No progress yet in death of Muscatine girl

Investigators still have made little progress solving last month’s death of a nine-year-old Muscatine girl. Heather Littrell was found dead August 18th at the rural farm home where she lived with her parents and three older half-brothers. Preliminary reports from the autopsy showed the girl died of hanging, which deprived the brain of a flow of oxygenated blood in the words of the report. But there’s been little other progress in the month since then. Muscatine County sheriff’s detective Sergeant Mark Kopf says lab reports still aren’t back, some people they want to question have proved hard to track down, and the girl’s death is, in his words, “the strangest case I’ve ever worked.” Accidental or otherwise, Kopf can only say he expects to have more answers within a couple weeks.