Jodi Sue Huisentruit, 27, a morning news anchor and producer at KIMT-TV in Mason City, Iowa, was last heard from in the early morning hours of June 27, 1995. Huisentruit had lived alone in a second-floor unit of Building C at the Key Apartments, 600 North Kentucky Avenue, Mason City, since November 1993. On the evening of June 26, she attended a Mason City Chamber of Commerce golf tournament and dinner, left around 8 p.m., called a friend in Mississippi at 8:24 p.m., and was reported to have stopped at a neighbor's apartment to watch a birthday video before returning home. She was scheduled to arrive at KIMT for her 3:30 a.m. anchor shift the next morning but did not appear; at approximately 4:10 a.m., a producer called her apartment, and Huisentruit said she had overslept and would be in shortly. That was the last confirmed contact with her. A coworker requested a welfare check with the Mason City Police Department at 7:13 a.m.; an officer arriving at 7:16 a.m. found her red 1991 Mazda Miata in the apartment parking lot with her purse, hair dryer, hair spray, red pumps, and earrings scattered on the ground, her car key bent inside the driver's-side door lock, and drag marks on the pavement. Some residents later reported hearing a scream around the time of the abduction but did not contact police at the time; a witness separately reported seeing a white van or truck near the vehicle. Huisentruit has not been seen or heard from since.
The Mason City Police Department and the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation continue to jointly investigate the case as an active homicide; Huisentruit was declared legally dead in 2001, and no remains have been recovered. John Vansice, a friend roughly 22 years her senior who said he was the last person to see her the night before, was investigated for years as a person of interest; he was subpoenaed by federal grand juries in 1997 and 2017, provided DNA and fingerprints, and had a court-ordered GPS tracker placed on two of his vehicles in 2017. He denied any involvement, was never charged, and died in Arizona in December 2024. Other individuals investigated over the years — including two men with prior sex-offense convictions living in the area and a deceased convicted murderer whose case was revisited in 2024 — were each interviewed and ruled out. In April 2025, a judge unsealed a portion of the 2017 search-warrant record, while keeping the underlying probable-cause affidavit sealed. In 2026, a private investigator working the case said he believed he had identified a suspect based on information not yet made public and referred it to the Iowa DCI; that claim has not been corroborated by law enforcement. The case is catalogued as NamUs MP #402, Mason City Police Department Case #95-08176, and NCIC #M-844559811. Tips may be directed to the Mason City Police Department at (641) 421-3636, the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, or the FindJodi tip line at (641) 999-1109.
