The kidnapping case in the north-central Iowa town of Dayton comes just nine months after the kidnapping and murder of two cousins in Evansdale in northeast Iowa. No one has been arrested in the Black Hawk County case.
Evansadale Police Chief, Kent Smock, says they are looking at the Webster County case to see if kidnapper there could’ve been responsible for the deaths of eight-year-old Elizabeth Collins and 10-year-old Lyric Cook-Morrissey. He says they’ve been looking closely at all such cases since the girls first went missing.
“So we are looking if for any connections, at this time it is way too early in the investigation to say that there are any ties, but we are certainly doing our duty and following up,” Smock says. The bodies of Collins and Cook-Morrissey were found in a recreation area about 20 miles north of Evansdale on December 5th, nearly five months after their July 13th disappearance.
Smock says the case remains active. “We will continue to investigate, we are continuing to follow up on all leads like we have been, there’s nothing else that we are releasing to the public,” Smock says.
Smock remains hopeful the Evansdale case will be solved. “I am very confident that this case will be solved at some point,” he says. “We’ve always stayed with that focus ….it’s just a matter of putting everything together and making sure that information comes together that we can present.”
Searchers in the Dayton case are looking for 15-year-old Kathlynn Shepard, one of two girls abducted by a man who later killed himself.
By Elwin Huffman, KOEL, Olwein/Waterloo