Seventeen-year-old Judy Ann Corbin had always been something of a wild child, and during her younger years had spent some time in the juvenile justice system during her family’s stint in California, while her father was serving there in the Navy.
After the Corbins had moved back to their native Iowa, Judy had struck out on her own, holding down three part-time jobs—as a men’s clothing store clerk, a tea room waitress, and a go-go dancer –and living in room 401 of the Chamberlain Hotel in downtown Des Moines.
Judy was evidently seen by witnesses at around eight p.m. on the evening of Tuesday, April 18th, 1967, and at around nine p.m., another tenant at the hotel reported hearing an argument between a young woman and a young man coming from another room in the hotel, though not the one that Judy was living in.
All was apparently quiet until the following day, when a maid named Loera Frederickson entered room 522 of the Chamberlain at a little before noon and discovered the blood-drenched remains of Judy Corbin, propped up against the bathroom wall. She had been stabbed once in the throat, and had subsequently bled to death.
Judy was found fully clothed, and other than the bed not being made, the room was strangely undisturbed, with no signs of a struggle. Room 522 was found to have been registered to a twenty-one-year-old Des Moines man by the name of Curtis Chittenden, who according to relatives had dated Judy Corbin some time before, but had since broken up with her. Curtis was questioned by authorities, but released after no solid evidence could be found linking him to the crime.
The next suspect to draw the focus of investigators was forty-three-year-old Ralph Reynolds, a prisoner with only a fifth-grade education who was on day-release to work his six a.m. to four p.m. shift in the boiler room at the Chamberlain Hotel. Reynolds had a long rap sheet, including charges ranging from receiving stolen property to bootlegging to aggravated robbery to car theft to rape. He also had a persistent habit of escaping or attempting to escape from custody whenever he was apprehended.
Reynolds denied involvement in the killing of Judy Ann Corbin, but was arrested and placed on trial for the crime later that year. Despite his extensive criminal history, the fact that he worked at the hotel where Judy was killed, and the fact that he had tried yet another escape while being brought to the Polk County Jail to be arraigned for Judy’s murder, a jury deliberated for only four hours before declaring him not guilty, on the grounds that the prosecution could provide no compelling evidence to connect him to the slaying.
After the release of Ralph Reynolds, the case went cold, and whoever left Judy Corbin to die in the bathroom of an Iowa hotel remains a mystery.
Crime Immemorial 