Jackson County Murders

FISCHER, SCHNOOR, SAGERS, KEENEY, TRACY, BATEY, KINYON, BERENDES, SCHMITZ, SWEENEY

Posted By: Anne Hermann (email)
Date: 12/9/2008 at 21:39:19

Jackson Sentinel
March 1, 1975

Last Murder in 1960

The stabbing death of Mrs. Hulda Fischer, Feb. 25 was the most recent murder in Maquoketa since 1960. The assistance of Jackson County Clerk of Court Lois Schnoor and deputy Gloria Sagers, revealed the following compilation of previous murders in and around Maquoketa.

On June 7, 1960 Orville Keeney, 57 took a shotgun, killed his 38-year-old wife, Florence and then turned the weapon on himself and committed suicide.

Their home at that time was at 311 South Olive St.

The last murder in Maquoketa before that was in 1935 when Mrs. Sarah Tracy, 78, was bludgeoned with an auto crank at her home. That house stood just outside the Maquoketa city limits on a county road leading past United Livestock Auction, north of Pershing Road.

Mrs. Tracy’s death has remained an unsolved murder.

Another recent death which took place in the area was the murder of Thomas Vincent Batey at his home on the Caves Road northwest of Maquoketa, on July 8, 1962.

Donald Kinyon was convicted of the death and was sent to the Iowa Penitentiary for Men in Ft. Madison.

Bellevue chief of police, Earle E. Berendes, was the victim of a homicide in April, 1969, when he died of a blow to the head while investigating a break in at Bellevue.

Richard E. Schmitz and William Sweeney, both of Dubuque, were convicted of second degree murder and are serving 75 year sentence at the present.