Crime Immemorial

On the morning of Monday, July 10th, 1967, in Des Moines, Iowa, twenty-five-year-old Leota Camp saw her husband Raymond off to his job at the Iowa Employment Security Commission, then set about her tasks for the day, which included doing laundry and looking after her three children: four-year-old Kevin, three-year-old Brenda, and three-month-old Kristine.

The day had started out cool and drizzly, but by late morning, the sun had peeked out and the temperature had risen into the 80s. Kevin and Brenda went out into the backyard to play, and for a brief time their mother watched over them as she hung the washing out on the line to dry. She went back inside at a little before noon.

Not long afterward, the two children were beginning to get hungry and decided to go back into the house for lunch. Their mother, strangely, wasn’t in the kitchen, and neither was she in the living room, though the baby was lying on the living room floor on a white blanket with a bottle of warm milk clutched in her chubby hands.

Kevin and Brenda made their way toward the rear of the house, calling for their mother. In the front bedroom, though, they were met with an appalling sight: Leota Camp was sprawled face-down across the bloody bedspread, a knife protruding from her back. Her wrists and ankles had been bound with neckties, and another necktie was stuffed into her mouth as a gag.

Kevin pulled the knife out of his mother’s back and placed it on the bed beside her, and then the terrified children ran next door and told their neighbor, Nelle Edwards, that, “Mommy’s bleeding.” An ambulance arrived in short order, and though emergency personnel attempted to revive Leota on the ride to the hospital, she was pronounced dead on arrival.

Leota Camp had not been sexually assaulted, but had been stabbed four times in the back, and one of these wounds had punctured her lung. There were no bruises or other signs that Leota had struggled, leading investigators to surmise that the killer had forced compliance from her by threatening her baby.

The murder weapons were two knives from the same kitchen set; one knife was the one Kevin saw jutting out of Leota’s back, while the other was also at the scene, though its handle was nowhere to be found and only its blade was recovered.

The brazen and senseless slaying shocked the entire neighborhood, and left police baffled. It was theorized that the killer had entered the house while Leota had been outside hanging the laundry, and that perhaps she had surprised the intruder when she came back inside sooner than he expected. The motive did not appear to have been robbery, for nothing had been taken or disturbed.

Several witnesses on the street had seen the man who was believed to be the attacker. He was described as a tanned white male between the ages of twenty and twenty-five, of average height, with curly brown hair and a stocky build. He was clad in jeans and a brown and white plaid shirt. Neighbors had seen him park his black Ford Mustang near the Camps’ home at around eleven a.m., and he was also spotted walking across their front yard. Another resident told police this same man had left the house at a few minutes past noon.

A composite sketch of the suspect was produced and distributed, and detectives followed up on every lead concerning the specific type of Ford Mustang seen parked on the street on the day of Leota Camp’s murder. Leota’s husband Raymond also provided a tip when he informed police that Leota had received a strange, obscene phone call to their unlisted number only two weeks previously, though it was unclear whether this call was related to the crime. A few other sources also assert that several other women in the neighborhood had reported similar phone calls.

Though authorities fielded hundreds of leads from people who claimed to recognize the man in the sketch, and though Raymond Camp offered a large reward for information, the investigation into Leota’s slaying was ultimately unsuccessful. Some researchers have laid blame for the crime at the feet of counterfeiter, rapist, and suspected serial killer James Mitchell DeBardeleben, who closely resembled the sketch of Leota Camp’s assailant. DeBardeleben, however, died in 2011, and the extent of his involvement, if any, was never determined.

In later years, a woman named Carol Wuetherich came forward and told the Des Moines Register that she believed she herself had actually been the target of the killer. In 1967, she stated, she had lived only a few houses down from the Camp family, and in fact had seen the black Mustang parked on the street as she went to run errands on the day Leota was murdered.

Carol told the paper that she long suspected her own life was in danger, and that perhaps someone had sent a hit man to kill her, but that the hit man had gone to the wrong house. She did not elaborate on why she believed a hit man would be targeting her, however

Raymond Camp and the three Camp children, now grown, are still awaiting closure and justice in the heartbreaking crime.