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Authorities revealed this week that a man once named a person of interest in the disappearance of Iowa news anchor Jodi Huisentruit was responsible for the 2006 killing of a Wisconsin woman and may have been responsible for other murders.
The Wood County Sheriff’s Office announced that Christopher Revak was behind the death of Deidre Harm, officially closing a case that had gone unsolved for nearly two decades.
On Oct. 20, the Wood County Sheriff’s Office shared a letter from District Attorney Jonathan Barnett on Facebook stating that he would have filed charges against Revak if he were still alive.
“I consider this case closed,” Barnett wrote. “I believe I had enough to charge and, if Mr. Revak were still alive, win at trial.”
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Harm, a 21-year-old single mother, disappeared after a night out at a downtown Wisconsin Rapids bar on June 10, 2006. Her remains were discovered five months later by hunters in a wooded area near Seneca, about five miles from downtown, according to WSAW.
“This may provide some closure for many but won’t bring Deidre back,” the Wood County Sheriff’s Office and Wisconsin Rapids Police said in a joint statement. “Our thoughts and prayers will always be with Deidre’s family.”
Revak, a Wisconsin native and former EMT, died by suicide in a Missouri jail cell in July 2009, just one day after being charged with second-degree murder in the death of Rene Williams, 36, a mother of three from Mansfield, Missouri.
Williams was last seen on March 13, 2007, at the Eagle Lodge bar in Ava, Missouri, where she worked. Revak was also at the bar that night, according to FOX 9.
In 2024, KCCI Des Moines reported that Iowa and Wisconsin investigators were taking a fresh look at Revak, who had long been suspected of multiple violent crimes before his death.
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According to a recent documentary, police have examined whether Revak might have been connected to as many as five different homicides over a 14-year span, including the disappearance of Huisentruit.
Douglas County Sheriff Chris Degase, who investigated Williams’ case, previously told Fox News Digital that Revak’s confirmed link to Harm’s killing deepened his concerns about the former EMT’s violent history.
“When I started working on the Christopher Revak case, he was my suspect in the murder of Rene Williams,” Degase said. “I didn’t think it was his first go around at it.”
Degase told KY3 that forensic evidence connected Revak to Williams’ disappearance.
“We had his DNA at the scene. We had her DNA inside his truck,” he said. “I think the biggest thing was that they weren’t able to find a body. They had no witnesses to come forward to say that she was dead.”
Despite the lack of a body, investigators charged Revak with Williams’ murder based on DNA results. Degase said his curiosity about similar crimes led him to uncover chilling parallels.
“It wasn’t the first time Revak tried to abduct a woman in Ava,” he said. “Actually, shortly after his arrest I Google searched ‘women abducted from bars’ in all the towns that he had lived in. And when I Google searched from Wisconsin Rapids, Deidre Harm came up.”
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That discovery prompted Degase to reach out to Wisconsin investigators, sharing his findings and helping connect the dots between cases.
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” he said. “I called the authorities out there and gave them the information I had.”
Degase, who is featured in the documentary discussing the case, said both Williams and Huisentruit remain missing, a detail that still haunts him. He didn’t rule out the possibility that Revak could have traveled to Iowa.
“Obviously, [Jodi] wasn’t abducted from a bar, but I just thought it was odd,” Degase said.
He added that Revak “had a dark side.”
“We’re dealing with what’s possibly a serial killer,” Degase told KY3. “During his day he’s doing his deed to society and helping people and saving people, but there was a dark side to Chris Revak.”
Revak had also been a person of interest in the 1995 disappearance of Huisentruit, a 27-year-old morning anchor for KIMT-TV in Mason City, Iowa.
Huisentruit vanished around 4 a.m. on June 27, 1995, after calling a colleague to say she was on her way to work but never arriving. Police found signs of a struggle outside her apartment, including a pair of high heels and a bent car key near her car.
She was declared legally dead in 2001, though her body has never been found.
At the time, Mason City Police said there was no evidence linking Revak to the case. However, in 2024, investigators from Wisconsin and Iowa reconnected to compare notes about him, according to FindJodi.com.
Authorities had also looked into whether Revak’s ex-wife once lived in the same house as one of the last people to see Huisentruit alive, but determined she moved out six months before the anchor’s disappearance.
Despite three decades of dead ends, then-Mason City Police Chief Jeff Brinkley said in June the department continues to receive and pursue leads year-round.
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“We haven’t put this down, we haven’t stopped working, we have not stopped pursuing leads and information,” Brinkley told FOX 9 at the time.
In 2024, officers searched a property in Winsted, Minnesota, following a tip, though no new evidence was found. Earlier this year, part of a 2017 search warrant was also unsealed.
“We’re still hopeful the case will be solved and justice served — no matter how long it takes,” Brinkley said.
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Huisentruit’s family continues to hold out hope for closure.
“The pain and anguish felt by us and all who loved Jodi are immeasurable,” her family wrote in a statement on the Jodi’s Hope Facebook page. “True peace will only come when Jodi is found and justice is served. We still choose to hope that one day soon it will happen.”
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A $50,000 reward remains in place for information leading to answers in Huisentruit’s disappearance. Anyone with information is urged to contact the Mason City Police Department or the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation.
Fox News Digital’s Stephanie Nolasco contributed to this report.
