County attorney seeking to postpone murder trial for second suspect in decades-old Weber slaying

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Due to the unavailability of a witness and a slate full of first-degree murder trials, the Jasper County Attorney’s Office has proposed re-scheduling Gottlieb William “Junior” Baumann’s first-degree murder trial for December. Baumann is the second man charged in the stabbing death of Colfax resident Karen Weber in 1986. The 46-year-old man’s trial initially had been scheduled for February, was postponed to June and then re-scheduled for Aug. 25. Late last month, however, Michael Jacobsen and Scott Nicholson, assistant county attorneys, submitted a motion requesting the trial be pushed back to Dec. 3. The motion indicates Darwin Chapman, a member of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation Criminalistics Laboratory who testified during convicted murderer Martin Sinclair Duffy’s trial, will be unavailable for trial the week of Aug. 25, as he will be out of state. “Mr. Chapman is a necessary State’s witness,” the motion stated. “Mr. Chapman processed the crime scene in 1986.” The county attorney’s office also cited pending first-degree murder trials for 18-year-old Tyler Ray Oberhart and 20-year-old Justin Alan Robuck — accused in the Oct. 6, 2007, stabbing death of 19-year-old Jerry Alden Pittman II — in its motion to re-schedule the trial. Both trials, Oberhart’s later this month and Robuck’s in September, are expected to last two weeks. A pre-trial conference in Baumann’s case is scheduled for Monday. Baumann was charged in connection with Weber’s death less than a month after 50-year-old Duffy was sentenced to life in prison following a jury trial in Jasper County last September. State and local authorities arrested Duffy after matching his DNA to samples taken from cigarettes found at the scene of Weber’s death using the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS). Then, during an interview with officials from the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office and DCI in early 2007, Duffy confessed to killing Weber while another man was present. Although Duffy would not tell authorities who was with him, he stated that in 1986 he often spent time with Baumann, driving around on gravel roads in central Iowa. DCI officials then spoke with Baumann at the Newton Correctional Facility and obtained a saliva sample from him. A criminal complaint filed by the Jasper County Attorney’s Office stated Baumann’s DNA was matched to samples taken from the murder victim. Weber’s body was found partially nude near the edge of a gravel road just off Highway 117 north of Prairie City by two Jasper County couples on their way to church on the morning of April 20, 1986. Autopsy reports indicated her throat had been slashed three times, and the medical examiner believed she had been sexually assaulted. Although investigators collected numerous cigarette butts from the crime scene in an attempt to locate fingerprints or determine the suspect’s blood type, no arrests were made until Duffy’s in January 2007. Baumann has pleaded not guilty to the first-degree murder charge. He has been incarcerated at Anamosa State Penitentiary since a 2001 conviction for prohibited acts and other charges in Polk County and is not scheduled to be released until 2019.