Murder on the Brunner Farm Mason City Iowa

Jennie Brunner

The morning of September 30, 1941, started quietly on the Brunner farm, a few miles northwest of Mason City. By noon, Sam Brunner was dead, and his twenty-two-year-old wife, Jennie, was running for her life.

They had known each other eight weeks before marrying. Long enough for a smile and a dance. Not long enough to see the violence underneath. Within two weeks, the fights began—sharp, fast, unpredictable. Once, Sam pressed a gun to his own chest and dared her to watch him pull the trigger.

That morning, they were in bed. Jennie reached over, teasing him, tickling his ribs. He told her to stop. She laughed. Then he reached under his pillow for the pistol he always kept there. “Quit it,” he said, “or I’ll shoot you.”

Jennie tried to calm him. She said it was time to milk the cows. He told her he didn’t give a damn about cows, or anything else. Then he leveled the gun at her. She grabbed for it. They struggled. One shot went wild.

“Don’t shoot, honey,” he said.

She fired again. The bullet caught him in the back.

He lifted his undershirt, showing her the wound. She helped him to the bed, then fled—taking the pistol and a Winchester rifle. “I didn’t mean to shoot him,” she said later. “I just couldn’t help myself. If I didn’t, he would have shot me before the day was over.”

Neighbors already knew the danger in that house. Sam bragged about killing someone—his wife, his parents, maybe himself. He hid weapons everywhere: pistols, rifles, a bayonet, brass knuckles. Once, in a fit of temper, he choked Jennie. Another time he beat her until she bruised. He even shot her dog to prove how cleanly a bullet could kill.

After the shooting, Jennie drove straight to her father-in-law’s house. “I’ve shot Sam,” she said. They went back together, but Sam was already gone.

Sheriff Tim Phalen didn’t buy everything she said. Jennie claimed she fired twice. Deputies found three shell casings. She said he had been shot once. He’d been hit twice—once in the chest, once behind the shoulder. And Phalen wondered how a small farm wife could drag a bleeding man to bed.

“I didn’t think he was shot that bad,” Jennie said. “He was still squirming when I left.”

A grand jury indicted her for murder. She waited in the Cerro Gordo County Jail until trial that December.

Her lawyer, L. R. Boomhower, asked the jurors only two questions:

“Do you believe in the law of self-defense?”

“Do you believe there are times when the taking of a human life might be justifiable?”

Witnesses painted the picture he needed. One man saw Sam knock Jennie down over a pack of cigarettes. Another said Sam showed him a bullet he called “the fatal one.” Jennie told the court about the brass-knuckle beating that caused her miscarriage.

When she took the stand, she said everything “went black” the moment she pulled the trigger.

After five hours, the jury came back: not guilty.

Jennie looked stunned. She turned to the bailiff and whispered, “I thought sure I would get the electric chair.”

Outside, the wind off the prairie was cold and sharp. Somewhere beyond Mason City, the Wapsipinicon kept moving, same as always.