An investigator with the Mason City Police Department says they continue to explore every lead in the disappearance of Jodi Huisentruit.
Monday was the 27th anniversary of the former KIMT TV morning anchorwoman’s disappearance. Officer Terrance Prochaska has been working on the case for 12 years. “I just want everyone to know that this case is very much alive with us. We continue to investigate this case like it happened just here recently,” he says.
Prochaska says he’s talked to and interviewed hundreds of people since taking on the case and hopes to someday find the right piece of evidence that solves this puzzle. “In my 12 or 13 years I’ve investigated this case, it’s countless people that I’ve talked to, met, interviewed, and I want you to understand is that we focus on the new technology that comes about all the time. We keep trying to figure out a way to put this case into our technology that keeps advancing, to hope one day find an answer to what happened,” Prochaska says.
He encourages people who think they have any information to call his office. “Ultimately what this is going to lead to is, what the findjodi.com team has been saying all along, is if you know something, say something. If you want to just give us a call with your thoughts, we’re welcome to listen,” Prochaska says. “You’ll talk to me directly if you do make that call, and I will be happy to listen to you and answer what questions I can.”
Prochaska says trying to solve the case has become a part of his life and can understand some people’s frustrations when they think their tips don’t result in anything. “Some of the feedback that we’ve heard over the years is that ‘we don’t ever get a result of what happened when I called in’. On cases like this, what you have to understand is, we’re playing a small game with whoever did this, and the more information we tell, the information that person could be receiving to try to hide even further, if you understand what that means,” he says. “Understand that we take this case as serious as any other case.”
If you have any information regarding Huisentruit’s disappearance, you can call Prochaska at the Mason City Police Department at 641-421-3636. It is believed Huisentruit was abducted from the parking lot of her apartment complex in 1995 Her body has never been found and she was declared legally dead in 2001.
(By Bob Fisher, KRIB, Mason City)