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Cryptic Message on Billboard of Missing Person Jodi Huisentruit
On New Year’s Eve 2020, vandals defaced a billboard of KIMT anchorwoman Jodi Huisentruit in Mason City, Iowa. The billboard is among three in Mason City which shows a picture of the missing news anchor, asking the question “Someone knows something, is it you?”
On New Year’s Eve, cryptic words were sprayed in bright yellow paint, reading “Frank Stearns Machine Shed” across the bottom half of the billboard. Frank Stearns was a longtime detective with Mason City Police Department who diligently worked Jodi’s case. Now retired, Stearns is a city death scene investigator.
Billboard Connection
In a bizarre twist of events, during 2011, the Globe Gazette reported that former Mason City police officer Maria Ohl accused two Mason City police officers and a retired Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) agent of being involved in the abduction and murder of Jodi.
Ohl, a ten-year veteran, said she received credible information from an informant in 2007, and again in 2009, who implicated Lt. Frank Stearns, Lt. Ron Vande Weerd, and Bill Basler in the abduction. Ohl said she told her superiors, but heard only crickets.
Ohl said she was terminated due to her handling of Jodi’s case information. “It’s horrifically disturbing. They’re still working on the taxpayers’ dollar — the whistleblower was put on administrative leave and terminated.”
Joshua Benson, an evening anchor at an Orlando ABC affiliate who founded FindJodi.com, said Ohl had also confided in him, but he could not find any information that would corroborate her claims. In fact, at the time the complaint was filed, an official investigation found no validity in Ohl’s claims.
Vandalism Incident
Cold Case investigator Steve Ridge told KIMT that he knows how and when the billboard was vandalized. He says two individuals dressed in black parked in the rear alley behind a tattoo parlor and erected an aluminum ladder against the wall at 11:30 p.m. on December 31, 2019.
