IA IA - Leota Hodges Camp, 25, Des Moines, 10 July 1967

[Backwoods]

I happened across this very sad and mysterious case while I was doing some reading about presumed serial killer James Mitchell "Mike" Debardeleben; there is a commenter on the linked site who feels strongly that Leota's murder was Debardeleben's doing. He/she makes a pretty good argument, and, to me, the sketch does somewhat resemble MD -- but I am certainly not "convinced". Interesting, though.

At any rate -- I checked and didn't see Leota's case in Cold Cases here at WS.

My heart goes out to her then-very-young two oldest children, who found their mother bound and stabbed on her bed while their infant sister sucked on a freshly-prepared bottle nearby.

http://iowacoldcases.org/case-summaries/leota-camp/

One detail about this case reminds me of another case I've seen -- on WS, I'm pretty sure -- but I can't remember the victim/state. Leota had just hung out some laundry on the clothesline, then returned to the house, where she was soon attacked. In the other case I'm thinking of, the wife/mother also had been hanging clothes -- but in that case, as I recall, she disappeared, possibly abducted, and was never found. I remember that in that other case, there was something about a large withdrawal from a banking account ... leading some to speculate that the woman left of her own free will, I believe, and perhaps also leading some to suspect her husband. I didn't get either of those feelings, myself, IIRC. (Anyhow, thinking that if by chance Mike Debardeleben WAS involved in Leota's murder, it might be interesting to look back at this other case I'm speaking of...considering MD's penchant at times for extortion, banking scams, etc. Can anybody point me to that other case?)

ETA: I found the missing person case I was thinking of -- it's here:
http://www.websleuths.com/forums/sh...lingham-30-Aug-1978&highlight=hanging+laundry

Going to review it.

 

[joejs89]

Another poster on the ICC website states that the rumor was that the perpetrator was known to police but the state didn't want to bring him back for trial, as possibly he was doing a long stretch in another state. It has been known to happen.

 

[PastTense]

48 years later, memory of a mother's brutal death lingers

It was a typical summer day in 1967. Leota Camp kissed a goodbye to her husband, Ray, as he went off to his job at the Iowa Employment Security Commission.

Like the many other stay-at-home mothers in the working-class Des Moines neighborhood on Fleming Avenue, a block east of Lower Beaver Road, she had housework to do and children to supervise.

Brenda, 3, and Kevin, 4, played in the back yard as Camp hung laundry on the line, leaving to check on her 3-month-old, Kristine, inside.

It was getting close to noon. Brenda and Kevin grew hungry and went inside to ask their mother for lunch.

What they found was a horror — one that 48 years later, still has no answers.

Their mother, Leota, was in the front bedroom, lying face down on the bed, her hands tied behind her back and legs tied together at the ankles with men's neckties, while another was used as a gag. A knife protruded from her bloodied back.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/st.../30682451/?from=global&sessionKey=&autologin=

 

[Backwoods]

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/st.../30682451/?from=global&sessionKey=&autologin=

Thanks for posting this good anniversary article, and the touching video of Leota's daughter. Those poor kids. Sure hope this coverage may bring something to light somehow.

 

[swedeheart]

Starts at 1:14:00.

 

[Richard]

Leota Camp,25
Des Moines, IA
Polk County
Case # 1967-10836
July 10, 1967

Case summary by Jody Ewing

The drizzling began the night before, and by 1 a.m. on Monday, July 10, 1967, the low rumbling thunder gave way to light rain across the sleeping city.

The day would break at 69 degrees with drizzle turning to fog, and inside a neat, one-story home with blue-gray asbestos siding in Des Moines, Iowa, Raymond Camp, 25, would kiss his wife goodbye and head off for his job as a tabulating equipment operator for the Iowa Employment Security Commission.

Courtesy photo Brenda (Camp) Conklin
Leota Camp with children Kevin, Brenda, and baby Kristine in April 1967.
Leota Camp, also 25, had given birth to the couple’s third child, daughter Kristine, three months earlier, and the days teemed with activity as she tended to the baby and kept a watchful eye on their two older children, 4-year-old Kevin and 3-year-old Brenda, at their 3213 Flemming Ave. home.

On this day, the clouds finally cleared by mid-morning, and Kevin and Brenda went outside to play in the back yard. A little while later, their mother came out to check on them and hang clothing on the clothesline. With temperatures heading for the high 80s, the baby’s diapers and kids’ clothing would be dry in no time.

Just after 12:00 p.m., the two youngsters went back inside, and though “Baby Kristy” lay nursing a warm bottle of milk on a white blanket on the living room floor, their mother was nowhere to be seen.

“Mommy’s Bleeding”
The two children found her in the home’s front bedroom, lying face down on the bed. Blood soaked the bed around her and a knife protruded from her back. Kevin removed the knife and the two children then ran crying to the next-door neighbor’s home.

“Mommy’s bleeding,” they told Mrs. Mary Groe of 3209 Flemming.

Mrs. Groe ran to the Camp home, saw Mrs. Camp on the bed, and rushed out the door calling for Mrs. Nelle Edwards — the Camps’ neighbor to the west who lived at 3215 Flemming — who was out in her front yard. The two women raced back to the Camp home, where Mrs. Edwards went into the bedroom to see what had happened.

Leota lay face down, fully clothed in a blouse, skirt and shoes, her arms crossed and tied behind her back with a necktie. Neckties also bound her neck and ankles, and a necktie had been stuffed into her mouth as a gag.

The blood-stained six-inch kitchen knife used to stab the young mother lay on the bed beside her. According to Mrs. Edwards, Leota moaned, but wasn’t able to answer any questions.

A fire department rescue squad administered artificial respiration for seven minutes on the way to Broadlawns Polk County Hospital, but pronounced Mrs. Camp DOA.

Officials summoned Raymond Camp at work and asked he meet them at the hospital, where they notified him of his wife’s death.

A White Man in a Black Ford Mustang
Dr. Leo Luka, Polk County medical examiner, said Camp had been stabbed four times in the back and that the wounds had penetrated her lungs. She died, he said, of internal hemorrhaging, and there was no evidence she had been raped or sexually molested. Luka would later say he believed Mrs. Camp was slain by “a kook or pervert who got scared and panicked.”

Des Moines Police said the wounds were inflicted by two different knives from a kitchen set: the one found on the bed beside Mrs. Camp, and another of which police found the blade but not the knife’s handle.

Neighbors described to police a young white handsome man who had parked his car — a black Ford Mustang with louvers behind the doors — about a house and a half away from the Camp’s home about 11 a.m. He had a good tan, they said, was approximately 20 to 25 years old, 5′ 8″ to 5′ 10″ tall with brown, curly hair, was stockily built and wearing a brown and white plaid shirt and dark trousers.

They said the man cut diagonally across the Camp’s front yard and then entered the home. Another neighbor said he saw the man leave a few minutes before noon.

Luka believed the killer entered the home around noon while Mrs. Camp hung clothes in the back yard. When she came back into the house quicker than expected, she likely “walked into trouble,” he said, and the intruder probably threatened harm to her baby if she screamed or struggled.

Luka stated there were no signs of a physical struggle, no marks, bruises, or scratches on Mrs. Camp, and that nothing had been noted as missing from the home.

Suspect Sketch Released

Neighbors helped Detective Robert Weichman compile a composite sketch of the young man seen entering and leaving the Camp home, and within the first four days after the murder received approximately 500 calls with tips.

Courtesy photo Des Moines Register
Sketch of the suspect based on descriptions neighbors provided to police.

“We would like to talk with this man in the event he saw anything,” Des Moines Chief of Detectives Cleatus M. Leaming said in a Des Moines Register article dated July 12, 1967. “We’re digging just as hard and as fast as we can on this murder.”

Investigators also followed up on 1965 or 1966 “fastback” Ford Mustangs with louvers on the vehicle’s upper portion behind the doors.

On July 14, 1967, the Des Moines Register reported that Mrs. Camp had received an obscene telephone call a few weeks prior to her death. Raymond Camp told the Register his wife received the anonymous call “about one and a half or two weeks before the Fourth of July,” and that when she answered, a man asked, “Where you been?”

Thinking it might be a friend kidding her, Leota told the caller she’d been feeding the baby, to which he replied “I thought maybe you were … [an obscene expression],” Camp told authorities.

Their home phone number, Mr. Camp said, wasn’t even in the phone book so they thought some nut dialed it by mistake, and there had been no further calls.

On August 16, Raymond Camp offered a $2,500 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for his wife’s death. The reward was valid until Feb. 18, 1968, and though police received a handful of calls, none led to an arrest.

More than four decades later, Mr. Camp and his three grown children continue to wait for the one call that will lead to closure in a loving wife and mother’s still unsolved murder.

Leota Mae (Hodges) Camp was born January 20, 1942, in Kirksville, Adair County, Missouri, to Mrs. and Mrs. Forest Hodges.

She married Raymond Camp, and the couple had three children — son Kevin and daughters Brenda and Kristine.

Funeral services were held at 2 p.m. Thursday, July 13, at the Church of Christ in Unionville, Mo.

Burial was at Scobee Cemetery in Pollock, Missouri, in Sullivan County.

Information Needed
Anyone with information about Leota Camp’s unsolved murder is asked to contact the Des Moines Police Department at (515) 283-4864 or the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation at (515) 725-6010 or email at dciinfo@dps.state.ia.us.

Sources:

• Personal correspondence with Brenda (Camp) Conklin
• Des Moines Police Department, correspondence to Iowa Cold Cases
• Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation
• “United States Social Security Death Index,” database, FamilySearch.org, 20 May 2014), Leota Camp, Jul 1967; citing U.S. Social Security Administration, Death Master File, database (Alexandria, Virginia: National Technical Information Service, ongoing).
• Find a Grave Memorial
• “Who killed Leota Camp? 48 years later, and still no answer,” The Newton Daily News, Tuesday, October 6, 2015
• “‘Gone Cold’: Leota Camp case,” Part of the GONE COLD: EXPLORING IOWA’S UNSOLVED MURDERS series, by Mike Kilen, The Des Moines Register / nwestiowa.com, Monday, August 10, 2015
• “Who killed Leota Camp? 48 years later, and still no answer,” by Mike Kilen, The Des Moines Register / Independence Bulletin Journal, Mason City Globe-Gazette, Saturday, August 8, 2015
• “Gone Cold: Who killed Leota Camp?” by Mike Kilen, The Des Moines Register, Dickinson County News, The Tama News-Herald/Toledo Chronicle, Part of the GONE COLD: EXPLORING IOWA’S UNSOLVED MURDERS series, Thursday, August 6, 2015
• “Gone Cold: Who killed Leota Camp? 48 years later, and still no answer,” by Mike Kilen, The Des Moines Register / The Carroll Daily Times Herald, July 27, 2015
• “Who killed Leota Camp?” by Mike Kilen, The Des Moines Register and Sioux City Journal, July 26, 2015
• “48 years later, memory of a mother’s brutal death lingers,” by Mike Kilen, The Des Moines Register. This story is part of a “Gone Cold” series of stories exploring Iowa’s unsolved murders. July 26, 2015
• “IA – Leota Mae Hodges Camp, 25, Des, Des Moines – 10 July 1967 – mother of three murdered,” websleuths.com, January 25, 2015
• “Unsolved Iowa killings: friends ‘still feel scars’,” by Nick Lamberto, The Des Moines Register, Sunday, September 8, 1974
• “List of ‘case open’ slayings in Iowa,” (third page of linked PDF file), by Nick Lamberto, The Des Moines Register, September 8, 1974
• “Police Ask Aid in Tracing Car,” The Des Moines Register, Sunday, August 20, 1967
• “Reveal Slain Woman Got Obscene Call,” The Des Moines Register, Friday, July 14, 1967
• “Doctor Feels ‘Kook’ Killed D.M. Woman,” by Nick Lamberto, The Des Moines Register, July 12, 1967
• “Slayer of DM Housewife Called ‘Scared Pervert,'” The Cedar Rapids Gazette, Wednesday, July 12, 1967
• “Think ‘Kook’ Killed Mom Of Three,” The Waterloo Daily Courier, Wednesday, July 12, 1967
• “Doctor Thinks DM Murderer Is Pervert,” The Oelwein Daily Register, Wednesday, July 12, 1967
• “Driver Seen Near Murder Site Sought,” The Cedar Rapids Gazette, Tuesday, July 11, 1967
• “Des Moines Woman Slain,” The (WI) Capital Times, Tuesday, July 11, 1967
• “Hunt Killer of Young Mother of 3 at Des Moines,” The Waterloo Daily Courier, Tuesday, July 11, 1967
• “Police Press Search For DM Murderer,” The Oelwein Daily Register, Tuesday, July 11, 1967
• “HUNT SLAYER OF D.M. WOMAN — A YOUNG MAN IN BLACK CAR SEEN AT HOME; Victim Found After He Drove Away,” by James Beaumont, The Des Moines Register, Tuesday, July 11, 1967

LINK:

Leota Camp

 

[Richard]

1966 Ford Mustang Fastback like the one seen outside the Camp home at the time of the murder:

[URL='http://r.search.aol.com/_ylt=AwrExo51rJJgxzsAvK9jCWVH;_ylu=c2VjA3NyBHNsawNpbWcEb2lkAzRmNTFjYTFlOTY4ZDQ1NjJhYzA3NGMxY2Y2YTVlMTk0BGdwb3MDNgRpdANiaW5n/RV=2/RE=1620253942/RO=11/RU=http%3a%2f%2fclassiccarsmarks.com%2fimages%2ffull%2f1966-ford-mustang-hatchback-black-rwd-manual-fastback-1.jpg/RK=0/RS=UUmPEvSVm6kZz.uJk.HNs1hRbsw-'][/URL]

 

[Richard]

Bumping case up...

In 1968, a Michigan court convicted one Richard Leroy Carl of the 11 October 1966 murder of Mrs. Emily Housel in St. Louis, Michigan. He entered her home between 3 and 3:30 am and killed her with a knife taken from the kitchen sink.

Could there be a connection with the 1967 murder of Leota Hodge?

 

[samsmom]

Gray Hughes does a short video on this

 

[Richard]

Leota Hodges Camp,25, murdered 10 July 1967 in Des Moines, Iowa

LINK:

Leota Camp

Leota Camp, a 25-year-old mother of three, was bound, gagged, and stabbed in the back in her Des Moines home just past noon on July 10, 1967.

iowacoldcases.org

 

[cenazoic]

In re Richard Leroy Carl, I don’t think it can be him (although he’s an interesting suspect, see photo below); he was apprehended for the Housel murder 31 October 1966.

 

[Porshasmom22]

This is a very interesting comparison. The picture on the right is a sketch that was made using the neighbor’s statements. Also said he was around 20-25 and a stocky build.

 

[airportwoman]

Maybe this is just my own medical training coming through, but I wonder if she would have recovered had her son left the knife in place. Of course, we couldn't expect a 4-year-old to know something like that.

I'm from Des Moines and a member of Iowa Cold Case Files. Some people have speculated that BTK might have done it, but there's no evidence he was in the region at the time.

 

[Porshasmom22]

This is a very interesting comparison. The picture on the right is a sketch that was made using the neighbor’s statements. Also said he was around 20-25 and a stocky build.

Maybe this is just my own medical training coming through, but I wonder if she would have recovered had her son left the knife in place. Of course, we couldn't expect a 4-year-old to know something like that.

I'm from Des Moines and a member of Iowa Cold Case Files. Some people have speculated that BTK might

Maybe this is just my own medical training coming through, but I wonder if she would have recovered had her son left the knife in place. Of course, we couldn't expect a 4-year-old to know something like that.

I'm from Des Moines and a member of Iowa Cold Case Files. Some people have speculated that BTK might have done it, but there's no evidence he was in the region at the time.

Was there any DNA found at the scene?

 

[Richard]

Bumping this thread up.