Chilling Twist Revealed In Beloved News Anchor’s Shocking Disappearance

Jodi Huisentruit was one of the most recognizable faces on Iowa’s evening news programs when she disappeared without a trace in the summer of 1995. Now, for the first time, authorities say they may finally have a clue about what may have happened to her.

Huisentruit was just 27 years old when she vanished, leaving behind a shattered family and an enduring mystery that has haunted KIMT, the Mason City station where she had worked.

Police investigated her home only to conclude they saw no evidence of foul play. However, a search of her personal belongings — scattered across the floor — led them to consider the possibility that she was abducted.

No suspect has ever been named in the case. Huisentruit was declared legally dead in 2001 at the age of 32.

A new Hulu docuseries is bringing the spotlight back to her disappearance and includes interviews from some of the cold case specialists who believe an answer to her disappearance is still out there.

“I think that the case is absolutely solvable,” Jeff Brinkley, police chief of Mason City, told NewsNation this year.

“Her Last Broadcast: The Abduction of Jodi Huisentruit” debuts July 15 on the streaming service and features “never-before-seen material and new, groundbreaking” information about the case.

The documentary is produced by ABC News, the news outlet overseeing KIMT, where reporters lost a colleague, friend, and family member.

Remarkably, the series implicates the ex-husband of a friend of Huisentruit as a likely suspect. He was a Wisconsin resident at the time and was named as a person of interest when the case first opened.

Huisentruit’s friend claims she approached investigators in 2022 about her ex-husband, the second time she had done so. Her outreach came after watching the 20/20 segment “Gone at Dawn,” which covered Huisentruit’s intrepid rise and untimely fall.

The woman claims in the new documentary that she had emailed police in 2017, but nothing came of it.

“The 20/20 show, that’s why I reached out to Mason City police,” the woman says, People reports. “I’m positive he went to Mason City, and he met with Jodi. I’m 100-percent positive. He always asked about Jodi. He needs to be looked at.”

The couple completed their divorce on June 23, 1995. Huisentruit went missing just four days later. This month marks the 30th anniversary of her disappearance.

“We’ve had a lot of people call and say, ‘My ex-husband did it,’” Mason City Police Investigator Terrance Prochaska, a central protagonist in the show, tells the documentary team. “But we know that you were one of her close friends. We call this a very high-priority lead.”

The tip led authorities to a remote area of Winsted, Wisconsin, where they scoured the ground for human remains but were unsuccessful. The search is a climactic moment in “Her Last Broadcast.”

Maria Awes, the executive producer, told the Pioneer Press it was important to “examine all the evidence” in the case, including three other individuals named as persons of interest.

“It’s also to show that for Mason City police, this isn’t really a cold case for them,” she said. “They’ve been working on it for decades. We wanted to get all this information out there, keep Jodi and her story, her legacy, top of mind. Hopefully, somebody who has any missing piece of information pertaining to any person of interest featured here or otherwise, will contact police. That’s just so critical for getting this case solved.”