MASON CITY, Iowa – A man who had been with KIMT news anchor Jodi Huisentruit the evening before she disappeared mysteriously in 1995 has died. The death was in Phoenix where John Vansice had lived since 2012. According to a private investigator who once interviewed Vansice, the death was December 6 after mental declines due to Alzheimer’s. Vansice was 78. The private investigator, Steve Ridge, said that the Vansice family decided not to publish an obituary. Vansice generally had avoided discussing the case. He told Ridge, however, that police had interrogated him twice but never told him he was a suspect. Police had listed him as a person of interest.
The cold case
Huisentruit was last known to have left her apartment on Jone 27, 1995, and was starting her car to go to work anchoring an early morning newscast. This probably was about 3:20 a.m., police said. Police were convinced of foul play – that she was abducted and scurried off in a matter of seconds by someone laying for her. Personal items, including a bent car key and her red high heels, were strewn about the parking lot. Huisentruit and Vansice were friends. She had been at his place the evening before to watch a homemade video of a birthday party, which he had arranged for her 27th several weeks earlier. He was 34.
Huisentruit profile
Huisentruit was a journalism graduate of St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. Before joining KIMT in Mason Cjty she was at stations in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Alexandria, Minnesota.
Mason City billboard. The search has been unending. An incentive for information for an arrest and prosecution is a $100,000 reward.
Vansice. Had long connections in Iowa and Arizona. His only court records were for drunken driving and traffic violations.
KIMT profile
Station is licensed federally for service to Mason City but its largest audience is 90 miles away in the much larger three-station Rochester, Minnesota, market. The station maintains a news bureau and sales office in Rochester as well as a sales office in Albert Lea. On air first in 1954 as KGLO and owned by the Lee Enterprises newspaper chain. The station was owned by Spartan Radiocasting of South Carolina at the time Huisentruit disappeared. A CBS affiliate. It was purchased in 2016 by Heartland Media of Georgia for $115 million.