Inquisitive Gideon students investigate cold murder case
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Deanna Coronado
A group of inquisitive eighth grade students in Denise Yount's classroom at Gideon have been working on a classroom project investigating the 1954 Missouri cold case murder of school teacher Bonnie Loretta Huffman, talking to family members of the victim and making some of their own interesting and controversial discoveries along the way.
On July 5, 1954, 59 hours after her automobile was found abandoned in the middle of the highway not far from her home, a farm on the outskirts of Delta, Mo., where she lived with her parents Mr. And Mrs. Millard Thiele, police located the badly decomposed body of 20-year-old Huffman in a ditch on Route N, about one half mile northwest of Delta.
According to the newspaper reports detailing the nearly 53-year-old murder mystery, an autopsy performed on Huffman's body concluded that the nearly six foot tall brown haired, brown eyed Huffman sustained a fractured neck at the third cervical and that her left jaw was broken.
The autopsy also revealed that her knees were skinned and badly bruised and although the evidence could not prove that she had been criminally assaulted physically, the pathologist entered into his report that it was a probability.
The clothing and accessories that she had been wearing were reported as being missing from the location in which her body was found and were also not located in her car. The Missouri State Highway Patrol investigated the case, spending much of its efforts polygraphing suspects with inconclusive results. No one was ever charged in the murder.
The murder of the valedictorian of her graduating class in 1950, Bonnie Huffman would remain one of the, if not the single oldest cold case murder cases in Missouri's history.
According to Yount's students, the investigation into the murder they launched as a class project turned out to be one of the most interesting assignments they have taken on.
"This was a really neat project," said Brittany Campbell, a student who participated. "We really got excited about it because we actually got to talk to someone who was connected to the victim and knew a lot about the case."
The person Campbell was referring to is Huffman's niece, Wanda Ross of Allenville, Mo.. Ross was only 6 years old when her aunt was murdered.
The fact that people remember and new kids learn about the mystery encourages Ross, providing her with hope that her family that someone out there who knows what happened may yet come forward.
Ross visited with the students at Gideon and with KFVS channel 12 Heartland News to discuss the case and talk about what is still being done to find out more and determine who is responsible.
"We talked about a lot of details into the case and different theories that we and others have came up with. There is a lot of things about the case that just doesn't add up," said eighth grader Slayton Moody.
Moody and his classmates said that they also talked with Ross about a reward fund that has been created to help continue investigation efforts and solve the Bonnie Huffman Case.
According to the eighth-grade investigators, Ross said a bank account was established to build a reward fund for information leading to either an arrest of her killers or closure of the case.
"She hopes the publicity of the fund will jog someone's memory or tug at their conscience to do the right thing and call police," their teacher Denise Yount said.
Moody and others said that the project surrounding the murder mystery was so interesting mostly because it happened in Missouri and that Huffman was a teacher.
"The real-life aspect of it all made it so much more interesting than something we could just read in a book," another student, Dylan Cornett, added.
The students in Yount's class dug deep into the past uncovering newspaper articles, letters sent in from anonymous authors who claimed to witness the murder, and Internet articles following the case, providing a written look inside the murder and into the life of Huffman.
"Everything we have ran across in researching this case has only made us want to know more," eighth grader Tamara Shafer said of the experience. "From the beginning, when Mrs. Yount first told us about this story, we were all ready to get in their and investigate it for ourselves."
The students are even taking their efforts a step further by writing to humanitarians any anyone that they think could help. Students were in the talks to write letters to famously charitable people such as Oprah and Bill Gates.
"We just want to see if people who are in a position to help would be interested in helping with this case," Moody said. "I am thinking about writing Bill Gates a letter."
Gideon Principal Keenan Buchanan said that he supported his students' investigative research efforts and that he was happy to see all of the students so involved with the project.
"This is something that has certainly caught their attention and interests," Buchanan said. "I am glad to see them all learning through this project. Mrs. Yount and Mrs. Rudeseal have done an excellent job with these kids and keeping them involved."
Yount and fellow faculty member Sande Rudeseal have helped the students at Gideon gather a multitude of resources to be utilized in their investigation. Many of the students used the resources to also help them write a final thesis on the real-life murder mystery and tell what they thought about the case including their theories into the who, what, where, when and why's surrounding the case.
Family members and friends marked the 50th anniversary of the killing with a candlelight vigil and memorial service at the cemetery where Huffman is buried in 2004.
Today, they and others like the students at Gideon, still remember Huffman and continue to hope for more answers.
Anyone wishing to donate to the Bonnie Huffman Reward Fund can do so by mailing a check to the Bank of Advance at P.O. Box 400, Advance, Mo., 63730. Checks should made out to the Bonnie Huffman Reward Fund.
Deanna Coronado
A group of inquisitive eighth grade students in Denise Yount's classroom at Gideon have been working on a classroom project investigating the 1954 Missouri cold case murder of school teacher Bonnie Loretta Huffman, talking to family members of the victim and making some of their own interesting and controversial discoveries along the way.
On July 5, 1954, 59 hours after her automobile was found abandoned in the middle of the highway not far from her home, a farm on the outskirts of Delta, Mo., where she lived with her parents Mr. And Mrs. Millard Thiele, police located the badly decomposed body of 20-year-old Huffman in a ditch on Route N, about one half mile northwest of Delta.
According to the newspaper reports detailing the nearly 53-year-old murder mystery, an autopsy performed on Huffman's body concluded that the nearly six foot tall brown haired, brown eyed Huffman sustained a fractured neck at the third cervical and that her left jaw was broken.
The autopsy also revealed that her knees were skinned and badly bruised and although the evidence could not prove that she had been criminally assaulted physically, the pathologist entered into his report that it was a probability.
The clothing and accessories that she had been wearing were reported as being missing from the location in which her body was found and were also not located in her car. The Missouri State Highway Patrol investigated the case, spending much of its efforts polygraphing suspects with inconclusive results. No one was ever charged in the murder.
The murder of the valedictorian of her graduating class in 1950, Bonnie Huffman would remain one of the, if not the single oldest cold case murder cases in Missouri's history.
According to Yount's students, the investigation into the murder they launched as a class project turned out to be one of the most interesting assignments they have taken on.
"This was a really neat project," said Brittany Campbell, a student who participated. "We really got excited about it because we actually got to talk to someone who was connected to the victim and knew a lot about the case."
The person Campbell was referring to is Huffman's niece, Wanda Ross of Allenville, Mo.. Ross was only 6 years old when her aunt was murdered.
The fact that people remember and new kids learn about the mystery encourages Ross, providing her with hope that her family that someone out there who knows what happened may yet come forward.
Ross visited with the students at Gideon and with KFVS channel 12 Heartland News to discuss the case and talk about what is still being done to find out more and determine who is responsible.
"We talked about a lot of details into the case and different theories that we and others have came up with. There is a lot of things about the case that just doesn't add up," said eighth grader Slayton Moody.
Moody and his classmates said that they also talked with Ross about a reward fund that has been created to help continue investigation efforts and solve the Bonnie Huffman Case.
According to the eighth-grade investigators, Ross said a bank account was established to build a reward fund for information leading to either an arrest of her killers or closure of the case.
"She hopes the publicity of the fund will jog someone's memory or tug at their conscience to do the right thing and call police," their teacher Denise Yount said.
Moody and others said that the project surrounding the murder mystery was so interesting mostly because it happened in Missouri and that Huffman was a teacher.
"The real-life aspect of it all made it so much more interesting than something we could just read in a book," another student, Dylan Cornett, added.
The students in Yount's class dug deep into the past uncovering newspaper articles, letters sent in from anonymous authors who claimed to witness the murder, and Internet articles following the case, providing a written look inside the murder and into the life of Huffman.
"Everything we have ran across in researching this case has only made us want to know more," eighth grader Tamara Shafer said of the experience. "From the beginning, when Mrs. Yount first told us about this story, we were all ready to get in their and investigate it for ourselves."
The students are even taking their efforts a step further by writing to humanitarians any anyone that they think could help. Students were in the talks to write letters to famously charitable people such as Oprah and Bill Gates.
"We just want to see if people who are in a position to help would be interested in helping with this case," Moody said. "I am thinking about writing Bill Gates a letter."
Gideon Principal Keenan Buchanan said that he supported his students' investigative research efforts and that he was happy to see all of the students so involved with the project.
"This is something that has certainly caught their attention and interests," Buchanan said. "I am glad to see them all learning through this project. Mrs. Yount and Mrs. Rudeseal have done an excellent job with these kids and keeping them involved."
Yount and fellow faculty member Sande Rudeseal have helped the students at Gideon gather a multitude of resources to be utilized in their investigation. Many of the students used the resources to also help them write a final thesis on the real-life murder mystery and tell what they thought about the case including their theories into the who, what, where, when and why's surrounding the case.
Family members and friends marked the 50th anniversary of the killing with a candlelight vigil and memorial service at the cemetery where Huffman is buried in 2004.
Today, they and others like the students at Gideon, still remember Huffman and continue to hope for more answers.
Anyone wishing to donate to the Bonnie Huffman Reward Fund can do so by mailing a check to the Bank of Advance at P.O. Box 400, Advance, Mo., 63730. Checks should made out to the Bonnie Huffman Reward Fund.
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