At around six p.m. on the evening of October 18th, 1971, twenty-one-year-old Karen Theresa Streed was spotted on a street corner in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, attempting to thumb a ride. Earlier that day, she had informed her coworkers at the American Optical Co. that she was planning to hitchhike to the campus of the University of Iowa, where her husband Ron was a student.
Unfortunately, whoever picked Karen up that evening was a merciless predator.
Six days after she went missing, on October 24th, Karen’s body was spotted floating face down in the Amana millrace canal by a seventeen-year-old hunter. Karen had been killed by four gunshots to the head, and had also been bludgeoned three times with a blunt instrument. Investigators determined that she had been dead for somewhere between two to five days.
She was still wearing the clothing she had last been seen in, though her boots, poncho, and rain slicker were missing and never recovered. Police were also able to establish that Karen had likely not been dumped where she was found, but that her killer had disposed of her farther upstream, after which her body had washed down to where it was ultimately discovered.
One person of interest in the case was arrested on the very day of the finding of the remains; this individual was driving a car bearing California plates, and stopped to ask officers if he could help in the search. Upon questioning him, police believed he was lying about who he was and what he was doing there, and further noted that the man would not produce any identification. Though this individual was detained and interrogated about the murder, however, he was eventually cleared of suspicion.
Interestingly, there were two other murders of young women in Iowa which took place at roughly the same time as the murder of Karen Streed. On October 17th, for example, eighteen-year-old Jeanine Marie Christensen had been raped and strangled in her Storm Lake apartment, though her fiancé Michael Dean Petersen would ultimately be convicted of the slaying.
Likewise, October 23rd saw the murder of twenty-three-year-old Karen Ann Goers, who was shot several times in the head and dumped in a ditch. Though an Oskaloosa man named Charles Silvers was arrested for the crime, it is unclear whether he had any connection to the death of Karen Streed, and her case remains open as of this writing.
Crime Immemorial 