Police Baffled by Iowa Murders

GREG SMITH
April 2, 1999

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) _ Laura Watson Dalton and Maria Therese Lehner didn’t know each other, but they apparently had a lot in common. Friends say both were outgoing, caring, just nice to be around.

They share a horrible link: Both were killed by multiple blows to the head, their bodies discovered March 19 in a gutted apartment that was intentionally set on fire to destroy evidence and cover up the slayings.

Police don’t know if the women _ complete strangers to each other by all accounts _ died together or how they ended up in an apartment near downtown being rented by three college students.

Right now, there is still no connection with the apartment ... and the two victims. There just isn’t any reason for them to be there at this point that investigators have been able to figure out,″ Police Sgt. Mike Lord said this week.

Lehner, 27, lived in Belton, Mo., a Kansas City suburb, and was employed by Bregman & Co. of Bethesda, Md., to do environmental contract work with U.S. Army reserve units in Iowa, Missouri and Kansas.

Watson Dalton, 29, a native of Omaha, Neb., had been a paramedic for six months in Creston, 150 miles southwest of Iowa City.

A big question is how the woman ended up at the apartment, which was rented by three University of Iowa students. Two were away for spring break that week and a third has been studying overseas. The students told police they did not know the victims.

Neighbors told investigators that they heard male voices in the apartment but assumed it was the students.

Police know this much.

Lehner was in Cedar Rapids, about 30 miles north of Iowa City, for a March 18 appointment. She left the reserve unit that afternoon, but never made it to an appointment the next day in Iowa City.

Last week, police arrested Johnathon Lee Memmer, 23, on a parole violation stemming from a 1997 burglary conviction. Memmer was being held on $1 million cash bond and was not cooperating with police.

Investigators are questioning Memmer because he was seen partying on St. Patrick’s Day with Watson Dalton and a group of people. That was two days before the bodies were discovered, while Watson Dalton was in town to visit a cousin and some friends.

There are certain points in an investigation where you can rule a person out as a suspect,″ Lord said. There are also points where a person emerges as a suspect. So far, Memmer is somewhere in between those two points.″

In Lehner’s hometown of Norwalk, a tightknit community of 560 people in western Wisconsin, grief and shock is turning into anger.

If I had anything to say to the police, it would be, Get this guy, this person who did it. Go on every little lead. This is undeserving of anybody,‴ said Kathy Degenhardt, Lehner’s high school classmate.


State v. Memmer'

No. 3-271 / 01-1869
Filed July 10, 2003

Jonathan Lee Memmer challenges two first-degree murder convictions claiming the district court allowed tainted in-court identifications and trial counsel was ineffective. We affirm.