22 year old Jolene Hass grew up in Iowa. She had met A.J. Rippatoe in Ft. Dodge, Iowa. they both eventually moved to Sioux City, Iowa. This was where Jolene began to do prostitution. She was deep in drug culture and the local outlaw motorcycle gangs. She eventually became an informant that testified against many people including A.J. Rippatoe.
In 1975 Jolene was supposed to testify against several suspects in the fall of 1975. She was then moved to Sturgis where she had been beaten and raped by 3 unknown males trying to buy drugs from her. Two days after the rape they moved her to the Delroy motel in Rapid City, South Dakota. She was then going by Jolene Schutt and was working for the police department for 3 months.
On November 10, 1975 Hass was found murdered in her motel room by a a RCPD detective and DCI agent to check on their witness. She was stabbed multiple times with possibly a switchblade.The knife was not found, the rope she was strangled with was found around her neck. The found that she eaten right before her death. They think that when she went out to eat that she may had been noticed by someone.
At first they did not reveal the nature of her death and what she had done, because they hoped someone would brag about killing a narc. At least one of the investigators believed that it was a hired killing by one of the people she was informing against.
There was one person who claimed to have murdered Hass for money, but when confronted they said they didn't. They also took a polygraph that confirmed this. Then in 1977 another suspect of this case was found buried in cornfield. He was killed by James Cowell, who was part of the El Forestos Motorcycle Gang, was prosecuted for the suspects murder along with the murder of his girlfriend and two mechanics.
This case remains unsolved.
SOURCES:
https://www.rcgov.org/departments/police-department/investigations/unsolved-homicides-309.html
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/13919791/jolene_hass_murder/
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/13919880/jolene_hass_murder/
http://law.justia.com/cases/iowa/supreme-court/1976/58995-0.html (Article of a case against Janice Ivory that Jolene Hass was an informant on. Case happened in 1974, but trial happened in 1976.)
http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/local/cold-cases-spanning-five-decades/article_12d44e06-0afd-5028-865b-fd0febca608b.html
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Thank you for calling attention to this cold case. A 22-yr-old Iowa woman becomes an informant, is moved to Sturgis, is raped there, is moved to Rapids City, is KILLED there....and her killer is murdered...Jolene's killer, James Edward Clark, frequented the Sir Lounge. Julie Benning, a cocktail waitress at The Sir, was killed only a few weeks after Jolene was silenced. (See Jody Ewing's Iowa Cold Cases website.)
ReplyDeleteJolene Hass was a valuable informant and had contacts in quite a few nightlife establishments, nightclubs, bars in the region extending from Sioux City to Waterloo.
The 1970s DCI (now known as BCI) made sure these cases went cold.