It’s past time for authorities to release case files surrounding the 1969 murders of Betty Cantrell and Sally Hutton, as well as other unresolved disappearances in the Iola area, a pair of true-crime podcasters proclaimed Saturday.
Gretchen Scanlon and Morgan Kelly, co-hosts of “Bodies in the Bayou,” spoke for two hours about Cantrell, Hutton and the 1984 disappearance of Don Sager of LaHarpe at Saturday’s summer meeting of the Allen County Historical Society.
A crowd of 130 gathered at Allen Community College to hear what they had to say about the cases, their research and the reluctance some agencies have when it comes to releasing information.
Both Cantrell and Hutton were killed days apart, the week of Sept. 30, 1969, in or near Iola. Cantrell was a waitress working the early morning shift at the Dine Out Cafe. Hutton was a ninth-grader at Iola Junior High School, who disappeared after telling her parents she was going to walk to a football game at Riverside Park.
Scanlon and Kelly retold the gut-wrenching series of events that followed that week, and apparent missteps in the early portions of the investigations.
To wit, officers told the Dine In cafe owners to quickly clean up blood inside the eatery so it could reopen for an incoming breakfast crowd.
“If anybody in any law enforcement agency moves forward and solves any of these cases, I will apologize for anything bad I have said, at any point in time,” Scanlon said. “But move forward.”
Cantrell’s case took a turn a couple weeks after her killing when Iolan Jack Shoemaker, best described as a local drunkard, confessed to killing her in order to rob the cafe. But even with his confession, a jury acquitted Shoemaker of criminal charges, in a large part because he confessed while being plied with alcohol by officers in order to keep him talking.
Hutton’s case also had issues. Authorities ordered a second autopsy about a month after her funeral, and didn’t immediately announce to the public that she had apparently eaten a hamburger and french fries the night she was killed. Had that information been released sooner, it would have increased the likelihood a witness would have seen her at a local restaurant, the podcasters noted.
Cantrell’s case was considered a closed case in the eyes of the Iola Police Department after Shoemaker was arrested, the podcasters said. Regardless, their efforts to get case files have been denied because the files contain “investigative materials,” Kelly said.
Hutton’s case remains an open investigation, Scanlon added.
But even then, after 55 years, it’s time to take a new tack in the investigation, she continued.
“Why are we not releasing information to the public?” she asked. “Does a 14-year-old child not deserve everything you can do?”
THE AUDIENCE included relatives of both Cantrell and Hutton, as the discussion centered on whether David Cantrell, Betty Cantrell’s husband, warranted a closer look as a suspect.
Scanlon noted that within hours of the news of Cantrell’s murder, officers announced he was not a suspect, even though relatives have pointed to an abusive relationship. Betty Cantrell’s sister, who was in the crowd Saturday, told the audience Betty had been planning to file for divorce when she was killed.
