Secrets in the cornfield: Iowa's Unsolved · True crime podcast

The Murder of Sarah Ann Ottens Part 1

·35 min·2 clips

Dr. T.T. Bozek said Sarah Ann Ottens died of suffocation from multiple neck injuries.

Megan says the case needs two parts. She begins in March 1973 at the University of Iowa during spring break, when most students leave campus and Sarah Ann Ottens stays behind. Sarah is 20, from Morrison, Illinois, and finishing nursing school after transferring to Iowa for her sophomore year. She lives on the fourth floor of Reno Hall, a dorm that held around 500 students. Brenda Simpson returns from Waterloo and meets Sarah there. The two collect their mail and split up. Sarah heads to the basement to buy cigarettes. Brenda goes to Slater Hall to see her boyfriend George Proctor. Around 5 p.m., Brenda returns for her purse and notices a strange smell near Sarah’s room. Later, around 11:30 p.m., she comes back with George to invite Sarah over for chicken and TV. She knocks on room 429 and hears Sarah’s cats moving around inside. No one answers. Brenda checks room 408 and finds no sign of Sarah. She opens room 429 and finds Sarah face down on the floor under a bedspread. Megan then jumps ahead to the six-month investigation and the trial that begins on May 13, 1974. She says James Hall had been a prime suspect from the start, kept invoking the Fifth Amendment when brought in, and that prosecutor Gary Woodward opens the trial with Brenda’s testimony. Megan also notes that most of the reporting comes from old newspaper articles, so some of the courtroom coverage stays vague. The episode closes by saying Hall was convicted, but that the case still does not end there.

As heard by us

A careful campus murder story built on testimony, silence, and an unfinished record.

Part one treats Sarah Ann Ottens' murder as a plainspoken true-crime account of a University of Iowa campus death that still does not feel fully settled.

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Why you'd press play

You want a campus murder story that starts in a dorm room and keeps moving.

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