In the last week or so, I've been able to get six more victim pages added to the Iowa Cold Cases website. Four are unsolved homicides and two are missing persons cases. More details are still needed for some -- particularly the missing persons cases -- and we hope to have that information soon.

Brief overviews of each case follow, with links to the individual victim pages.

Missing Person:

Age at Report: 32 YOA
Missing From: Cedar Rapids, IA (Linn County)
Missing Since: April 12, 1981

Naomi Wilson was reported missing to the Cedar Rapids Police Department in Cedar Rapids on April 12, 1981. If you have information regarding her disappearance, please contact the Missing Person Information Clearinghouse/Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation at 1-800-346-5507.

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Homicide:

25 YOA
3213 Flemming Ave.
Des Moines, IA (Polk County)
July 10, 1967

Just after 12:00 noon on Monday, July 10, 1967, Mrs. Raymond (Leota) Camp, 25, was discovered "bleeding" in her home's front bedroom by her son Kevin, 4, and daughter Brenda, 3, who immediately went crying to neighbors. Neighbors then found the young mother lying face down on the bed, her arms crossed and tied behind her back with a necktie. Neckties also bound Camp's neck and ankles, and a necktie was stuffed in her mouth as a gag. She had been stabbed four times in the back while her two older children played outside and her three-month-old daughter Christine lay on a white blanket on the living room floor, nursing a warm bottle of milk.

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Homicide:

27 YOA
610 West 3rd St.
Sioux City, Iowa (Woodbury County)
April 26, 1997

At

approx. 2:00 a.m., Redowl and his 24-year-old sister, Sonja, had a physical altercation in the back yard of their mother's Sioux City residence, which both Redowl and his sister listed as their home. The SCPD and medical personnel were called at 2:07 a.m. Upon arrival they found Redowl unconscious and he was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at Mercy Medical Center. Cause of death was a stab wound to the chest. Because of conflicting witness statements and inconsistencies, no charges were ever filed.

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Homicide:

47 YOA
603 West 5th St.
Sioux City, Iowa (Woodbury County)
Sept. 14, 1997

An area resident returning home at approx. 5:30 a.m. noticed Brown lying on the ground between a curb and the sidewalk. After calling Sioux City Police, Brown was transported to a hospital and died shortly thereafter. An autopsy revealed he'd been beaten about the head and body and died as a result of those injuries. Brown had recently received and cashed his paycheck, though no money was found on his person. Police interviewed numerous people but no suspects were arrested.

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Homicide:

73 YOA
1610 West 19th St.
Sioux City, Iowa (Woodbury County)
January 1, 1994

When Swetnam's family couldn't contact her by phone, they sent her grandson and granddaughter's husband to check on her welfare. The grandson found his grandmother dead at the bottom of the basement steps. She had received multiple stab wounds. Sioux City police observed that the house had been ransacked, with drawers dumped out of dressers. The victim had operated a massage business out of her home, and though investigators interviewed every client named in Swetnam's book as well as all relatives and associates, no viable suspects were developed.

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Missing Person:

50 YOA
Missing From: Cedar Rapids (Linn County)
Date Reported Missing: August 25, 1993

Barbara Elms was reported missing to the Cedar Rapids Police Department on August 25, 1993.

I really have to give credit to Sioux City media (both print and broadcast) for the great jobs they're doing with regular reports on area cold cases.

The

, in addition to their regular coverage on the

case, recently launched a

dedicated to Nissen's 30-year-old unsolved homicide. It's nicely done and includes, in part, case history, photos, videos, a timeline, and also details Sheriff Blythe Bloemendaal's long-standing commitment to solving Lyon County's only cold case.

Then earlier this week, Sioux City's

Channel 4 news reporter Melissa Lanzourakis produced an excellent two-part piece on the 1997 unsolved slaying of Ida Grove's

. The story featured an interview with Ruddy's best friend -- referred to only as "Jane" -- who talked about the days leading up to Ruddy's disappearance, how she made the discovery and her theories about her friend's murder. Read the articles and view the videos for

and

.

KTIV has kept close tabs on the Ruddy case since Ida County Sheriff Wade Harriman

that authorities would reopen the case on Feb. 10, the 12-year anniversary of Ruddy's disappearance. In 1999, the "missing persons" case became a homicide case when DNA tests proved a jaw bone found in a river near Denison, Iowa was Ruddy's.

Siouxlanders can also tune in to

or

for cold case updates. And, as more viewers turn up the volume, officials continue to turn up the heat as they close in on cases never laid to rest.

So I say to Siouxland media: We're reading, we're watching, and we're listening. Keep up the good work, and keep the stories coming.

Today I received an uplifting, heartfelt e-mail from Korene Shelton, whose mother,

, was found near a creek below a short bridge in a wooded area south of Dunkerton, IA on August 11, 1995. The 37-year-old mother of four had died from a single gunshot wound to the chest.

Korene, one month shy of her 17th birthday when two men setting turtle traps stumbled across her mother's body, first contacted me in November 2008 about her mother's unsolved homicide. The follow-up documents she sent me -- complete with her own carefully researched and detailed notes with names, dates, law enforcement contacts and then-unanswered questions (perhaps now revisited with DNA advances) -- painted a daughter's dedicated landscape where the only brush stroke missing was a mother's killer finally brought to justice.

Clearly, for this daughter, like Maureen Farley's nephew, like

's son and

's brother, like

's nephew and Phil Terrell's daughter and

's sister and

's husband -- all of whom have written -- resignation is simply not an option. They, and so many more like them who've also written and wait patiently for their loved one's page on the

website, truly define dedication.

I'd written about those pages needing added in a

, and so it was that Korene's e-mail today not only lifted my spirits, but made me view the letters I receive from a whole new perspective.

Her e-mail, which she entitled "your dedication," is posted below with her permission:

Yes. Exactly. None of us want our loved one forgotten. We want healing. We need answers. We demand justice. And yes, our lives can seem very lost

of those we've lost when there's been no closure and those responsible still walk free. A page on the cold cases website may contain limited information and certainly can't include all things great and small about every victim's life, but it makes a very big statement:

.

It still does.

Thank you, Korene. Your words inspire and evoke countless stories. As long as others write, I'll keep telling them. And this much I know is true: from a sheriff's office in Black Hawk County to the FBI and DCI, more are working even harder to provide the endings.

Jody