It was Friday, March 5th, 1971, and eighteen-year-old Palmer Junior College student Judith Anne Haecker had plans to hang out and have drinks with her friends at her one-room apartment on 15th Street in Davenport, Iowa.
Judith had been spending the day with her parents, who lived only a few blocks away, but they gave her a lift to her place at approximately nine-thirty p.m. During the drive, Judith happened to mention a man who lived in the same apartment building who had been annoying her, and her concerned parents offered to walk her up to her front door when they arrived at the complex. Judith, though, spotted one of her friends’ cars already parked in front of the building, indicating that the friend was already in the apartment, so Judith assured her parents that she would be fine.
Three of Judith’s friends were reportedly drinking wine in the apartment that night, and one of the male guests got fairly drunk, though everyone had left the party by around one-thirty a.m. Judith phoned her parents about half an hour after that, asking to speak to her sister, and nothing appeared to be unusual. It was the last time the Haeckers ever heard from their daughter.
Nearly two days later, on the evening of Sunday, March 7th, Judith’s mother came by the apartment at approximately six-thirty p.m. to pick Judith up for a church function. Mrs. Haecker noticed that two unread newspapers were sitting in front of the apartment door, and when she tried the knob, she found that the door was locked.
Knowing that Judith kept a spare key hidden near the door, Mrs. Haecker let herself into her daughter’s apartment. The moment she walked in, she spotted the body of Judith Haecker, lying face up on the bed, nude from the waist down, and partially covered with sheets.
Other than a window shade having been pulled down and left on the bed, there was no indication of a struggle or of forcible entry into the apartment, and nothing appeared to have been stolen or disturbed.
A post-mortem examination determined that Judith had been strangled and bludgeoned once in the head with a blunt object. It was unclear whether she had been sexually assaulted, and detectives did not believe that her clothing had been removed by force, which led them to speculate that perhaps the killer had known Judith or was there at her behest.
Despite interviewing half a dozen persons of interest in the days following the homicide, no arrests were ever made, and the case very quickly began to grow cold. As of this writing, authorities in Davenport still have no idea who murdered Judith Haecker or why.
Crime Immemorial 