A first -degree murder warrant has now been issued for a Cedar Rapids man suspected of killing his former girlfriend in Missouri. On Sunday the body of 63-year-old Renee Zeman was found in a house in St. James, a few miles east of Rolla, Missouri.
An autopsy report released today (Tuesday) says she died of a knife wound to the neck. Detective Andy Davis says the two had lived and worked together in Iowa.
The detective says they’d lived there together and both worked at Rockwell Collins. He doesn’t know how long they lived in Cedar Rapids, but says “it had been some time.”
Pantaleon Salvadore Salinas is an engineer at the Iowa-based avionics company. Davis says the man had recently sold their home in Cedar Rapids, and they’ve placed him in Missouri within the past few days. “We have witnesses saying that he was there” on Friday, Davis says, adding he doesn’t know if those witnesses actually saw the man or had been told he was there, at the house in St. James where the woman’s body was later found.
On Sunday afternoon relatives found the woman dead in the bathroom of the home, which was owned by her family according to Davis. Detective Davis says about 10-30 Monday morning Salinas was seen about twenty miles east of the town where the woman’s body was found. At the time of the sighting he was leaving Cuba, Missouri, in a green minivan registered to him.
The van has Iowa license plate 601-RJT. Davis says there is now a first-degree murder warrant out for Salinas, issued just this afternoon. Anybody who spots him is asked to not try and stop him, but to call law enforcement.