IOWA CITY - People living in an Iowa City neighborhood want to find a way to remember three children who were brutally murdered by their father earlier this year. In late March, Steve Sueppel beat his wife and four kids to death before taking his own life in a car crash.
The plans for a memorial are hard to come by. The secretary at Longfellow Elementary School says as many as a dozen different news outlets from outside eastern Iowa have contacted her asking for information about a possible memorial. At least one call came from Colorado. But the secretary keeps telling them no one will comment. That makes it difficult to find out about a memorial.
The district superintendent says a letter sent out to parents mentioned the idea of a memorial for the Sueppel children. Three of the four went to school at Longfellow. Superintendent Lane Plugge says it's not uncommon to have a memorial on school grounds. He said, "We have art work that's been donated in memory of a former student that died, staff members that have left and retired sometimes we'll have memorials like that."
Police discovered the bodies of Steve Sueppel's family in their Iowa City home on March 24th. He apparently beat them all with a blunt object like a baseball bat. Later in the morning they found Sueppel dead in his car which had crashed on I-80. Sueppel had allegedly embezzled half a million dollars from Hills Bank.
Longfellow Elementary is receiving some donations for a memorial.
Email Steve Nicoles at Steve.Nicoles@kcrg.com
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