Lynn Schuller was a 25-year-old mother living the suburban dream in Cedar Rapids with her husband, Keith, and their three-year-old son, Eric. On the surface, the couple enjoyed a picture-perfect life. They’d tied the knot in 1967 and welcomed their first child in 1969. Life was good, right? But as often happens, appearances can be deceiving.
Keith dropped a bombshell on Lynn in 1971. He wanted a divorce. But Lynn
wasn’t ready to give up on her marriage and refused. He kept pushing, but she
wouldn’t sign the papers.
Things went sideways. Fast. Lynn wrote a letter to her mother, Eloise
Tickner, in 1972, confiding Keith had threatened to kill her. But she quickly dismissed
it, saying, “He would never do anything like that.” Was it denial? Or wishful
thinking?
Fast forward a few months.
It’s August 6, 1972. Keith told authorities: He woke up early, left the
house with their son around 7:30 a.m. to take his son fishing, and let Lynn
sleep in. When they returned just after noon, Lynn and her bicycle were gone.
No note. No trace—just gone.
Keith didn’t think much of it at first, figuring she’d gone for a ride
and would be back soon. He took off again, leaving a note that he was taking
their son swimming at Beaver Park. But when they returned home an hour later,
Lynn’s bike was sprawled across the front lawn. Her purse was in the house, but
Lynn was nowhere to be found. Hours passed, and she didn’t return. Finally, as
the sun set, Keith decided something was wrong. He made some calls—first to
Lynn’s parents, then a few friends.
They searched the nearby woods, but there was no trace of Lynn. The only
thing Keith could think was that she’d had enough of him asking for a divorce
and had taken off to clear her head. It was the only thing that made sense,
right?
The next day, Keith reported Lynn’s disappearance to the Lynn County
Sheriff’s Office, and a massive search was launched. Over fifty people scoured
the nearby woods, searching for Lynn, or if it came to the worst—her body.
The sheriff’s office had instructed its men to keep an eye out for any “signs
of freshly turned earth, broken branches, and piles of wilting weeds or brush.”
Infrared photos of the grounds surrounding the Schuller home found several suspicious
areas, but when detectives examined them, they found no trace of Lynn.
But here’s where it gets weird: Keith refused to join the search party.
When asked by deputies, he flat-out said no, telling a reporter later, “I had
already checked the woods myself.” Why should he waste his time repeating
something he’d already done?
Who could blame the cops for thinking Keith had a hand in his wife’s
disappearance? She was missing, and he didn’t want to help look for her. Can
you say suspicious? Besides, the statistics were on their side. Most times when
a woman went missing; her husband was behind it.
Police assumed
foul play was involved and searched Schuller’s home for evidence. They seized
several items, including a snow shovel, a spade, two knives, and a machete.
Even though they couldn’t tie the items to Lynn’s disappearance, they hung onto
them, assuming they might be important if they uncovered more evidence. Or a
body.
The authorities arrested Keith for not assisting in the search. But with
no solid evidence, they were forced to release him. And just like that, Keith
Schuller slipped through the cracks.
Keith kept filing divorce papers, then pulled them when his wife’s
parents pushed back. A Dubuque judge granted him a divorce in July 1976. The
couple’s son was named sole heir of Lynn’s life insurance, and Keith was named
conservator. Two years later, Lynn was declared legally dead. Keith left Iowa,
starting fresh as a sixth-grade science teacher in Fruitland, Idaho, where he
taught for 25 years. When he retired, Keith became the county coroner.
But what about Lynn? To this day, her disappearance remains an unsolved
mystery. All we know is that she stood 5’5, weighed 120 pounds, and had red or
strawberry-blonde hair, and wore horned-rimmed glasses. Contemporary pictures
showed a mother, a daughter, a woman whose story ended without answers.
Was it foul play? Did Lynn walk away from her life and begin anew
somewhere else? Or is there a darker secret buried in those woods behind the
Schuller house? We may never know. But one thing’s for sure—this story still
haunts Cedar Rapids, even after all these years.
Seven years
after Lynn’s disappearance, her mother, Eloise Ticker, told the Cedar Rapids
Gazette Sheriff Walter Grant was a caricature straight out of the comic
books, smoking a big fat cigar while riding his desk. Solving the case,
probably not.
She wasn’t wrong. From the sound of things, Sheriff Grant had given up
on the case less than two weeks after it landed in his lap. He implied there
would be no more searches because he didn’t know where to look next. The case
was dead in the water unless a new lead came in.
And before we go, I should probably mention Keith’s pets—a six-foot long alligator named Pogo and two snakes. And here’s the scary part—many of the locals suspected he chopped Lynn up and fed her remains to the animals—eliminating any evidence that a crime was committed. Several years later, the Lynn County Sheriff’s Department debunked the idea, saying the reptiles were too small to do the job.
Before you go ...
Stuff like this is what I always end up chasing—the little lines in old newspapers and magazines, the parts most books skip over.
I pulled a bunch of those stories together into Iowa Crime Time if you want more of it.
And if you just like reading this kind of thing, Buy me a Big Gulp / Support Retro Iowa
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