Iowa : Donna Sue Davis
As I was researching this case, it just happened to fall on the same week as Rosie Tapia’s birthday. I’m not sure if it was the fact that it was her birthday during the week or if the similarities between Rosie’s story and this one caused my reflection. What is even more interesting is that Melissa stumbled upon a resource called the Rosie Tapia ID Project or (RTIP) this week as well. Through Intermountain Forensics, they are offering no-cost DNA testing of human remains for the states of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah to law enforcement. They provide free testing for 1 sample per unidentified person. You can purchase additional samples at the lab’s regular non profit rate, which I can assure you is less than a private lab rate. They also include up to 40 hours of Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy through their FIGG division. There is an easy application process so I encourage you to go to their website intermountainforensics.com for more information. While Intermountain Forensics does not service Iowa, where we are navigating advocacy today, I could not help but share this information in the event it could help someone within their region.
Hundreds of miles away in Sioux City, Iowa, and 40 years before Rosie’s death another tragedy occurred. It isn’t often we share trigger warnings on our show but this one warrants it.
Donna Sue Davis was born to James, who went by “Don”, and Mary Beatrice Davis on September 19, 1953. She had clear blue eyes and curly blonde hair. Donna had an older sister and an older brother. The family of five lived on the west side of Sioux City, Iowa on Isabella Street. The neighborhood was exactly what you would expect from a typical midwest town in Iowa. There were other kids in the neighborhood that rode their bikes in the street. Kids played outside without the fears that plague the world today. The neighborhood knew who the kids belonged to and everyone kept an eye out for one another. Donna Sue was known as “the darling of the neighborhood.”
I couldn’t find specific statistics from 1955, but in relation to crime, it was one of the warmest summers Iowa had seen in a while as well as one of the wettest. On Saturday July, 9, 1955, several inches of rain fell and caused flooding in many areas. The flood sirens even sounded in the overnight hours and electricity was lost for many residents.
Sunday morning the rain stopped and water began running down into the river. Sioux City is a beautiful city of around 75,000 in 1955 that sits along the Missouri River. You can visit three different states without leaving the city limits of Sioux City. It sits in the northwestern edge of Iowa right where South Dakota and Nebraska meet. It hosts many music festivals including the Saturday in the Park, and has many museums and art centers.
In the 1950s, central heat and air conditioning was not as commonplace as it is today. It wasn’t until the late 1960s that new builds would have them installed. Individual room air conditioning was more common but according to science direct.com in 1955 fewer than 2% of US homes had the luxury of air conditioning. It was much more common to have an open or cracked window for the late summer breeze cooling your home at night. This was the usual plan for the Davis family in their duplex on Isabella st. The family of 5 lived in the downstairs duplex.
Photo: Iowa Cold Case
21 month old Donna Sue shared the room with her parents. Her crib was placed against the wall near the foot of the bed. Next to it was placed a cedar chest below the bedroom window to the left of the crib. Sunday, July 10, 1955 the temperatures reached over 95* at the heat of the day. That evening, Donna Sue’s mother went through her typical bedtime routines. She gave her daughter a bath, dressed her in pink pajamas, and laid her down in her crib around 9:30 pm. Even at less than 2 years old, Donna Sue would already have that girly girl personality about her. She was always carrying her teddy bear, doll and bright red purse. At night this was no different. Donna Sue needed her bear, rubber doll and purse all in the crib with her. I remember this stage of life with my kids as toddlers. When they have their favorite items and they are still learning how to communicate with you, they will sleep with the strangest items because it's their favorite at the time.
Mary tucked Donna Sue in and noted that the window was open to allow a breeze in to help pull the temperatures still in the 80s down. The two older children were already in bed, so Mary heads to the kitchen to have a relaxing evening catching up on current events in the newspaper.
Don was watching television in the living room. It was a typical Sunday evening in the Davis household.
The neighborhood was quiet and seemingly calm. The Davis’ upstairs neighbor was enjoying the nightly breeze on his balcony and across the street Mr. Berger was sitting in his backyard also enjoying the evening. The way this is described in several articles is exactly what I picture of a neighborhood in the 50s.
Photo: Iowa Cold Case
Around 9:35 pm, Mr. Berger, noticed a man cross over the hedges on the Davis’ side of the duplex and walked down the side of the home. He couldn’t really see what he was doing but he was walking upright. A few minutes later, he sees the same man walking back the way he came but stooped over.
Another neighbor, Mr. Fjeldos who shares a property line with the Davis’ back lot but lives around the corner and two houses down, hears his dog Rex barking. Mrs. Fjeldos heads to the back door and flips on her outdoor light to let their dog inside and she notice a man who appears to be carrying something in his arms. This was cause for concern and Mrs. Fjeldos alerts her husband. He grabbed a flashlight and headed out to see who was near the back of their property. When Mr. Fjeldos points the light towards the man he stooped behind a bush.
Mr. Fjeldos was already on edge when it came to vandals as a couple of weeks before their dog alerted them to someone trying to break into their car.
Mr. Fjeldos asked his wife to keep the light on the stranger while he called the police. This potential vandal was wearing a white tshirt and khaki trousers. At 9:37 pm, the Sioux City Police are alerted to the suspicious man cornered in Mr. Fjeldos’ property and they dispatch an officer. Before they get there, the suspicious person runs away. Mr. Fjeldos chased him and remembered that he was running strangely and hunched over the bundle in his arms. It appeared to be something wrapped in a blanket.
Mr. Fjeldos loses the man in between some bushes one block down from the Davis’ home on Isabella St.
At 9:40 pm, just 10 minutes after having laid her down for the evening, Don got up to check on his youngest daughter. When he went into the room he did not see her but thought she may be under her blanket. He called out to his wife asking where Donna Sue was and before she could answer, he noticed the screen was missing from the window.
He immediately called the police. As they were unaware of the encounter their neighbor had, it wasn’t long before police arrived because they were already on route to the neighborhood. Mr. Fjeldos was standing in front of his home waiting for law enforcement to arrive to give his statement about the prowler when he heard Mary start screaming from her home that her baby was missing.
I know I already said this, but this truly is what I would imagine happens in many neighborhoods, especially in the 50s. The sense of community was much stronger then than it is now. Several neighbors heard Mary’s screams and come to help.
Statements are given from Mr. Berger about the strange person he saw skulking around the house just a few minutes earlier. Mr. Fjeldos recounts his chase and the upstairs neighbors stated they did not see anything unusual.
Over 25 neighbors participate in an immediate foot search of the vacant fields and houses in the area. Don gets in his car and begins searching as well. For 1955, the timeline of this event seems that law enforcement were really on top of their game when it came down to an immediate response. Volunteers and law enforcement alike were coming together to find this little girl.
The immediate leads they had seemed promising. They had a description of the potential perpetrator, they had a tight timeline of when the abduction occurred, and they had hands on help.
Around 11pm, Sioux City police receive a call from a man who heard the report on the radio while driving in South Sioux City Nebraska. He tells them that when he was driving through the nearby town of Elk Point, South Dakota around 10 pm that evening he saw a man at a motel in a white t-shirt and khaki trousers standing beside a black Chevrolet 2 door sedan holding a baby in his arms. At the time, the caller had no knowledge of what had happened in Sioux City but he could remember the license plate number.
Sioux City PD recruits the help of the Elk Point police department to check the motel. The man and car was long gone by the time local authorities arrived.
Evidence at the Davis home was collected, including the window screen and fingerprints off of the cedar chest in hopes to gain a match with someone. The abductor had to have climbed into the window to grab Donna Sue and then back out due to the crib not being near the window but beside it.
Photo: Iowa Cold Case
Investigations and searches continued through the night without any new leads.
The following morning three FBI Officers from the Omaha Field Office came in as consultants as they couldn’t come in on official capacity. There were no ransom requests or proof of the abductor crossing state lines.
The Air National Guardsmen and extra police, dozens of more volunteers had shown up by Monday afternoon. Still no new leads.
Around 3:45 pm, Mr. Oehlerking, a farmer across the river in South Sioux City Nebraska, was driving his tractor north of his farm when he noticed something in the ditch. When he went to get a closer look he noticed it was the bottom half of a baby’s pink pajama pants and a pair of rubber pants. It was described as the kind normally worn over a baby’s diaper. The farmer stops and turns around and heads back to his farmhouse to phone the police and alert his wife.
His wife immediately gets into her car to go pick up her own daughters from Girl Scout Camp. She stops at her sister in law’s house and alerts her to what was found and the two agree to set out and start searching the area.
The two women drove along Old Back Road in separate vehicles, looking for any evidence. Mrs. Oehlerking drove about a half mile past the farm and her daughter in the backseat yelled that they had seen Donna’s body. Mrs. Oehlerking pulls over and walks 15 feet west off of the road into a cornfield.
The waist high corn shielded Donna Sue’s lifeless body. Her arms were above her head and her tiny body was covered in blood and bruises with her pink pajama top wrapped around her neck.
Mrs. Oehlerking asked her sister in law to take the girls back to the house and call police while she stayed with Donna Sue. She found an old paper sack and covered the remains.
Approximately 30 minutes later police arrived on scene and took the clothing to the Davis’s for identification. Investigators noted that due to the broken corn stalks it seemed as though Donna’s body had likely been tossed from a car.
After the Davis’ positively identified the pajamas, Donna Sue’s body was taken for autopsy where they learned she had died from blunt force trauma approximately 10-12 hours prior. The coroner also listed that Donna Sue had been raped, sodomized, beaten, had her left jaw broken and had cigarette and lighter burns on her buttocks.
On Tuesday there were a few calls about a hitchhiker in the area of a man that matched the description of the perpetrator along Highway 12. Officers were dispatched but they were unable to find the man fitting the lead.
That afternoon, a “John Doe Warrant” was filed giving the authorization to officers throughout the country permission to arrest and hold anyone suspected. Six agents from the FBI also joined the investigation in official capacity through the Lindbergh Act.
Donna Sue was laid to rest on Wednesday, July 13, 1955, and her story was reaching national headlines. J. Edgar Hoover even learned of her murder and demanded the perpetrator be found and held responsible.
Over the coming weeks more leads were uncovered, and suspects looked into. When alibi’s checked out on all of the suspects, the town grew uneasy. Security systems were not commonplace and people relied on guard dogs and weapons to protect their households.
A $2,387 reward was raised including $500 coming from the state of Iowa. This is the first time the state had ever pledged a reward to a criminal case. $2,387 in 1955 is $26,533 today.
In December of 1955, a butcher from nearby Onawa, Iowa, confessed to raping and killing Donna Sue when he had been arrested for intoxication and disorderly conduct. When FBI agents question him, he recants his original confession. To verify that his confession was indeed false, they learn that this man had been in Des Moines, Iowa around 7pm the night Donna Sue was taken and he could not have made it to Sioux City in time to commit the murder as Des Moines is approximately 3 hours away.
In the following year another man was questioned and ruled out as a person of interest. In 1957 the reward once offered for Donna Sue’s murderer was closed and all of the donations returned to the original donor.
Donna’s case goes cold until 1958 when 8 to 10 other persons were brought in for polygraph tests. This is the last known update from Donna Sue’s case.
If you have any information about Donna Sue Davis’ murder please contact the Sioux City Police Department at 712.279.6390 or contact the FBI at 800. 225.5324.
Bryan "Vladek" Hasel, described as 5’8” with blondish-brown hair and blue eyes, If you have any information please contact the Orange County Sheriff’s Office missing persons unit at 407-254-7000, with case number 21-83864.
