We had an interesting development in the Jody Housentrude case, or surrounding the case, over the last week here in the local area.

In Mason City, which is where Jody Housentrut was a news anchor when she went missing before reporting to work on June 27, 1995.

Two summers ago, a series of four billboards were erected in Mason City in honor of what would have been

Jody's 50th birthday. They were paid for and organized by the team at findjody.com, which is that

website of journalists and former investigators who have made it their mission to make sure

that Jody's case stays at the top of people's minds. And along those lines,

the billboards were unveiled. I was actually one of those who attended the billboard unveilings

a couple of summers ago. Over the following months and the year plus that's gone by, eventually

the funding for most of the billboards ran out. In fact, the funding for all of them ran out,

but the billboard company had donated their space for one of those billboards so that Jody's

face could again be present in Mason City every single day, and so that people might think about

her case when they saw the billboard during their date-to-day life.

But for all the media attention that they'd received at their unveiling two summers ago,

the billboard and Jody's case received even more attention last week.

And a billboard intended to bring awareness to a decades-old cold case was found vandalized with spray paint this

morning in Mason City. Two people in dark clothing were seen on surveillance footage parked behind a

nearby tavern committing the crime. From the best information that we've been able to gather,

at 11.30 p.m. or so on New Year's Eve, two men using a ladder that they'd stashed at the scene sometime earlier, went about to facing the remaining Jody Hoosentrute, find Jody Billboard.

Along the bottom of the billboard, they wrote four words. First, the name of a long time and now retired Mason City police officer who investigated Jody's case,

and then the words machine shed in yellow spray paints on the dark billboard.

Steve Ridge, a close follower and independent investigator of Jody's case.

And brought it around and very methodically moved the ladder along to write the letters.

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