Iowa Cold Cases ... where hope is never laid to rest
Patricia Jauron

Homicide
45 YOA
Highway 141
Woodbury County, IA
Date of Death: May 26, 1998

Ten years have come and gone without an arrest in the violent death of a Sioux City woman.

Patricia Jauron, 45, was stabbed several times as she fled her attacker -- a man Patricia's husband Gene says made an appointment to view a waterbed they'd advertised for sale.

The couple had just moved out of one home to another across the road and were selling off the last few items from the former home. They'd held an earlier yard sale, and Gene Jauron says a person who came to their yard sale called several times afterward inquiring about purchasing the waterbed. He wanted to set up a time to meet. Pat -- who'd worked at the Sergeant Bluff Middle School -- agreed to meet him at the home and was supposed to be gone only for a few moments.

In a 2005 interview with
KTIV News Channel 4 reporter Melissa Lanzourakis, Gene Jauron talked about his late wife and said he believes he's met her killer face to face. From his home across the highway, Gene said he saw a red car, and believes the car belonged to the man who murdered his wife. When Pat didn't return home, Gene says he went to check on her at the other house. He found the waterbed in the basement covered in blood.

"He'd hit her in the head, knocked her down and tied her up," Jauron said. "She still had the twine on her one arm, but she got loose. He started stabbing. She got out the basement door and she got out into the yard and he must have stabbed all the way out."

The stabbing was so forceful, Jauron said, that the blade broke off in Patricia's chest. Jauron said he found her body over an embankment.

"And all I could do was hold her," he added.

The couple had been married 25 years and were just settling into retirement.

"She was the life of the party...never see her grumpy...always willing to help everybody," her husband said.

Jauron said he feels there are still many clues to be followed up on, and believes they met the killer at the garage sale before the murder. The man, he said, paid for a dresser that day but never came back for it. He says the same man told him he worked at an area packing plant.

Phone calls made before the murder were all traced to a pay phone near a local convenience store.

As for the red car in the driveway, Jauron says they're clues he'd like to see tackled in a cold case crime unit. He also believes someone in Siouxland knows what happened.

"Somebody around here knows," he said. "He would have had to have been the most horrible bloody mess you ever seen in your life. All I can do is hope they get him."



KTIV's Melissa Lanzourakis contributed to this report.