Frozen Truth

There’s a dark side to television reporting that few watching are aware of.
Could Jodi Huisentruit’s abduction be related to her profession as an on-air media personality?

Mason City, Iowa police have never named a suspect in the 1995 disappearance of television news anchor Jodi Huisentruit, but they have ruled a few people out.
One of those men ruled out by authorities in Jodi’s case was a violent serial rapist who stalked some of his victims before attacking them in their own homes. That man, 21 year-old Tony Jackson, lived two blocks from KIMT-TV in Mason City at the time Jodi vanished.
Some question what information police have kept quiet about Jackson that led to him being quickly ruled out as a possible suspect in the Huisentruit case.
Caroline Lowe broke the story of Jackson’s possible link to the Jodi Huisentruit disappearance for WCCO-TV in Minneapolis three years later in 1998. She joins me on this episode to discuss her research and reporting on Jackson. We also discuss another man often suspected in Jodi’s disappearance, local seed dealer John Vansice, and examine a third possibility in the case: that someone else, previously unknown, is actually the person responsible for one of Iowa’s most notorious abductions.

In this episode you’ll hear from Candy Host, Chairman of the Board of Jodi’s Network of Hope, which is is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit corporation founded in 2005 on the 10 year anniversary of Jodi’s abduction. The group promotes positive educational opportunities for students and supports safety training and awareness.
In this episode you’ll also hear from Joe Vigil, who worked with Jodi at the campus television station when they were attending St. Cloud State University together, and then in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in 1992.

On New Year's Eve, a billboard in Mason City meant to raise awareness of Jodi Huisentruit's unsolved 1995 abduction was vandalized.
Two men were involved in spray painting the name of a former Mason City police officer and the words "machine shed" on the billboard.
Was this a random act of vandalism?
Or does it have something to do with the case?

Two children who were placed by Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services and its Office of Child and Family Services have died in the last year.
Both deaths were determined to be the result of child abuse at the hands of their foster caretakers.
One state lawmaker called the events a “colossal failure” of the state’s government, adding: “we have miserably failed these kids.”
The agency has been accused of systemic failures for two decades and before they became involved in the Ayla Reynolds’ disappearance in 2011.
Writer Terrilyn Simpson is my guest this episode.