Iowa

2,809 murders reported in Iowa from 1976 to 2025; police reports named an offender in about 86%. Explore the statistics →

Cases that span several states show only their locations in Iowa. Open on the big map

Cases

Villisca axe murders
1912 · Villisca, Iowa
MassUnsolved8 victims
Around midnight on the night of June 9-10, 1912, eight people were killed with an axe as they slept in the home of Josiah and Sarah Moore in Villisca, a small town in southwest Iowa: the Moores, their four children, and…
John Wayne Gacy
1972–1978 · Norwood Park Township, Cook County, Illinois
SerialExecuted28 victims
John Wayne Gacy murdered at least 33 teenage boys and young men between 1972 and 1978 at his home in Norwood Park Township, just outside Chicago, burying most of them on his property and leaving four in the Des Plaines River.
Cristhian Bahena Rivera
2018 · Brooklyn, Iowa
SingleConvicted1 victim
Mollie Tibbetts, a 20-year-old University of Iowa student, disappeared on the evening of July 18, 2018, while out for a run in her hometown of Brooklyn, Iowa.
Mason City witness murders
1993 · Mason City, Iowa
SerialExecuted5 victims
In 1993 Dustin Honken, who was facing federal methamphetamine charges in northern Iowa, set out to eliminate witnesses against him.