THE VANISHING WOMEN OF IOWA II

Chapter Two The Teacher's Memory For nearly three decades, investigators possessed no name, no suspect, and no clear explanation for the disappearances. The first possible clue emerged in 1997. It arrived in the form of a handwritten letter mailed anonymously to the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation. The letter contained only two sentences. "You should ask about the Mercer girl from Benton County. She was strange long before the women disappeared." No return address was ever identified. No fingerprints were recovered. The tip led nowhere. At least initially. Yet years later, retired investigators revisiting the files discovered a forgotten interview conducted in 1975. The subject was a retired elementary school teacher named Eleanor Whitcomb. Her comments would become one of the strangest pieces of circumstantial evidence in the entire case. Interview Archive B Eleanor Whitcomb Former Elementary School Teacher Recorded: March 14, 1975 Q: Why did you contact investigators? Whitcomb: Because the newspaper sketch bothered me. Q: In what way? Whitcomb: It reminded me of someone. Q: Who? Whitcomb: A student I taught years ago. Q: What was her name? Whitcomb: Judith Mercer. Q: Why did she stand out? Whitcomb: Most children wanted friends. Judith studied people. Eleanor Whitcomb Interview Portrait (1975) According to school records, Judith Elaine Mercer was born in 1944. Her family lived outside the tiny farming community of Norway, Iowa. The Mercers occupied an aging farmhouse situated nearly two miles from the nearest paved road. The property no longer exists. It was demolished in 1986. Few photographs survive. What records remain paint an unsettling portrait. Mercer Family Farm (Late 1950s) School Records Teachers repeatedly described Judith as intelligent but detached. One report from 1956 stated: "Student exhibits unusual fascination with observing classmates rather than participating in activities." Another noted: "Appears capable of strong emotional expression when desired, but often displays little genuine reaction." Psychological evaluations were rare in rural Iowa schools during the 1950s. No formal assessment was ever conducted. Still, several instructors remembered her. That fact alone was unusual. Decades later, former classmates struggled to remember most children from those years. Nearly all remembered Judith. Interview Archive C Former Classmate Helen Rasmussen Interviewed 1998 Q: What do you remember about Judith? Rasmussen: Everybody remembers the eyes. Q: What about them? Rasmussen: She stared. Q: In what way? Rasmussen: Like she was trying to learn something. Q: Learn what? Rasmussen: I don't know. That's what scared people. Family Background Public records reveal little about the Mercer family. Father: Thomas Mercer Farm laborer. Mother: June Mercer Homemaker. Neighbors later described the household as isolated. One nearby resident recalled rarely seeing visitors. Another stated that the family often seemed disconnected from the surrounding community. No allegations of abuse were ever documented. No criminal history was discovered. Yet rumors persisted. Many surfaced only after the disappearances gained media attention. As with most cold cases, separating fact from folklore became increasingly difficult. Interview Archive D Neighbor Walter Jensen Interviewed 1982 Q: What was Judith like? Jensen: Quiet. Q: Anything else? Jensen: She'd walk. Q: Walk where? Jensen: Everywhere. Q: Alone? Jensen: Always. Q: Did that strike you as unusual? Jensen: Not until later. The Yearbook Photograph Among the most controversial items connected to the case is a single surviving high school yearbook image dated 1962. The photograph depicts a dark-haired teenage girl seated in the second row of a graduating class. Investigators never conclusively established whether the student was Judith Mercer. The yearbook's caption page was missing. School records from that year were partially destroyed in a flood. Several classmates identified the girl as Judith. Others insisted it was another student entirely. The debate continues among amateur researchers today. Yet one detail proved intriguing. Facial reconstruction specialists hired by a documentary production in 2004 concluded that the unidentified girl shared several characteristics with witness descriptions of the so-called Pontiac Woman. The findings were heavily disputed. No official law enforcement agency endorsed the comparison. Nevertheless, the image became central to public fascination with the case. The Mercer Girl - High School Yearbook Photograph (1962) A Sudden Disappearance The Mercer trail grows cold after 1963. Employment records become inconsistent. Residences change frequently. Names appear and disappear. Several women matching Judith's age surface briefly in records across Iowa, Illinois, and Minnesota. Whether any were actually Judith Mercer remains unknown. Then, in 1968, the disappearances begin. At first there is only one. Then two. Then three. No connection is recognized. No task force is assembled. No serial offender is suspected. Not until investigators place photographs of the missing women side by side do they notice something remarkable. Several had been seen in the company of the same unidentified woman. A woman who looked strikingly similar to the girl in the disputed yearbook photograph. Whether that similarity was coincidence, confirmation bias, or the first glimpse of a serial killer has never been determined. But by the autumn of 1972, another woman was gone. And this time, witnesses remembered far more than a cream-colored Pontiac. They remembered her smile. End of Chapter Two Next Chapter: "The Woman With Three Names" Investigators uncover evidence suggesting the mysterious woman seen before multiple disappearances may have used different identities across Iowa's hidden lesbian social scene between 1968 and 1973.