Rhonda Knutson /// Part 1 /// 665 | Forensic Files

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grab a beer let's talk some true [Music] [Applause] [Music] crime [Music] parts of the following are from The
Gazette at of Cedar Rapids an article by Val swin calling her murder a crazy Act
of wickedness the Reverend Bernard oper sought to comfort friends and relatives of Ronda kuden with a reminder she is in
a Heavenly mansion with Jesus Christ an overflow crowd of more than 500 mourners packed the Trinity Lutheran
Church for Canon's funeral her body was found in the back of the Williamstown store no motive had been established and
no arrest have been made things go Haywire in this world occasionally oper said as in ronda's
death someone allowed the power of evil to take over his life and snuff out Rhonda in Rhonda's case we can say what
does it mean there's got to be more than just the piece of iron wielded by a crazy
person in the middle of the night youth is more than just preparation for life he said it is life
itself you cannot use today to set the stage for tomorrow there may be no tomorrow this is true crime garage
[Music] [Applause] this week we go to a great place with a great name Chickasaw County in the
Hawkeye State Iowa Chickasaw County is in the almost very North Eastern part of the great state of Iowa about 12,000
people living in the the county so I'm picturing some wide openen spaces here the county is named after the Chickasaw
tribe and the county seat is New Hampton back in 1992 one person living in the county was 22-year-old Ronda Canon Ronda
was known to be a hard worker she was a creative person and an artist she came from a very big family Rhonda was one of
seven kids to parents married and Nells Canon that's six too many and we will see this was a very big family even
Beyond ronda's immediate family of nine people all of the seven kids have first names that start with the letter R so
today we are talking about Ronda and her brothers are Robert Roger Richard and Rodney and her sisters are Renee and
relle Ronda graduated from New Hampton High School in 198 where we pick up Rhonda's story she is
22 years old she's in a long-term relationship with her boyfriend Al it looks like they've been together for
about three years by this time and been living together for about two years just
to get this out of the way you say Chickasaw I say Chickasaw he how Ronda worked at the Philip 66 store this is an
open all day and all night 24-hour convenience store I'm guessing it would get a lot of traffic just given its
location it's just 6 miles south of new Hampton again that's the county seat everyone knows a key ingredient to a
successful business is the actual location and the potential traffic right right well this store is on US Highway
63 and just a quarter of a mile from the junction of Highways 63 18 and 346 so we're going to see a ton of
highway traffic people traveling across or through the state and especially semi-rs Ronda works the overnight shift
at the Philip 66 station I was an overnight worker for a couple years Captain many call it third shift we
called it third trick because often times these types of stores have close proximity to a highway or in this case
three highways that certainly increases the risk of a potential Rob y or holdup at this location now the overnight shift
when there are less employees and less customers coming in and out of the store this increases the possibility of the
store being targeted for such crimes as well more than one person in Rhonda's life encouraged her to switch to either
a different shift or to change jobs but Rhonda told everyone that she really liked working the overnight shift and
had done so for a period of time well anybody that has worked at a convenience store you you get regulars
and I will say from my experience working third shift it certainly has its pros and cons I guess one check mark in
the Pro column for Ronda would be that that is actually how she met her boyfriend she was working at the Philip
66 and at the time he was driving a truck for a cream company and so the two met there so this point of the story
takes us to the late summer of 199 this is Labor Day and I don't know if this has any bearing on our case but
Captain you know I'm always interested when a holiday is involved portions of the population operate on different
schedules on holidays and when we are talking a murder case as we often do here in the garage we are most certainly
going to discuss motive means and opportunity who has it and who doesn't is key so why while it may mean nothing
it also could mean everything so on this date Monday September 7 1992 Rhonda's overnight shift is the
9900 P p.m. to 5:00 a.m. time slot ronda's boss typically is the one to relieve her at the end of her shift when
he arrives he finds Rhonda dead in what is described as a back room her boss then sends in a call to emergency
service at 4:45 a.m. the general statements about this case are these in the early
morning hours of Monday September 7 1992 Ronda Annette kudon was murdered while working the 900 P.M to 5 a.m. shift at
the Phillips 66 convenience store in Chickasaw County the store was located 6 miles south of new Hampton on US Highway
63 and one4 mile north of the junction of the three highways the store was open 24 hours a day but
currently no longer exists so today due to road construction they have expanded the
lanes and the roads and the highways so where the gas station SL store once stood now is a road in place of that my
friend so it's determined right away that the probable cause of death was severe traumatic head injuries yeah this
would have been in severe traumatic head injuries from a beating with a blunt object now we talked about motive means
and opportunity already but we're going to try to sort through those things as we sift through the information that we
have in this case this case remains unsolved to this day we're talking over 30 years later and the family and law
enforcement and really the county it's a close-nit county in town of new Hampton
and Williamstown there's still looking for justice here in this case a lot of people have not forgotten about this
case 31 years later yeah it's interesting because this is a pretty popular case if you talk to people in
the area but just hasn't got the Coverage Nationwide law enforcement and there have been several different
agencies working this case over the years in fact the Iowa Department of Criminal investigations got involved
very early in the investigation I believe the Chickasaw County Sheriff's Department requested the assistance of
the FBI as well for them to get involved but I don't believe that they ever that
the FBI ever did any work on the case but regardless good by those at the sheriff's department to get or at least
request other agencies to get involved because this is a case that if you close your eyes you can picture it right it's
a case that takes place in the dark of night so I I think about this case as this brief quick isolated violent
incident going down in a matter of minutes well they always say that the 3:00 a.m. time slot is the witching hour
how long was the killer or killers in the store we are going to try to sort through that but it may have been only a
short period of time but you have this murder taking place in the stretch of land not a huge population this should
have just been another laid-back night at the gas station but because of the highways we could be talking about a
killer or killers that came from another town a city down the road on one of the
highways or another state and then the same is true for the Post defense movements of the perpetrator or
perpetrators relatively quickly this killer could be in another town in a city in another portion of Iowa or even
in another state right so goodby the men and women over at the Chickasaw Sheriff's Department to to request the
assistance of DCI and FBI who we have DCI who can cover you for Manpower expertise and resources throughout the
state of Iowa well and I've said it before and I'll say it again you don't have to be the smartest guy in the room
you just have to be the one that invited the smartest guy there just have to be one of the guys in the room that helped
get this thing done at the end of the day I would wager a Franklin that someone at the FBI would later regret
not getting involved especially with something that we covered last year remember we have the FBI's Highway
serial killings initiative and we're going to see a couple different things in this case potential serial killer
being involved or identified or unknown also potential trucker being responsible
for this death now why would that be something that the FBI would be interested in we just checked both of
those boxes for you but again you can imagine with a small town murder case like this early
rumors were that either a trucker was involved a serial killer was involved and I guess we should say serial killer
that may have been a trucker involved the other weird rumor that was circulating in town was that potentially
a sheriff's deputy may be responsible now what is difficult about this rumor C is as far as I could find searching high
and low no single sheriff's deputy was named in particular that was more of a blanket
theory in the case and we will see why given the location and some more information about our victim now before
we get too far into the weeds here we need to talk about a website that I know we have discussed before here in the
garage but that's because they do such gang busters work everyone should go read this website it's Iowa cold
cases.org they are the primary source for us today they cover a lot of Iowa cases that you have heard of maybe even
heard them here in the garage we have jod hen Tru Johnny gosh Tammy Joe awiki just to name a few so if you want to do
a deep dive on some fascinating unsolved cases I tell you many a night I have lost myself on that website spunking the
rabbit holes of Iowa cold cases let's get into more information about the crime scene and the injuries to the
victim yeah the crime scene information and the autopsy information is something that's going to
help us sort out some of the issues that this case itself presents the store information just general information
about the store is very confusing I think a little confusing anyway to out Outsiders but what we can tell you is we
have been saying Philip 66 and that is absolutely true this store was both a convenience store and as the old-timers
say a filling station they sold gas as well I think the gas station portion is key to this case and potentially key to
our perpetrator or perpetrators who are responsible sometimes especially back in
the day and in these more out in the country type areas you will see a gas station with a well-known commercial
brand of gas being sold you'll see the sign right this says Phillips 66 gas unleaded being sold for back then in
1992 I was we were both too young to be driving back then but I would guess UNL may have gone for what Captain 75 80
cents a gallon back then yeah I might have been too young to drive but I was driving jacking cars back then you have
the convenience store that is attached so here they don't share the same name you see the sign that's Philip 66
gas here the store itself was called the Williamstown store the locals called it
billstown the billstown store or for short billstown it's a small building this is
not one of those large pilot or Flying J gas stations and stores right this is a
small building judging by the pictures if they have a restroom at all or restrooms at all it's probably one of
those situations where you're going inside asking for the key and then you have to go back outside to a door on the
outside of the store the question on everybody's mine are you man enough to eat a hot dog from one of these stores
roller food as they call it I used to be a big roller food guy when I was like 18
19 years old but that's also the only thing I could afford so so your your intestines are probably glad you're past
those days so I can say in this situation for this question back when I was a boy I was much more of a man than
I am today the store sold I don't know about roller food here Captain but the store sold coffee snacks and I would
guess cigarettes and newspapers as well this is a small store but people would go in and frequent the store it appears
that they had three gas pumps out front now most of the reports we do not get a time of death
and yet very quickly in this investigation law enforcement is going to be asking the public for their help
the the simple information that we get is just that she was working the 9 p.m. to 500 a.m. shift and then found dead in
the morning the person that found her was the store's owner so he's a longtime owner slash
operator of the store his name is Ray robrock he said that he arrived at 4:45 a.m. that Monday morning and found
Rhonda lying fully clothed in a back room it sounds like there may have only been one back room to this small store
so Ray is going to find Ronda but unfortunately she is already dead she's been attacked she's dead upon his
arrival of course he phones it in immediately the county seat is nearby so the sheriff's department will arrive
rather quickly and to top that off not just proximity the deputies know the store they know the gas station very
well and they probably know Rhonda exactly they did know Ronda and and one of one of several statements they say
this case is extra difficult because we know the victim we personally knew the victim because many of them would stop
in for snacks or even to get gas gas while on shift while they're working their shifts fairly often and a lot of
these convenience stores they give free coffee to law enforcement the good ones do and everybody should continue to do
that because you know what it's does not hurt your business if cops are in there
it prevents crimes it prevents theft and things like that if they if the cops feel good about coming in and know that
they're going to be greeted with a smile a friendly welcome and a hot cup of coffee and that's what they got at
Rhonda's store when they would visit her in fact more than one deputy said that we would go in there to get gas or get a
snack and maybe we felt in some way that we were checking on her making sure she
was safe and the store was safe but there were other times that we would be driving by and slow down honk the horn
and she would pop up in the window or or step into the doorway and just wave you
this is the middle of the night you need to pass the time for both the sheriff's
deputies and the person working at this billstown store can we dive into more of
the information of where she's found in the store yeah that I think that's very interesting Captain I'm glad that you
brought that up the back room where Ronda was found it does not have a safe in it right so for
whatever the back room may play in this investigation it's not for the purpose of emptying out a safe yeah it makes you
wonder if she was attacked in the store and then dragged into the back room so maybe delaying somebody finding her or
was she attacked in the back room because as you know sometimes they have stock back there and so when it gets a
little slow part of your job is to restock some of the shelves and maybe responsibly so but I believe there could
be a whole bunch of hold back information in this case at times I find that I agree with it and other times I
don't agree with it and I think you take each piece of information on a case-by casee basis but if you're holding back a
whole bunch of information about the crime scene and the way that the victims found keep in mind this is a small town
right 12,000 people for the entire County we have the owner who found her I'm sure he shared with people what his
experience was and and and what he saw we have and possibly law enforcement as well correct we have deputies there who
would have seen things and so what I wonder about this case is when I'm trying to picture and work through how
the crime may have went down how the murder may have went down you're trying to figure out what you just said right
was she attacked in the front room and then dragged back there for some other purpose one one simple purpose could
have been either there would have been an attempted sexual assault after the attack and maybe the attacker heard
somebody come into the store and decided to take off right or got spooked somehow
got spooked right where did the attack take place unfortunately given the the injuries we know that there's going to
be a considerable amount of blood did they find that blood in the front portion of the store or only in the back
room of that store as you say captain was she dragged back there or if she's attacked back there it makes you Wonder
a couple of other things if there's no safe what why was she and the killer in that back room at the same time right
was it for the purpose of the killer to do something else to the victim or to conceal the body or is it just simply
that yes to conceal the body that the killer dragged the body into this back room to buy some time and conceal the
body or did the attack go down in that back room because this was somebody that she was comfortable enough with that
they happened to be in the back room together talking about something you know that on this third shift you have
people that would come in and talk with her and talk with the other employees is this somebody that was kind
of just following her around the store as she's carrying out her duties throughout the night and she felt
comfortable with this person following her around and for whatever reason the attack happened to occur
in this back room I think that you could put different potential suspects or possibly who did this into different
categories by knowing something simple as as simple as that about the crime scene
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shopify.com slmp podcast free [Music] all right we are back you filthy animals cheers to you Colonel cheers to
everybody in the back hey most importantly cheers to you Captain it is it's the captain's
birthday week all week here in the garage and we cannot wait until we can celebrate with all of you this Saturday
at Brew dog with beers in hand yeah and I'm just going to give you a warning I might get a little tipsy well if you
don't I'm leaving here's the thing Captain when we're looking at this case right now we
have to wonder often times the Killer is local often times the killer knows the victim
so now if this case in R Canon's case I think it' be different if it was at a house or apartment or something but this
is at uh philli station basically in a heavy traffic area where a lot of people are going to be either traveling these
roads especially like you said Labor Day or it's going to be a possibly a trucker
right and given the holiday that's why I wonder things about people's routines when you have something like a holiday
Labor Day traditionally a lot of jobs and occupations people don't go to their jobs on Labor Day so could you you while
you could be seeing an increase in traffic as far as people traveling great distances because of the holiday you
likely would see the reverse on the local level less traffic from the local so I wanted to kind of sort through this
part of it because you're spot on my friend about wondering if this could be somebody from far away if this killer
were local or someone that knew Rhonda what would they likely know about the situation this goes to our means and
opportunity portions of the investigation right so we know the stores open 24 hours a day locals will
know this we have a store owner Rey he's the owner/operator the store has the owner
who works there and four employees the shifts are covered by one single attendant at all times so other than
that 15minute window when a person is ending their shift and a new worker comes in to start their shift as far as
employees go there's only one in the store at a time and so locals and people that knew Ronda would know that yeah
locals would know that and they'd also know she's a young attractive female and she's working alone and then on the flip
side of things if it's a traveler then they're coming into an opportunity a young attractive female
working by herself right and if this were a robbery that went bad and for whatever reason ends up not appearing to
be as such you also know that you have employees working at the store where there's 1992 there's cash money in those
registers yep and there's one person in the store working at a time so and then to take that a step further a lot of
criminals are cowards and a lot of them will choose to attack or Rob a female or
an elderly person because it appears to be an easier Target a less threatening Target to the criminal well here's a
question that I have for you that I can't find the answer to I understand that there's no safe in
this back room but that doesn't mean that the protocol wasn't hey once your drawer gets filled up with a certain
amount of cash you bundle that cash and place it somewhere in the back room that's interesting and if that's the
case it's not mentioned in any of the the stories but that could be something that would be hold back information as
far as law enforcement's concerned now well but it also can be confusing information because if that store owner
didn't keep a very tight inventory there might not be any way of knowing whether
there was money that was taken from the crime CRI scene or not well and talking about a potential easy target again
going back to the idea that a criminal for whatever reason whatever crime that they are intending to commit may want to
Target a location or person that presents less of a threat or perceived less of a threat we said we have the
owner and we have four employees of those four employees working by themselves three of them are female
right so 24 hours a day 7 days a week five people that work there two of them are male and three of them are females
but anytime that we have a victim we have to look at the Inner Circle and the immediate Outer Circle and so you have
current employees of the station you have boyfriends of the current employees of the station you have friends is there
somebody that knew this and would that make sense of why the victim was found in the back room right and with this
case when we talk about truckers or potentially a traveling serial killer we also need to look at well what would the
locals know what would the people that knew Rhonda know even you know the locals that knew her didn't know her
what would they know about the situation and the situation would be this they know that a single person is working
there there's cash in the register there's Rhonda who worked the overnight shift
for a long time so many of the locals would likely know that she would be expected she works five days a week the
overnight shift yes there a certain reason why you keep saying the situation now one key element to the case though
is this it sounds to me that the store had a good deal of regulars and people that would drop in and not just buy
something or fill up the old gas tank but they would stick around for a bit talk shoot the breeze in fact there were
early morning Farmers that made Regular trips to the station routinely to start out their day I used to be one of the
regular third shift when our buddy JJ worked at I believe it was a Speedway and I would regularly just stop in grab
a coffee grab some smokes sit around and chat for a little bit and just kind of shoot the and kind of be a Compadre
and wasting a little time with our buddy JJ he had I know he had several regulars
that would drop in and hang out for 15 minutes or 20 minutes and these were people that he only knew from the gas
station right and then in this case there were persons that would drop in and visit and even bring things to
Rhonda or even give things to whoever was working I'm sure they all had their favorite employee or or their person
that they would see during their routine so it's been noted that people would bring in things like crops like corn
Peppers things from their Farms or their Gardens and give to the person working yeah wasn't there a bag of peppers found
in the store I know that on at least one occasion someone came in and gave peppers a bag of peppers to R I don't
know if it was on the same night that she was attacked right so the store even overnight shift it does not appear like
you're sitting there every night for very long periods of time with no one coming in now having said that we review
these cases many of them are unsolved murders many of them are from the 90s and I am always aggravated and frankly
appalled at the extreme lack of security yeah it's monkey yeah it's very upsetting to hear that you have a young
woman who is brutally attacked in a store where she's working alone and there's no security camera there's no
alarm system and as the employee stated with this case no weapon behind the counter to defend yourself with yeah
even if they're fake cameras they're at least a deterrent yeah smile you're on camera we've all seen that that poster
or that sign posted going into a gas station or once you're inside and I don't get it here's the thing you have
to wonder how many beautiful lives would have been saved across this great land over the years by Simply Having a camera
system in a place of business well that's one of the things that we know about a lot of serial killers they're
Travelers because they don't have a a close group of friends for the most part especially like on a long
weekend these guys would plan sometimes to travel and to hey let me get a couple
hundred miles from home and start looking for an opportunity and if you're a trucker you're going to be several
hundred miles from home potentially anyway and we talked about motive means and opportunity opportunity doesn't just
always mean the opportunity to commit the murder but also the opportunity to get
away with it so if this were in fact a crime of opportunity well then you have to
wonder would that opportunity go away for the perpetrator if there were a camera if he were to see
a camera or read a sign that says smile you're on camera and again you have to wonder how many lives would be saved by
that and you I would bet that it would be a lot of lives but of course there is no way of ever knowing now in the
defense of Ray robrock who and any small business owner in this particular area of Iowa and in fact
the entire County murder is not something that happens there with any regularity at all
so that was something that I was immediately interested in knowing when reviewing
this case what is the murder status in this area especially in the late 80s and the early 90s well cuz like you said
it's a very small population what under 12,000 under 12,000 today or right around 12,000 or so today so
less than yeah and does the investigating agency which the primary here would be the Chickasaw sheriff's
department does that agency have a cold case division so I jumped on their website it's Chickasaw count. iowa.gov
you click on departments then click on Sheriff and beautiful they have a tab not for cold cases but for unsolved
crimes so the Sheriff's Department gets High Praise from the garage from the extra Krispy colel here for reminding
the public about the unsolved crimes and this case is actually meant to basically
mean cold cases so you click on that right unsolved crimes meant to mean cold cases and guess what you get send you to
Don donkey porn you get homicide 1992 one case this case Rhonda's case you get one case so for the entire
County as far as murders go the last murder before Ronda was killed was 12 years prior
1975 and that in fact was a manslaughter charge when a man was run over by a truck but good for them because some of
these small departments would not promote that on their website they'd go this is a black eye on our department
that we haven't been able to solve this case in so many years we're just not going to promote that we haven't solved
this one but good for them to say hey this case we are going to see this to the end and and that's what I'm saying I
think in the year 2023 when this technology when computers and websites are are even old news and everybody's on
social media I I do not understand why when you have law enforcement agencies that do not have those unsolved cases
listed especially cold cases when it comes to homicide listed on their website or somewhere for the public to
have an awareness of something and back to back to the murder rate here in this County the last murder before Ronda was
killed 1975 then before that it was 8 years earlier in 1967 when a woman was shot by her husband so while we get
angry that there's no security set up here at the store murder just wasn't a thing that happened here yeah but maybe
that's okay at your residency but if you have if you have workers working by themselves and I understand it's if you
don't have a slew of customers every five seconds you can't afford to pay to have two
employees but if you're going to have one employee working by themselves get the surveillance because
if some does happen at least you can help in assisting that victim getting Justice
one employee Captain said that the store was really laid back the people that came in were really nice there was never
any thing that you were ever worried about and they said even if the workers were nervous about a suspicious customer
the company policy was pick up the phone the sh the sheriff's off the Sheriff's Department was only 6 miles away and the
boss who you could call at any hour lived just a quarter of a mile away right and then again as far as robbery
at first that was the speculation especially because the victim was found fully clothed it only took a day maybe
two before they ruled out robbery as a motive they wouldn't elaborate on the cause of death immediately or the weap
used until the autopsy was conducted however law enforcement was actively and openly searching the store
the property and surrounding area for the murder weapon they brought in the help of 50 rescue workers this included
firefighters and searched along the three highways nearby searching for possible evidence and the murder weapon
they covered a TW mile radius and were told to look for for quote a piece of iron but nothing turned up makes you
wonder if they brought in sent dogs as well on September 10th we would get some more information the autopsy had been
conducted and the public was informed that the autopsy concluded Rhonda died as the result of head injuries after
being beaten possibly with a heavy object also law enforcement states to the public a motive for murder has not been
determined the no arrests have been made and we're look no arrest have been made and we are
working on a sketch composite drawing of a truck driver that is not a suspect but
someone that the sheriff's department would like to talk to sounds like a suspect they go on to
say yeah rightfully so Captain this they go on to say this person is quote believed to be one of the last persons
to see Ronda alive and on September 10th while the sketch the composite sketch of
the person they wanted to talk to was not available yet at that time law enforcement did offer up a brief
description stating that the person that they are working up a sketch for is a truck driver or believed to be a truck
driver described as 35 to 45 years old heavy set with dark hair and a dark beard the vehicle that law enforcement
believe that this individual is connected to they described as a semi trctor pulling a silver or white
trailer now we said earlier that gasoline and the sale of gasoline may be one of the key ingredients in this
murder mystery I say that because it sounds like it was well known probably in this
local trucking Community or or even the extended Trucking Community you can take
that beyond the state even for that matter people that travel this stretch of land she's working the overnight shift
and this is the only stop the only overnight stop along Highway 63 where truck drivers could buy diesel gasoline
between waterl Iowa and Chester Minnesota that's a 114 mile stretch of land well then it makes me question also
a motive could be gas because like you said it's probably 75 cents but if it's a semi some of
those have and and I'm kind of speaking out of my ass here which I I guess do anyways but they normally have two tanks
you know in the tank can hold up to 150 gallons and if you have two tanks that's
300 gallons so that's possibly 300 in some dollars not to mention if you have these other vehicles maybe you're
filling up the vehicles that are on this tractor trailer so would that be enough of a
motive to go well I'm going to fill up this gas and as I'm filling up I'm watching the store I realize that
there's only one person in the store and that's why the person attacked Ronda well and in all fairness to you and
really in all fairness to anybody out there listening that have are trying to come up with their own motive we have
this case here where we're being told we don't know what the motive is by law enforcement by people that
were investigating this case and have done so for decades and like we talked about in our little rock
slasher case where law enforcement are saying the same thing we don't know what the
motive is here it's not easily identifiable to us even in law enforcement but what we do know what
what the science and psychology tells us about criminals and again I will I'll quote what we quoted in the Little Rock
slasher case in the decades since that time psychiatric professionals law enforcement officials and those working
in Behavioral Science Fields have learned that there is always an understandable motive for murder cops
and shrinks May disagree on what that motive is and why it evolves but there is always a motive
always want to thank you all for joining us here in the garage join us back tomorrow same bat Time same Channel
where we hope to have a big show announcement on tomorrow's episode so make sure you join us back here in the
garage and until then be good be kind and don't [Music] litter [Music] Shopify is the global Commerce platform
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Rhonda Knutson /// Part 1 /// 665

Part 1 of 2

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On Labor Day, 1992 the body of Rhonda Knutson was found in a back room at a gas station. Rhonda was working the overnight shift. This is a small-town murder mystery. Sadly her case remains unsolved all of these years later. Anyone with information about Rhonda Knutson, either or both of the men in the composite sketches or if you have information that could help the investigation please contact the Chickasaw County Sheriff’s Office at 641-394-3121 or the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation at 515-725-6010 or email dcinfo@dps.state.ia.us

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Brief Summary

Ronda Kuden was murdered in 1992 while working overnight at a convenience store, and her case remains unsolved.

Key points

The Murder of Rhonda Canon. Rhonda Canon was found murdered during her overnight shift at a convenience store in Iowa.
Unsolved Mystery After 30 Years. Despite ongoing investigations, Rhonda's murder remains unsolved decades later.
The Impact of Rhonda's Death. Her murder left a lasting impact on the close-knit community of New Hampton.
The Attack's Location. Questions arise about where the attack took place and the circumstances surrounding it.
Lack of Security. The absence of security cameras and alarms raises concerns about safety.
Investigation Insights. Law enforcement shares details about the investigation and potential suspects.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Things go Haywire in this world occasionally.

Reverend Bernard oper reflects on the unpredictability of life.

4:49WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

60/ 100Some tension

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