The murder of Robert Huntbach

The Huntbach case stands as a rare modern example of a cold-case murder broken almost entirely by the killer's own voluntary confession, with no DNA, genetic genealogy or new forensic testing involved. When Robert and Goldie Huntbach were found bound, gagged, tortured and shot to death in their Waterloo home in January 1981, investigators interviewed a large number of people, including Jack Wendell Pursel, a former Waterloo resident who was believed to have once been in a relationship with a relative of the couple. Detectives could not develop enough evidence to charge anyone, and Pursel left Iowa not long after the crime, eventually settling in California, where he was later convicted of sex offenses against a minor and remained on the state's sex-offender registry after his release in the 1990s. For thirty-one years the killings of the elderly couple remained officially unsolved. The break did not originate with police work but with Pursel himself. In the days before his confession he telephoned a brother he had not seen in years, a brother who was not even familiar with the 1981 crime, and told him about the killings and that he was the one who had committed them, and said he intended to go to the Waterloo police. On May 8, 2012, Pursel walked into the Waterloo Police Department and confessed to robbing and killing Robert and Goldie Huntbach. He told investigators he had become a born-again Christian and was seeking forgiveness and mercy by taking responsibility for the torture and execution-style shootings. He also disclosed that he had confided the crime years earlier, in the 1990s, to a man named Bruce Davis, who had once been associated with Charles Manson's group and who had become active in prison ministry; Pursel said Davis had preached to him while the two were incarcerated in California. The legal strength of the case rested on the content of the confession rather than on physical evidence. Black Hawk County Attorney Tom Ferguson said Pursel provided factual details about the murders that had never been made public and that only the killer would have known, giving prosecutors confidence in his guilt. Pursel was charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Rather than go to trial, he pleaded guilty on June 7, 2012, about a month after walking into the police station. At the hearing he quoted scripture and again framed his confession as an act of religious repentance. Two of the Huntbachs' grandchildren, who testified using only their first names, Kevin and Pam, rejected his plea for forgiveness; Pam said she was disappointed that Iowa had no death penalty for what she called the sick and cowardly killings of her grandparents. District Judge Bradley Harris imposed the mandatory penalty for first-degree murder in Iowa, sentencing Pursel to two consecutive terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole. The Huntbachs' only surviving child, daughter Barbara Beck, was reported to have reacted to news of the confession with disbelief, wanting assurance that police had the right person.