News : Murder history: 1981 suspect in Vinton son\'s death died in 2010 in Minnesota

The only person ever charged with committing murder in Vinton died last year in central Minnesota.

The case of Judith Eisenbacher Burkart, who later remarried and became Judith Jeppesen, kept the attention of law enforcement authorities in two states for several months in 1980 and 1981.

It began in a garage on West 17th Street in the middle of the night in the summer of 1980.

Ronald Burkart found his wife, Judith Burkart, then age 27, and her 13-month-old son, Christopher, in a car in a garage at around 2:30 a.m. on July 7, 1980, and called an ambulance; Mrs. Burkart had attempted to commit suicide via carbon monoxide poisoning.

Christopher was pronounced dead at Virginia Gay Hospital.

Two days later, his mom was charged with murder.

Officers interviewed Judith Burkart while she was still in her hospital bed.

The county attorney at the time, Mark Mossman, filed murder charges.

Now, 31 years later, Mossman still remembers the case and the opinion of some members of the public about it.

"We took some flak over that case," Mossman said recently. "Some people said we shouldn't charge her with murder, but she killed her child."

The murder case was moved to Jasper County, where after months of hearings, Burkart and her attorney agreed to plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter in early 1981. Burkart received a suspended sentence.

Prison escape plot

Mossman said that while in jail, Burkart met some people who were bad influences on her.

"She later went to prison for helping a man escape from jail," he said.

Court records confirm this part of her history.

While living in Cedar Rapids, Judith Eisenbacher (who had divorced Ron Burkart and had begun using her maiden name), wired some money to a man in Minnesota. That man used the money to purchase a small caliber hand gun, and smuggled it into a jail in Hastings, Minn, in October of 1981.

Two inmates, including a male friend of Eisenbacher's, pointed the gun at prison staff, forcing them to allow them to escape.

Eisenbacher, who claimed that she did not know the money was to be used to purchase the gun, was charged with a variety of offenses in Minnesota; later she was returned to Benton County court, where her probation was revoked.

After serving time in prison in Iowa and Minnesota, Eisenbacher moved to central Minnesota. She married Michael Jeppesen on Jan. 3, 1987. The couple lived in Pillager in central Minnesota, where Judith (then known as Judy) worked at a metal casting company until retirement.

Other murders in Vinton

While Burkart was the only Vinton resident charged with murder, there were other cases in which the murder suspects took their own lives. Scott T. Johnson, 27, killed his ex-girlfriend, Crystal Hawkins, (and his dog) before committing suicide on May 13, 1993.

And the man who shot Sheriff Sam Fry in 1938, later killed himself as police surrounded the house where he was hiding. See that story by Vinton Police Officer Eric Dickinson HERE.