Murder at the State Fair, Part 1: Greed, Envy and Lies

Editor's note: Des Moines Register reporters Kathy A. Bolten and Grant Rodgers spent more than three months in 2016 interviewing people connected to one of Iowa’s most notorious double homicides that occurred in 1996 at the Iowa State Fair and involved a hitman and family filled with jealousy. The award-winning five-part series – “Greed, Envy, Lies” – originally published during the 2016 Iowa State Fair.

© Copyright 2016, Des Moines Register and Tribune Co.

Marilyn Blewer suffered the most.

The gunman had already ordered her husband, Bobie, to open their safe and take out thousands of dollars earned at their funnel cake stand at the Iowa State Fair.

But she sensed something even more terrible was about to happen in the cramped bus, her family's living quarters on the road.

Her hands bound, Marilyn jumped up from her seat at the dining table. The gunman fired, the bullet ripping into her chest and knocking her to the floor.

Murder at the Iowa State Fair

A five-part Des Moines Register series:

• CHAPTER TWO:  A killer confesses and details a bigger plot
• CHAPTER THREE:  The secret affair
• CHAPTER FOUR:  A daughter's betrayal
• CHAPTER FIVE:  A family shattered
• EXTRA:  Is he innocent?
• WATCH THE VIDEOS

Outside, tens of thousands of visitors flooded the fairgrounds that August day in 1996. They stood in long lines to sample attractions that were quintessentially Iowan — eating corn dogs and glimpsing the renowned butter cow and its companion sculpture, "American Gothic."

But inside the motor home, a coldblooded murder plot played out, fueled by  greed envy and lies.

Marilyn cried as the gunman stood over her.

She heard a second gunshot. And then another.

'Try my funnel cake'

Bobie and Marilyn Blewer began operating Florrie's Funnel Cakes at the Iowa State Fair in the mid-1970s, eventually landing a coveted vending spot on the Grand Concourse "triangle" for their distinctive-looking red trailer with gold accents and wagon wheels.

Married in April 1969, the couple lived on a 120-acre farm near Granby, Mo., a town of about 2,000 in the southwestern corner of the state. Bobie "was doing quite well" at an executive recruiting company, but he wanted to be his own boss, said his older brother, Arnold Blewer.

"He went down to Silver Dollar City one time and saw what they were doing with funnel cakes," Arnold Blewer said. "He had a trailer built, and as far as I know, he was one of the first to go on the road with funnel cakes."

The couple traveled the Midwest from mid-June until the end of September. It didn't take them long to add a second trailer, he said.

Neighbors and friends kept watch over the family’s livestock and large garden during concession season.

“We had a cherry tree,” said Jada, the couple's youngest daughter. “My mom would tell the neighbors, ‘You pick the cherries, I’ll make you a pie.'"

Their son, Beau, helped with the garden. “Then we’d leave and go concessioning,” he said.

Jamie, the Blewers' oldest child, was 8 when she first joined her father on the “funnel cake circuit.” Bobie taught her how to count change and pour sodas, but kept her away from the hot fryer.

When Beau and Jada were old enough, they joined the family on the fair circuit.

“We were all together,” Beau said.

The Blewers brought their stand to Des Moines after an Iowa State Fair manager noticed the crowds they were drawing in Oklahoma. At the time, many Iowa fairgoers were unfamiliar with the sweet treat made by pouring cake batter through a funnel into hot oil and serving it with powdered sugar sprinkles.

Bobie “would stand outside his trailer with bits and pieces of funnel cake cut up and hand them out to people as they walked by — ‘Here, try it; try my funnel cake,’” Arnold said.

By 1996, the Blewers’ stand, and funnel cakes, were fair staples.

A home on wheels

The first days of the 1996 Iowa State Fair were nearly perfect —  85 degrees with a light breeze and a blue sky punctuated with white, cotton candylike clouds.

At night, the family slept in an older-model charter bus they had converted into a home on wheels.

It was parked among other concessionaires' campers, trailers and vehicles in Lot N, east of East 33rd Street and north of the maintenance building, where a hill provides views of the midway and Grandstand.

Inside the bus, two pinstriped armchairs and a six-sided end table and lamp were squeezed to one side. A small dining table with booth seating was just past the chairs. A couch and cabinet were on the other side of the 2-foot-wide aisle.

Bobie and Marilyn’s bed was shoehorned behind the bathroom, shower and kitchen area.

Beau and Jada usually alternated between sleeping on the couch or in the cramped aisle. Jamie, who was married and had two small children, stayed in Missouri, attending nursing school.

Occasionally, Bobie hired people to help in the stands, sometimes local teenagers and other times people he brought in from Missouri.

In July 1996, Jerimy Sneed traveled with the family to Davenport to work at the Mississippi Valley Fair. The heavily tattooed 22-year-old had a prison record, but people the Blewers knew vouched for him, so they offered him work.

Jerimy returned to Missouri after the Davenport fair, but late on Aug. 8, the first Thursday of the Iowa State Fair, he unexpectedly showed up. The Blewers put him to work and offered him a place to sleep on the bus.

Where are they?

About 8 a.m. Monday, Aug. 12, Bobie woke Beau and Jada so they could open the stand. Jada saw Jerimy, wearing a Coke T-shirt and jeans, asleep on the couch.

The teens drove Beau’s red Chevrolet pickup truck the half-mile to the stand and began preparing for the day. They made batter, heated the oil and checked their supply of cold drinks.

Sometime after 10 a.m., Beau left to take supplies to the bus, walking back about 20 minutes later, Jada said.

Bobie contacted Beau and Jada about 11 a.m. on one of the family’s two-way radios. He wanted to know “if we put transmission fluid in the truck,” Jada said. They hadn’t.

The conversation, which lasted less than two minutes, was Jada's last with her father.

Florrie’s Funnel Cakes got busy as the fair began to fill with the day’s 75,658 visitors. Beau fried the cakes; Jada took orders at the window.

A long line formed, and the teens began to wonder what was keeping their parents. They knew their father had planned to pay the fair “the percentages” from Sunday’s proceeds, and their mother was going to do laundry.

Beau and Jada were heading back to Missouri later that day so Jada could start school. Their mother wanted them to leave with clean clothes, Jada said.

As noon approached, and then passed, with no sign of their parents, the teens became anxious. Their parents — Bobie was 56 and Marilyn was 48 — rarely left them alone during busy periods.

Beau and Jada tried at least 10 times to call them on the radio. No one answered.

Jada tried to rationalize the delay.

“I had said to Beau that the laundry’s not going to be done in 10 minutes, and you never know how long Dad’s going to be gone,” Jada said. “My dad was very sociable. If he saw somebody he knew, he’d stop and talk. It could be 10 minutes or 30 minutes.

“I’m just thinking he’s talking to somebody.”

Sometime after 1 p.m., Beau decided to go see what was keeping their parents, Jada recalled.

“That’s when everything happened.”

'Something was wrong'

Beau hurried to Lot N, stopping at a gate to a get a wristband so he could re-enter the fairgrounds. Then he jogged to the bus.

“I was in a hurry to get back to help Jada out,” Beau remembered.

He noticed the door was slightly ajar, and when he opened it, he saw a roll of money on the steps. He picked it up, figuring his father had accidentally dropped it.

The bus was dark. The window blinds were closed, and no lights were on. Just enough sunlight came through the windshield for Beau to see his parents on the floor in the cramped aisle near the dining table.

Bobie, his white T-shirt tucked into his bluejeans, was facedown, and his feet were bare. Marilyn, in loose white shorts and an aqua top, was on her back, just beyond her husband. The bottom of her feet touched Bobie’s right shoulder.

Beau thought his parents were napping. He called for them to wake up and come help at the stand. When no response came, Beau moved closer and nudged his father’s foot.

“I knew something was wrong, because he wasn’t responding,” Beau said.

Then he noticed his father was bleeding and had duct tape over his mouth. His mother’s hands were bound, and something covered her mouth. Her glasses were askew.

“I knew they were hurt, but I didn’t know how bad,” Beau said.

The 18-year-old rushed out of the bus, flagging down a security guard, who told him to go to the gate to get help.

Beau ran there “yelling for help.”

'Crime doesn't happen there'

About 15 miles away in Ankeny, Frank Severino was at a training session for Iowa State Patrol officers assigned to work the fair.

The Polk County assistant attorney had joined the office in 1992, soon after graduating from Drake University Law School. He had worked felony cases but had never been assigned a homicide.

During the session, somebody asked what jurisdiction was in charge if a major crime occurred at the fair.

“My thought was, ‘It’s the Iowa State Fair. Major crime doesn’t happen there,’” Severino said. But he responded by saying the Division of Criminal Investigation would oversee a major investigation.

Roughly a minute later, a telephone in the room rang. There had been a murder at the State Fair, the caller said.

“I did not believe that it was the truth, because it was just so coincidental the way it happened,” Severino said. “I drove all the way back downtown thinking, ‘Were they kidding me?’”

It was no joke. Two people had been shot dead (“executed” was the word some used), something unprecedented in the fair's 142-year history.

Kathie Swift, the fair’s marketing director, had also been called. As she began making her way in a golf cart to Lot N, she passed Florrie’s Funnel Cakes, where Jada was trying to keep up with the line.

“Everybody was having so much fun,” Swift recalled thinking. “It was a little surreal to think somebody had been murdered.”

'100,000 possible suspects'

Yellow police caution tape surrounded the bus when Severino arrived. Crime scene analysts were taking photos and bagging evidence. DCI agents talked with potential witnesses.

"I've got a murder at the State Fair, and I've got 100,000 possible suspects," Dave Button, the DCI special agent who oversaw the investigation, remembered thinking. "I mean, talk about a mass of humanity." 

Someone asked Severino, who moved into a makeshift office at a nearby building, to watch Beau until he could be interviewed and his hands tested for gunshot residue.

“He and I were alone in a room together,” Severino said. “He was just sitting there, he had his head down, and he just said to me, ‘What is this world coming to?’

“He was completely deflated.”

As word circulated about the double homicide, reporters gathered outside the lot, peppering anyone they could find with questions. Other concessionaires heard about the shooting, including Jada at Florrie’s Funnel Cakes.

“Somebody came and said, ‘Something’s happened to your parents,’” Jada said. “I remember taking the radio — I stepped out of the trailer to try and call them — and this other lady had come up and told me what happened. I threw — or dropped — the radio, and it slid on the floor. We ran up the hill.”

Jada was not allowed to enter the bus or talk with Beau. She was led away, sobbing.

She was interviewed and fingerprinted, but remembers little about it.

Beau was questioned by then-DCI agent Jim Saunders in the front seat of Saunders’ vehicle.

“He was in shock,” Saunders recalled. “So we tried to do the best that we could to get a preliminary interview with him and just kind of get some basic information down about that day.”

When did Beau last see his parents? Who else had been in the bus with them? Was money kept in a safe? Was it missing? Was anything else unaccounted for?

Officials quickly learned two things were missing — Jerimy Sneed and Beau’s truck.

“It really didn’t take a trained investigator to figure that one out,” Saunders said.

While detectives asked questions, Severino obtained a search warrant that allowed officials to enter the bus.

As Severino looked at his first homicide scene, “The thought that went through my mind is that these people went through a horrible, horrible ending to their life.

“Their last moments of their life were so terrifying.”

Severino said he noticed a seat cushion was out of place and a .22-caliber revolver was on a chair.

“We walked in, took a look and got out because we didn’t want to tamper with the scene in any way,” he said.

Across the fairgrounds, Faith Hill was performing at the Grandstand, opening for her future husband, Tim McGraw.

'Jerimy who?'

Late that night, Beau and Jada were finally able to talk with each other.

Both knew Jerimy was missing. They hadn’t spoken with their sister, Jamie, but her husband, Rodney Borushaski, had shown up late in the day. He had been expected to arrive the next day to help his in-laws run the stand because Beau and Jada were to be in Missouri.

Police questioned Rodney, asking him if he knew a funnel cake worker named Jerimy. “Jerimy who?” he responded.

After Rodney finished answering questions, he sought out Jada and Beau.

Jada said her brother-in-law urged her and Beau to return to Missouri with him that night.

“I didn’t want to go,” she said. “I didn’t want to leave my parents here.”

Sometime before noon the next day, Rodney headed back to Granby, a six-hour trip from Des Moines. It took him more than 12 hours to arrive.

Law enforcement officers asked Rodney why it took so long.

He lied.

Murder at the Iowa State Fair

A five-part Des Moines Register series:

• CHAPTER TWO:  A killer confesses and details a bigger plot
• CHAPTER THREE:  The secret affair
• CHAPTER FOUR:  A daughter's betrayal
• CHAPTER FIVE:  A family shattered
• TIMELINE OF EVENTS: Take a deeper dive into the case
• EXTRA:  Is he innocent?
• WATCH THE VIDEOS