40 years after 'Waverly stranglings,' a renewed search for answers
Julia Benning lived on a farm near Clarksville, but she wanted to experience the wider world....
...The oldest of five daughters of Lowell and JoAnn Benning, Julia had been the picture of a good farm girl, following her father around to do chores as a youngster, growing into a beautiful 4-foot-11-inch tall young woman who sang in the Plainfield High School choir, played in the band and performed for the speech team.
But with no money to attend college, Julia went to nearby Waverly to find a job after high school...
...Julia, 18, walked into the Sir Lounge in Waverly and was hired on the spot as a cocktail waitress. That it was a strip club pained her religious parents....
...On Nov. 28, 1975, the day after spending Thanksgiving with her parents, Julia was seen walking to work. But then, she disappeared....
...JoAnn Benning she tried to talk her daughter out of working at the club, but the young woman they more commonly called "Julie" said she wanted to be an "independent woman" and promised she would never be a stripper. She made pottery and chokers out of bear claws, feathers and beads, and sewed the dress she wore that last day on the way to work....
...The bar staff called her the next day to say Julia hadn't shown up for work on Friday. They waited a day before going to police. The family searched in fields and buildings in the area....
...Five months passed, and a black car pulled into the driveway....
...Julia's naked body was found by a county maintenance worker in nearby rural Butler County. She had been strangled, and her body was stuffed in a culvert, washing out with the March rains.
A homicide investigation ensued....
...In the months following the murder, questions arose.
Her case was similar to that of Valerie Kossowsky, 14, whose strangled body was found in 1971 on a creek bank off a gravel road near Waverly. Six months after Julia's body was found, 20-year-old Wartburg College sophomore Lisa Peak's nude body was found in a ditch north of Waverly. She had also been strangled.
The three unsolved cases became known as the "Waverly stranglings." Bremer County Sheriff's Department detective David MacDonald believes they may be connected....
...Recently, the sorrow was channeled into a new lead. A man from a nearby small town told Carol Kean he was at the Sir Lounge the night of the murder and named the people responsible....
...Waverly Police Capt. Jason Leonard said he has taken information from the man, and police have looked into every new lead. But there hasn't been any "new information" in the past two years, he said. ...
