She was the darling of local morning television in Mason City, Iowa — not as glamorous as it sounds, since it meant showing up for work at 3 a.m.

But one morning, Jodi Huisentruit never made it to the studio.

She’s been missing ever since.

Final hours

It was still dark when Jodi Huisentruit’s alarm clock failed to wake her, on June 27, 1995. The 27-year-old TV anchor was supposed to be on air before sunrise — cheerful, composed, and camera-ready.

Instead, sometime around 4 a.m, her phone rang.

It was her producer checking in. Groggy but upbeat, Jodi apologized, saying she had overslept but was on her way in.

That was the last time anyone heard her voice.

Heard a scream

When the sun came up over Mason City, Iowa, Jodi’s red Mazda sat in the apartment parking lot, untouched. Her car key was still in the door, bent sideways, as if it had been twisted in panic.

Nearby lay one of her high heels, a can of hairspray, a blow dryer, and a few scattered earrings, glittering in the early morning light.

The ground told its own story: drag marks, a struggle, and then silence.

Investigators spoke with several neighbors at Jodi’s apartment complex. At least three said they heard screams around the time she would have been leaving for work. Another neighbor reported seeing a white Ford Econoline van idling in the parking lot at about the same time.

Within hours, the story of the missing young anchor was leading the very newscasts she used to deliver. Police quickly classified Jodi’s disappearance as an abduction but had no leads to follow.

A small town in shock

Jodi Huisentruit grew up in the small town of Long Prairie, Minnesota.

Bright, ambitious, and full of energy, she was the kind of person who made an impression wherever she went. In high school, she was a star golfer and a natural performer. After college, Jodi chased her dream of becoming a television journalist — a dream that eventually led her to KIMT-TV in Mason City, Iowa, where she became the familiar, friendly face of the morning news.

Back then, Mason City was a quiet community of about 30,000 people. It was big enough to have a mall and a few busy streets, but still small enough that everyone knew each other’s business.

When Jodi Huisentruit vanished, it shook the town to its core. All across Mason City, local businesses put up a simple message on their signs: “Find Jodi.”

Jodi disappeared in a town where people rarely locked their doors, a quiet community, mostly free from break-ins, with maybe one or two murders a year.

A person of interest

So who could have done something like that?

Well, maybe the answer lay in what Jodi had told her friends just days before she disappeared. She had told friends she sometimes felt like someone was watching her. A white van had been seen near her apartment more than once.

She’d even signed up for self-defense classes, joking nervously that she might actually need them. But no one imagined those warnings were real.

The day before she vanished, Jodi played in a local golf tournament.

Later that evening, according to Mason City resident John Vansice, she stopped by his house to watch a homemade video of the birthday party he had hosted for her earlier that month.

Unsurprisingly, John Vansice became a person of interest for police. He was almost certainly one of the last people to see Jodi alive. In 2004, investigators even conducted a search of a home formerly occupied by Vansice, but no new evidence was found. He later moved to Arizona and continued to maintain his innocence until his death in December 2024.

Investigator’s theory

Despite years of police work and public efforts to uncover the truth, Jodi Huisentruit’s disappearance remains one of the most haunting and heartbreaking mysteries in Iowa’s history.

There has been psychics, national TV appeals, hundreds of interviews, and endless theories. Capt. Mike Halverson led the team of investigators who worked tirelessly in the days following Jodi’s disappearance.

“It started like any Tuesday,” he recalled in a 2007 interview with The Globe Gazette.

“Then we got the call, went and started checking things out, and there was something different from the very start.”

Although Jodi had expressed fears that someone might be following her, Halverson never fully believed that theory.

“I don’t think it was a mystery person who came here and stalked her and then grabbed her,” he said.

Declared dead in 2001

Jodi Huisentruit was officially declared legally dead in 2001 — though for many, her story never truly ended.

Doug Merbach, the news director at KIMT when Jodi disappeared, reflected in a 2025 interview with the Globe Gazette:

“It doesn’t get any easier as the years go by.”

Thirty years later, Jodi Huisentruit’s story still sends a chill through anyone who hears it. Mason City Police Chief Jeff Brinkley said his department continues to receive new information about Jodi’s case throughout the year.

“We haven’t put this down, we haven’t stopped working, we have not stopped pursuing leads and information,” Brinkley told FOX 9 in June.

Who was Christopher Revak?

But then, in 2025, something happened.

In October, authorities revealed that a man once considered a person of interest in Jodi Huisentruit’s disappearance — who died by suicide back in 2009 — has now been confirmed responsible for another murder.

The Wood County Sheriff’s Office in Wisconsin announced that Christopher Revak was behind the 2006 killing of Deidre Harm, officially closing that cold case.

Revak’s name had surfaced years earlier in connection with Jodi’s disappearance, but according to Mason City Police Lt. Frank Stearns, investigators in 2009 found no evidence directly linking him to her abduction.

A $50,000 reward

Revak’s own story was dark. In 2007, while facing charges for the murder of another woman, Rene Williams, who vanished after working a shift at a Missouri bar, Revak took his own life in a jail cell. That case remains unsolved.

Wood County Sheriff Shawn Becker said in a statement that his department had gathered enough evidence to prove Revak’s guilt in Harm’s murder and that the case is now officially closed.

In 2024, Mason City police had once again compared notes with Wisconsin investigators about Revak, according to FindJodi.com. One connection raised interest, Revak’s ex-wife had once lived in a house tied to one of the last people who saw Jodi alive, but it turned out she had moved out six months before Jodi disappeared.

Most recently, officers assisted in a search near Winsted, Minnesota, after receiving a promising tip — but the effort turned up no solid evidence.

Another update came in March of this year, when portions of a 2017 search warrant related to the case were finally made public.

A $50,000 reward is still being offered for any credible information that could help solve Jodi’s disappearance. Anyone with details is encouraged to reach out to the Mason City Police Department or the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation.