Hulu series names new suspect in Jodi Huisentruit case

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A new suspect in the abduction of Mason City, Iowa, TV news anchor Jodi Huisentruit is identified in an ABC News’ documentary that premieres Tuesday on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+.

The three-part series, “Her Last Broadcast: The Abduction of Jodi Huisentruit,” names – for the first time – a Wisconsin resident, the ex-husband of a friend of Huisentruit’s, as a person of interest in the June 27, 1995, case.

Huisentruit’s friend said she reached out in 2022 to Mason City, Iowa, police about her ex-husband for a second time after a 20/20 segment, “Gone at Dawn,” on the Huisentruit case aired. The woman said she had emailed police in 2017 about her suspicions, but nothing came of it, according to “Her Last Broadcast.”

“The 20/20 show, that’s why I reached out to Mason City police,” the woman says in the documentary. “I’m positive he went to Mason City, and he met with Jodi. I’m 100-percent positive. He always asked about Jodi. He needs to be looked at.”

The couple’s divorce was finalized on June 23, 1995; Huisentruit went missing four days later. This year marked the 30th anniversary of her disappearance.

Mason City, Iowa, Police Investigator Terrance Prochaska, who is featured prominently in the new documentary, talks with the friend on camera: “We’ve had a lot of people call and say, ‘My ex-husband did it,’” Prochaska said. “But we know that you were one of her close friends. We call this a very high-priority lead.”

The tip led investigators last year to Winsted, Minn., where they searched for human remains in an area near where the man had owned property. No human remains were found. The search is featured in “Her Last Broadcast.”

The man reportedly drove a white Ford Econoline van for work; a van matching that description was seen near Huisentruit’s apartment around the time of her abduction, according to the series. A composite sketch of a man neighbors saw in the parking lot of Huisentruit’s apartment complex looked so much like the friend’s ex-husband that she got “goosebumps” when she saw it, she says in the series.

He also reached out to his ex-wife on the 10th anniversary of Huisentruit’s abduction, according to the series.

The man, who was questioned by police, declined to be interviewed for “Her Last Broadcast.” The Pioneer Press typically does not name suspects until they are charged.

Persons of interest

The man is one of four suspects named as persons of interest in the case in “Her Last Broadcast.”

Maria Awes, the documentary’s director and executive producer, said it was important to “examine all the evidence” to see if any of the four may have had something to do with Huisentruit’s abduction.

“It’s also to show that for Mason City police, this isn’t really a cold-case for them,” she said. “They’ve been working on it for decades. We wanted to get all this information out there, keep Jodi and her story, her legacy, top of mind. Hopefully, somebody who has any missing piece of information pertaining to any person of interest featured here or otherwise, will contact police. That’s just so critical for getting this case solved.”

A tipster reported seeing a white van in the parking lot of Huisentruit’s apartment around the time frame that they think she disappeared, Awes said.

“It wasn’t as though somebody saw her being put into this van or something like that, but it’s always been a vehicle that law enforcement has wanted to find,” she said. “They did an enormous amount of work trying to locate white vans. As you can imagine, there’s a lot of those. Trying to sift through literally every white van in Iowa, you know, and also even in Minnesota, I know that they were looking and trying to figure out whose van could this have been, and so the fact that (this man) had a white van, that was certainly something that piqued Mason City Police Department’s interest.”

Local celebrity

Awes, who grew up in Richfield, was studying broadcast-journalism at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul when Huisentruit disappeared, and Huisentruit’s case was discussed at length in class, she said.

In the 1990s, local TV news anchors like Huisentruit were celebrities, according to Awes.

“It was very different then,” she said. “People recognized them all over the place, and there are dangers that come with that type of local fame. You really can’t discount that. It was a serious thing. You also have just that generalized fear that all, you know, women kind of have where you’re alone. It’s dark. You’re going to your car. ‘Could something happen to you?’ And in this case, something did.

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“I think most women know what that experience is like. I think that’s one of the reasons Jodi’s case resonates so much with people is because of that fear. It’s something very identifiable for a lot of people.”

Who does Awes think is responsible?

“People ask me that all the time,” she said. “I always say it’s really not for me to necessarily comment on that other than to say, you know, I think my job is really I just want to get that information out there. I think people can evaluate it on their own and come to their own conclusions. And certainly the most important thing is not what I think or what anybody thinks, but really, who actually did it – and what’s the evidence? The hard evidence. And how can you prove that in court?”

Jodi Huisentruit documentary

“Her Last Broadcast: The Abduction of Jodi Huisentruit” premieres Tuesday, July 15, on Hulu and Disney+.

The three-part series was produced by ABC News Studios and Committee Films, a Minneapolis company that produced an ABC “20/20” episode on Huisentruit’s abduction in 2022.

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