A man accused in one of the largest mass murders in Iowa in nearly two decades has been found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder.
Jurors in Linn County delivered the verdict against Luke Truesdell Monday, Nov. 17, after more than two days of deliberations. Truesdell faces life in prison without parole.
It wasn’t just the surveillance video that pointed to Truesdell as the culprit in the brutal June 2024 quadruple murder, prosecutor Monica Slaughter told the jury. Nor was it just the DNA evidence, the blood spots on his clothing, or the confused but inculpatory statements he made to police officers after the killings.
All of them combined, she said, painted an unmistakable picture: that Truesdell, 36, was the one who beat to death Romondus Cooper, 44, of Cedar Rapids; Keonna Ryan, 26, of Cedar Rapids; Amanda Parker, 33, of Vinton; and Brent Brown, 34, of Marion.; that Truesdell did so with a metal pipe found lying at the scene in rural Marion; and that he did so under the influence of methamphetamine, and apparently was convinced the victims were involved in a sex-trafficking conspiracy.
Prosecutor in closing said evidence points to Truesdell
In her closing argument Thursday, Slaughter laid out the case against Truesdell, who was visiting the rural property with his father, Larry, to work on a boat there. The four victims were found in an outbuilding on the property, and when officers questioned Truesdell, first believing him to be a possible witness, he told them “I hit ’em all” and where to find the pipe later identified as the murder weapon.
Jurors didn’t hear all of Truesdell’s statements or comments, some of which were suppressed by the court, including that he committed the killings “to make a movie.” But they did hear additional statements Truesdell, of Marion, made later while in custody, including unsubstantiated claims that the people he’d attacked were sex traffickers and that he “wanted to take them all down.”
He described being awake for two days while smoking meth and gave further details of what happened, including what one of the victims said before she died.
“(Truesdell) didn’t blame anybody else. He owned it,” Slaughter told jurors. “He said he felt bad about it. And that he was worried his kids would hate him because of what he did.”
Jurors also heard that forensic analysts found DNA from at least two of the victims on the bloodstained pipe Truesdell told investigators about, and identified Truesdell’s DNA on the non-bloodied end. More blood was found on his shoe and sleeve. And jurors saw surveillance video from the home on the property showing Truesdell and his father walking out to the boat, and a sole figure later going to the shed, where Cooper and Ryan were staying, then later exiting and following Brown and Parker as they entered the building, possibly in response to a cry for help.
Afterward, the video showed Larry Truesdell shouting for the homeowner to call for an ambulance and yelling in his son’s face, at one point asking, “what do you mean you don’t know?” The homeowner, Lon Brown, said Truesdell appeared “dazed” and was mumbling to himself after the bodies were discovered.
Defense suggests Truesdell’s father could be killer
Larry Truesdell did not testify at his son’s trial, and investigators said they were unable to locate him to serve a subpoena. Luke Truesdell’s attorneys made Larry Truesdell the focus of their defense, arguing that the video can’t definitively show which of the two it was who entered the outbuilding and bludgeoned the occupants inside.
“The state says that Luke was in a daze, and Larry was doing damage control (for his son),” defense attorney Patrick McMullen said in his closing argument. “Or, Luke was dumfounded by what he’d just seen, four dead bodies, and Larry was trying to minimize what happened based on his own actions. We don’t know which is true.”
McMullen argued that police pressured his client, who was under the influence of methamphetamine, in to making seemingly damning statements, many of which they later took out of context. Then they decided “we got the right guy” and ignored other investigative avenues, for example by destroying clothing worn by Larry Truesdell without performing testing on their apparent bloodstains, he said.
“There was somebody else there that day, and the police, using their tunnel vision and cognitive bias, decided nope, we’re done here,” he said.
In her rebuttal, Slaughter said reasonable doubt requires more than speculation and possibilities, and that all evidence, considered as a whole, pointed to Luke Truesdell as the killer.
“(McMullen) can stand up here and ‘possibility’ you to death, and frankly, some of the possibilities are insulting to your intelligence and common sense,” she said.
The jury received the case Thursday afternoon and deliberated all day Friday before returning their verdict just before noon Monday.
William Morris covers courts for the Des Moines Register. He can be contacted at wrmorris2@registermedia.com or 715-573-8166.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Linn County jury finds Luke Truesdell guilty in Iowa quadruple murder trial
Reporting by William Morris, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
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