the money, and still do. But piece of her lovely daughter, and a his garage by the man he suspects or
cracked. There was no way he could tions to get the word out. Nothing. they followed the ethic learned hard hair pin JoAnn found while scouring
talk about it again. He only whis- “I looked in culverts. By then I on the farm to pick yourself up by the ground one day where Julia’s body
pered, “I gave her her first ice cream,” knew she was gone. It was a matter of the bootstraps, go to work, be strong. was found. Her mother used to suf-
before exiting to the farm shed, where finding her. I just had a feeling,” said Carol Kean even went to school the fer thinking of the act of dying and
his daughter’s ’70s-era platform shoes JoAnn Benning, whose own mother day after her sister was found. whether Julia felt physical pain. Now
hang above his work bench. had died when she was an infant. In the months following the mur- she just regrets that her daughter nev-
JoAnn had Julia at 19, and they were der, questions arose. er got to experience life.
• deeply connected because she felt they Her case was similar to that of Recently, the sorrow was chan-
matured together. Valerie Kossowsky, 14, whose stran- neled into a new lead. A man from a
JoAnn Benning said she tried to “We just stayed here at home all gled body was found in 1971 on a nearby small town told Carol Kean he
talk her daughter out of working at winter. Just to be here.” creek bank off a gravel road near Wa- was at the Sir Lounge the night of the
the club, but the young woman they Five months passed, and a black verly. Six months after Julia’s body was murder and named the people respon-
more commonly called Julie said she car pulled into the driveway. Sister found, 20-year-old Wartburg College sible. He said he had first told authori-
wanted to be an “independent wom- sophomore Lisa Peak’s nude body was ties what he saw in the months after it
an” and promised she would never found in a ditch north of Waverly. She happened. Then after his own daugh-

INVESTIGATORS from the police. These are what I call devalued victims.” in a hit in a national DNA database of felons, but are nonetheless critically
from page 1 From 2009 to 2011, Iowa had a special cold case unit that was part of the important if law enforcement agents can match the samples to a suspect, Mots-
Iowa Department of Public Safety. But its two agents and a criminologist were inger said.
“We have half as many homicides. Why aren’t we solving more?” reassigned after a federal grant, which pumped $500,000 into the program, The results of some of the cold case work were made public in 2012 with
Adcock, a longtime law enforcement instructor and author of several cold ended. the arrest and subsequent conviction of Robert “Gene” Pilcher. He pleaded
case books, says the answer is tied to a complex web of issues. Among the The state continues to follow up on leads in the roughly 160 cold cases guilty last year to murder in the 1974 death of 17-year-old Mary Jayne Jones.
hurdles to finding justice, he said: too little money for law enforcement inves- that are part of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation’s files. But with no Jones had been sexually assaulted and shot twice at a Wapello County farm-
tigations, witnesses’ fear of the killers and public apathy. full-time staffing dedicated to it, far less time is spent seeking new leads, said house.
There’s also something called the “white woman syndrome,” a term used Mike Motsinger, the special agent with the public safety department who was Pilcher was questioned in Jones’ murder in 1974 but didn’t face charges
by social scientists to explain the short-lived news coverage and lack of public in charge of the cold case unit. until DNA evidence linked him to the killing.
interest when murder victims are members of minority groups. Among the unit’s first tasks in 2009 was to evaluate and identify cases — “These cases are important. They affect a family forever,” Motsinger said.
“If you are blonde and blue-eyed, you’re most likely to get more attention some going back to the early 1960s — with evidence that could be tested for “You and I hear about these cases for a day, maybe a week. But, until there is
from the news media,” Adcock said. “And if you’re a prostitute or homeless, DNA. Of 40 cases tested, 34 DNA profiles were identified. Most did not result closure, that family is stuck in that moment in time.”
you’re also less likely to get attention from the news media and even potentially

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