Original subtitles

We had a cabin on Stumpf Island.

People think if you're in a cabin community,

everybody's friendly,

but that's not the vibe of that area.

It was a place where things happened...

...bad things.

When she got to the cabin, she really got nervous.

There were rumors galore, but naturally,

nobody saw anything.

That cabin

holds an awful lot of secrets.

On April 14, 1981, an 18-year-old,

Jodi Bausman did not come home to her parents' house.

Her parents became concerned.

They did some checking through the school she was going to.

She was a student of cosmetology in Dubuque,

and she was supposed to be at class that morning,

but she did not show up.

She was very committed to her training her training at

the cosmetology school, and so when they found out that

she didn't show up for school that day, they suspected

something was seriously wrong.

Her mother and father were panicked.

They started making phone calls to Jodi's friends.

On April 13th, I was raking the yard.

Her house was just two houses down the street, and I saw Jodi

get in her blue AMC Hornet with her friend.

And she turned around and waved at me,

and I waved back, and she left,

and that's the last I saw her.

When it became obvious to Jodi's parents, they could not

get any answers.

They went to the police department and filed

a missing person report.

It piqued the interest of the Dubuque Police Department

because four months before Jodi disappeared,

on December 10th of 1980,

a body of a woman was found abandoned along a roadway in

rural Grant County, just a few miles over the bridge from

Dubuque, Iowa.

I got a call that there was an African-American female that

was discovered by a road worker.

Her body was half naked laying along the roadway.

We had no idea who she was.

She had a pair of pantyhose on and an overcoat.

And her body appeared to be dumped from a moving vehicle.

Her shoes were on each side of the road.

Her clothes are in a state of disarray.

They thought it was likely that she had been

sexually assaulted, beaten, and strangled.

One of the things that helped on the case was they found

her purse along the Mississippi,

downstream from a group of few small cabins on the north end

of Stumpf Island.

These cabins are on a sand island in

the Mississippi River,

very, very isolated.

They're pretty rustic.

Power and sewer and water are usually non-existent

on the islands.

It's not the kind of place that you can probably spend

a lot of time relaxing.

It's more for sportsmen--

hunting, fishing, and unfortunately,

sometimes for partying, too.

It is a very isolated spot,

but that's what some people were looking for.

In the purse found along the Mississippi, south of

Stumpf Island, there was an identification card.

And that's how they ended up leading the identification to

the unknown Jane Doe.

The Jane Doe is identified ultimately as

Thomasina Dunivant,

22 years old, single mother of a four-year-old.

Thomasina was so happy, and so outgoing.

And, you know, it was my big sister, so I looked up to her.

She loved to sing and dance. We danced all the time.

Thomasina was ten

when my mom passed away from breast cancer.

Thomasina took over my mom's spot.

She would take care of us, good care of us.

Growing up was tough, but you know,

we made it through.

Last time I talked to Thomasina,

She had told me she was, uh,

she was gonna go, and try and make some money

for her daughter, because she ain't got

nothing for Christmas.

Thomasina had no money.

Times were hard,

and she had to resort to prostitution to

try to get some money for her daughter.

She wasn't a bad person. She was a nice and good person.

Thomasina was doing what she had to do for her baby.

She didn't have nobody else.

I said, "You got to be careful, you know, it's dangerous."

On December 10th, the police notified the family.

She had passed me, and I felt so bad because I...

...I wasn't there for her. I felt that I let her down.

I was kind of mad, too, you know,

because I didn't know what had happened.

Although DNA evidence examination was at its early

stages in that time of the 1980s, they took samples

from her body and from her clothing.

They did preserve a wealth of evidence, but that evidence in

and of itself, was not enough to be able to point to her killer.

Dubuque is a large city.

But in the 1980s, that would be unusual to have two

young women, one missing and one murdered, that close in time,

that close to each other in location.

Those two similarities alone made investigators stand up

and look at these cases very, very seriously.

They were concerned that maybe these could be connected,

and they feared that you have a serial killer on the loose

in your community.

Jodi was a childhood friend.

She was sassy.

She knew who she was and what she wanted.

She was always happy.

Just a delight to be around.

We both had a love for music.

We listened to albums all the time.

She played flute at Hampstead High School,

where we both went.

On April 14, 1981, I was 17 years old.

And I was getting ready that morning to go to school.

And on the radio, they said that Jodi Bausman

was missing.

And the first thought in my head was--

was something bad had happened.

Jennifer Nieland was a friend of Jodi's and was with her

the night before she was missing.

When Dubuque Police Department officers

interviewed Jodi's parents,

they were informed that Jodi was going to be staying at

Jennifer Nieland's home that night.

The police interviewed Nieland, and Nieland gave

a full statement.

Jennifer informed law enforcement that Jennifer

and Jodi were in Jennifer's house all night.

But around 11:30, they decided to go to a bar

locally in Dubuque called Kelly's Cove and order pizza.

Kelly's Cove at the time was a tough-guy bar.

It was a bar where-- where things happened...

...bad things.

They were playing pool, having a good time,

and socializing with friends.

Later that evening, Jennifer decided to go home,

but Jodi wanted to stay at the bar.

Jodi was going to stay at Jennifer's house that night.

So Jennifer had anticipated that Jodi would be arriving at

her house later that night.

Jennifer left the door unlocked for her, but when she got up

in the morning, Jodi was not there.

It all rang true.

There was nothing that she said that seemed to be inconsistent.

According to Jennifer Nieland, there was a male there at

the same time that Jodi was playing pool.

She did not know this person's name.

She referred to him as a stranger.

He was acting very odd and talking suggestively to

Jodi and made her feel uncomfortable.

He started hitting on Jodi, wanting to know If she could

fall in love with a guy like him, she kind of blew him off.

He was just acting like a creep.

Law enforcement had to look at this person as

a potential suspect.

They were hoping that maybe you find this stranger,

maybe you find Jodi.

Dubuque Police Department investigators interviewed

the owner of Kelly's Cove.

Turns out the guy had cashed a check there for $10,

and his identification was on that check.

From the check from Kelly's Cove,

they were able to identify the stranger as Joel Graves.

What they found out about him was he was from

the Chicago area, and he was a traveling salesman.

Graves had recently been in Cedar Rapids, and they also had

a recent missing person case.

Cedar Rapids is about 72 miles away from Dubuque.

That's considered pretty close proximity.

This is somebody that needed to be looked at very,

very closely.

On April 24th, while the police were looking at Joel Graves,

Jennifer Nieland got a call from a man named Mike Shaffer,

who said he would like to meet with her.

Mike was one of the men that was playing pool with

Jodi Bausman the night she went missing.

He told Jennifer that he had some information about Jodi

that he wanted to share with her.

They set up a meeting,

and she called the police.

As a law enforcement officer, you have to ask,

"What is Mike Shaffer's intent?"

Is he trying to find out what she knows?

It's just a very peculiar,

and yet very dangerous situation.

The last thing you'd want her to do is meet alone with

somebody that could be involved with a disappearance.

The police department of Dubuque made it very clear that

she was not to go meet him.

They never met, and so I don't know what information

he was going to tell her.

But then it was a question of trying to find out everybody

else who was in Kelly's Cove that night.

According to witnesses, Jodi was playing pool with

three regulars to that bar,

Randy Rhomberg,

Greg Otterbeck,

and Mike Shaffer.

They were playing pool that night with a man who was

handing out cigars,

celebrating a child recently being born.

Rhomberg, Otterbeck, and Shaffer

were all brought in and questioned individually.

All three of those individuals had similar stories.

Rhomberg and Shaffer were playing pool that night at

Kelly's Cove.

Then Jodi played pool with them.

Otterbeck said he left and went home.

Right around 12:30 AM, Rhomberg and Shaffer left

the bar with Jodi in Randy Rhomberg's car,

and drove around in the area for a while.

According to Rhomberg, they were driving around

and Jodi said she wanted to be left up at the Walnut Tavern.

So he drove her up there, let her out,

never saw her again.

However...

...what was strange is that Jodi's friends and parents

were asked about Jodi ever mentioning the Walnut,

and they said, "No, she never mentioned the Walnut."

So it was inconsistent with what Jodi's friends

and colleagues knew about her, that she would not have been

dropped off in that area.

Now that Rhomberg and Shaffer admitted they had Jodi in

the car driving around, that right away

eliminated Graves.

Once Graves is eliminated, the police start focusing

on Rhomberg, Otterbeck, and Shaffer.

The Dubuque Police Department conducted search warrants on

the men's vehicles and residencies for any

potential evidence that connects them to

the disappearance of Jodi.

Unfortunately, they found nothing.

One of the things they were thinking about is, where would

the potential crime scene be?

Where would a potential crime have occurred if it's not

connected to their vehicles and, or to their residence?

They were focusing on trying to develop leads on where did

they actually go and what actually happened.

On April 23rd,

law enforcement received a call.

The woman making the call said that someone resembling

Jodi's description was actually staying in a trailer house with

a young man

approximately 20 miles from Dubuque,

near Platteville, Wisconsin.

You can imagine how officers were looking at this.

You're hoping that she's still alive and safe.

Law enforcement put together a team to go check whether

or not it was actually Jodi there, and if she was,

was she being held against her will?

But when law enforcement got there,

the young woman who was there was approximately 19 years old,

had a similar physical description to Jodi Bausman,

but it positively was not her.

That lead ended up being closed out.

May 10th, which was Mother's Day, I get a call.

The captain of the Spirit of Dubuque,

which is a dinner river boat, spotted a body,

uh, on the Illinois side of the river.

As they approached it, it turned out to be a body of

a female, just downriver from Stumpf Island.

The body was-- had been in the water for

a couple weeks or more.

Until a body is actually found and identified, even seasoned

law enforcement officers always have a bit of hope that

they're able to find a missing person.

But when you find a body in the area

where the victim was last seen,

in your gut,

you know that it's probably not going to be good news.

The female's body was in a state of decomposition,

but there was a pink t-shirt on the victim,

and that was the color of the shirt that was last seen on

Jodi Bausman on the night she went missing.

At this point in the investigation, that's where

you realize you have to get the family back involved again

to do an identification.

And that's probably one of the most difficult things

you can do in law enforcement.

The body was transported to the morgue at Mercy Hospital.

She had identifiable rings on, a watch, and some other

jewelry, earrings.

And her mother came down to the-- to the morgue,

and identified those items.

I can't conceive of anything much harder for a parent than

to have to see your child's body in a decomposing state.

She was very distraught.

I think she had hopes that her daughter was alive.

From then on in her life, the only thing that

she remembers, I'm sure, on Mother's Day is having to

identify her daughter. Terrible thing.

Once Jodi's body was found,

it was just numb,

shock, sadness.

You never really do get over it.

I, uh, went down by the lock and dam,

and just sat on the-- sat on the bank.

Just kind of cried it out, just bawled.

Until I didn't have any more tears.

I remember Jodi's funeral.

It was the first time that I've ever saw

a funeral where there was just a picture.

And it was...

like, wow.

It was sad to know that she was in the river, because I know

what the river can do to things and to people.

Now that they've got a body,

the police are all over everybody, really working hard.

The autopsy indicated definitively that her voice box

had been crushed.

We knew at that point she had been strangled.

Now we have a murder investigation.

The main suspects in this case were Randy Rhomberg,

Greg Otterbeck, and Michael Shaffer.

And the reason, of course, was that that's who Jodi was

last seen with at Kelly's Cove.

The Dubuque Police Department had conducted search warrants,

but nothing solid came out of any of those search warrants.

However, it was always rumored. There was a lot of

bad situations that happened around those people.

It was reported a woman had stated to others

that Randy had sexually assaulted her.

She supposedly was going for a drive with him.

She was taken to this cabin

on Stumpf Island.

She tried to get away, and he chased her

and got her and dragged her back,

took her into the cabin, forced her

to have sex with him.

But she never called the police about it

because she didn't think anything would be done about it,

and because she was so scared of Rhomberg.

That's obviously an incredible leap, and there's now a focus

on this cabin on Stumpf Island.

We had a cabin on Stumpf Island.

People think if you're in a cabin community,

you know everybody and everybody's friendly,

but that's not the vibe of that area.

It was a fun place to go.

But if you walked beyond your safety area,

it could be creepy.

I'm not saying that bad, evil things were happening out

there, it's just the feeling that you had.

It was a creepy, creepy space.

There were rumors galore.

There always seemed to be parties around this house.

A lot of drinking,

drugs, sexual encounters.

But naturally, nobody saw anything.

It makes it very hard for the police because everybody

you talk to gives a different story.

Investigators continue to develop leads on

our three suspects.

And along with that, information came in that

a fourth man was with them that night.

There was a fourth person involved that we had not been

investigating at all.

An individual by the name of Robert Miller.

This was a person that we really wanted to talk to.

Robert Miller was brought into the law center,

and he admitted to being there at the time.

Robert Miller, at this point, is going to be either a witness

or a participant,

yet to be determined.

On May 30, 1981, law enforcement officers speak

with Robert Miller.

He came forward with information that he had been

holding onto since the night that Jodi went missing.

We believed at that particular time, after interviewing

Robert Miller,

that he was the absolute key to the whole entire investigation.

On the 13th of April, 1981,

Robert Miller said that he was in Kelly's Cove playing pool

and just enjoying the evening.

He said that he knew Shaffer, Rhomberg, and Otterbeck,

but not that well.

Well, he wasn't that close to them.

Even though Miller was extremely intoxicated

that night,

he was able to tell law enforcement everything that

he saw happen.

Robert Miller stated that the four of them, along with

Jodi Bausman, left Kelly's Cove about 12:30.

They went to Shaffer's apartment and got a joint,

and they smoked it and drove around.

Randy Rhomberg had said that Jodi wanted to be left off at

the Walnut Tavern. But Miller's statement was,

"That's not what happened."

Jodi just thought they were going to get a joint

at Shaffer's.

But they start heading across the bridge into Wisconsin

towards Stumpf Island.

Jodi said she wanted to be let out.

She wanted to go home.

And they talked her into it,

said, "No, no, we're just gonna go play some cards,

drink a little bit, blah, blah, blah."

Eventually, they ended up at the cabin

of Rhomberg's brother

on Stumpf Island.

When she got to the cabin, she really got nervous.

Jodi did not want to go in.

This cabin was right out of a horror movie.

It's a horrible, horrible place,

so isolated and run down.

Inside, they were drinking, playing cards,

and generally just talking.

Robert Miller stated that Randy Rhomberg was trying his best

to kiss Jodi.

Jodi was resisting.

Rhomberg took Jodi to the bed

and started to take her clothes off.

She's screaming and crying and saying,

"Please don't do this."

At that point, Shaffer and Otterbeck

came over.

From Miller's point of view, he was highly intoxicated.

He was laying down across the room from the bed.

And what he witnessed was a violent assault

and rape of Jodi

by Rhomberg, Shaffer, and Otterbeck.

Miller insists that he never touched the girl.

He was just shocked by what they were doing.

After all three men raped her,

she got up and ran for the door.

They were not gonna let her escape.

Jodi was crying,

screaming.

She said she was going to tell the police.

Rhomberg told her, "This is what's going to happen if

you go to the police."

And placed his hands around her neck.

She never stopped fighting,

but it was this horrid situation.

At some point,

she became limp.

Mike Shaffer felt her pulse and discovered

she was no longer living.

Rhomberg took her life from her with the assistance of

the other two suspects.

Then according to Miller, they had to come up with a way

to dispose of her body.

In Robert Miller's statement, he indicated that he did not

participate in getting rid of Jodi's body.

But Randy Rhomberg, Greg Otterbeck,

and Mike Shaffer put her in a refrigerator,

tied a rope around the door of the refrigerator,

and took the refrigerator and Jodi's body up to

the lock and dam, and dumped the body in the Mississippi River.

This was April so the water levels were high

and there was a great deal of turbulence at that point

and I'm sure that the turbulence of the water

broke the rope loose and eventually Jodi's body

ended up coming to the surface.

Hearing and understanding the circumstances of her demise

in such a horrific way, it was just devastating

and just unbelievable.

Jodi was free-spirited,

easygoing.

I don't know why anyone would want to hurt her.

They were just out having fun.

Jodi was the girl who liked to go out and have a drink or two

and talk to boys.

The sadness came in knowing

that somebody treated her that way.

Nobody deserves to be treated

in that manner.

Through the positive identification of Jodi

Bausman's body, and the statements made

by Miller of what he saw that night,

arrest warrants were drafted for Rhomberg,

Shaffer, and Otterbeck.

As soon as we found out that Jodi Bausman was killed in that

cabin, right at the top of my head came

the Thomasina Dunivant case.

And the close proximity to that cabin where she was found

was uncanny.

I knew there was a connection

to Thomasina Dunivant.

I knew that cabin that Jodi Bausman was murdered in

holds an awful lot of secrets.

On June 1st, 1981, Randy Rhomberg, Greg Otterbeck,

and Mike Shaffer were arrested for the rape and murder of

Jodi Bausman

and charged in Grant County, Wisconsin.

We went to trial, and it lasted over a week.

The jury returned a verdict of guilty against all three of

them on the first degree murder, as well as

the sexual assault.

The judge sentenced them right then and there, and I remember

him saying, "I can't believe what you did to that girl."

To connect the Bausman case with the Dunivant case,

they needed to look very closely at that cabin on

Stumpf Island.

Unfortunately, that cabin burned, and all evidence that

might have been there was destroyed.

It was never proven what happened or how that

fire started.

It was suspected of being arson, but unfortunately,

there wasn't enough evidence to charge anybody in that case.

We worked on the Dunivant case for quite a few years,

and one of the leads came up with the name of Greg Otterbeck.

And Greg Otterbeck was a suspect, a very good suspect.

I knew it, but I couldn't prove it.

And finally, the case went cold.

Many, many years later, in 2009, I received a call from

the cold case investigator that had picked up

the Thomasina Dunivant case.

They had taken the clothing of Thomasina and discovered

a male DNA on the clothing.

And that DNA profile was definitively determined to be

Gregory Otterbeck.

They brought Otterbeck in from his prison cell,

and he admitted to them that he had murdered

Thomasina Dunivant.

On October 9th of 2009, a hearing was set in Wisconsin,

in Grant County, bringing charges against

Otterbeck with the death of Thomasina Dunivant from 1980.

Gregory Otterbeck was one of the most evil people that

I prosecuted.

Our facts in a nutshell was that Otterbeck picked up

Thomasina Dunivant, where she was working

as a prostitute in East Dubuque.

She may have agreed to go with him somewhere, not necessarily

to the cabin on Stumpf Island.

But that was a place that he was familiar with.

So it's believed that Otterbeck took Thomasina to Stumpf Island.

He was gonna have sex with her.

She changed her mind.

She didn't want to have sex

and started to scream.

He covered her mouth

until she stopped breathing.

And eventually, he brought her body back into Wisconsin

and dumped it along a rural road in Grant County.

A plea agreement was reached, and Otterbeck was sentenced to

an additional 20 years on top of the sentence

he was already serving.

To find out what actually happened and who did it,

yes, that felt good.

But, it don't bring her back.

Thomasina would probably have a husband and be happily married

and everything by now. Life would be good, you know?

And I just miss my sister so much.

I tell you, we was like that, you know?

Like two peas in a pod, you know?

We was really close.

I just wish she was here today.

They were arrested, and justice did its job,

but I can't go and call my friend and say,

"Hey, how are you doing today?"

Because she's not there, you know, and that's sad.

You just,

you learn to live with it and do your best to remember

the good times, and that's what keeps you buoyed.

Her father planted a rose garden out at our arboretum in

her honor and her memory.

And whenever I went out there, I'd always

say a prayer and just kind of remember the good things that

we did together.

Her memory is always with me.

St. Joseph Island is a very isolated area.

Anything could happen down there

and you wouldn't see it or hear it.

There was a cabin in the middle of the bush.

They had no idea that if you go you probaboly won't come back.