How a Winneshiek County deputy helped crack a 40-year-old cold case

WINNESHIEK COUNTY, Iowa (KCRG) - A Winneshiek County deputy helped solve a cold case more than 40 years in the making, identifying a man whose remains were found in a barn in 1986 and giving his family answers they had searched for ever since.

The case began in 1986 when Winneshiek County officials received a call that a farmer had found a body in his barn. Deputies found the remains but were unable to identify them.

Deputy Cole Tweten with the Winneshiek County Sheriff’s Office said the case had stayed with the department for decades.

“It was kind of a lingering thing over our sheriff’s office,” Tweten said.

Tweten, who grew up hearing about the case, used the slower hours on the night shift to dig into the file.

“Essentially, after looking through the whole case file, basically I realized that the only way we were ever going to identify who the person was if we had DNA, and the only way to get that would be to disinter the remains,” Tweten said.

Tweten brought his plan to Sheriff Dan Marx.

“I was originally quite apprehensive at the idea of disinterring a body,” Marx said.

After Tweten explained that DNA was the only way to move the case forward, the two began working to make it happen. Working with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation and a funeral director, they exhumed the remains on April 16.

“When the DNA testing was done, they put the sample into CODIS, which kind of pointed them in the direction of this missing person’s profile in NamUs, which was Clifton Womack,” Tweten said.

With Womack’s missing persons profile located, investigators found that Womack’s brother had already submitted his own DNA to the database. The team then used dental records to confirm the remains belonged to Clifton Womack.

Deputy Tweten then reached out to Womack’s surviving family.

“It was definitely a sense of relief for them that they had some closure after all this time,” Tweten said.

Sheriff Marx said the family’s reaction stayed with him.

“To see the relief and thankful hearts of his four remaining siblings was priceless,” Marx said.

Tweten said one of the major hurdles of reopening the investigation was cost. The DCI connected the department with the Elizabeth Collins Foundation, a nonprofit created in memory of Evansdale cousins Elizabeth Collins and Lyric Cook-Morrissey. The foundation funded the work it took to solve the case.

“I just, I know the agony that they go through,” Drew Collins said. “To be able to help another family that’s struggling through this process is great for us to be able to do.”

Tweten said being able to close the case and complete the work of deputies that came before him was rewarding.

But he said the real reward was giving the Womack family peace after decades of unanswered questions.

“This was their brother. They missed him for 40 years and they looked for him the whole time,” Tweten said.

Womack’s remains will now return to his family in Ohio.