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Thomas Freeman: How Did He Die? Information Regarding Lee Rotatori Murder Case
The episode of “On the Case with Paula Zahn: Room 106” that aired on Investigation Discovery helps viewers make sense of the convoluted chain of events that transpired in Council Bluffs, Iowa, in June 1982, when a food service manager by the name of Lee Rotatori was discovered stabbed. In the end, the police were able to determine who had killed her, but the investigation was fraught with unexpected turns of events. If you are interested in learning more about the incident and the individual who committed the crime, then you can rely on us to provide that information. Without further ado, how about we get this show on the road, shall we?
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How Did Lee Rotatori Die?
Clifford W. Gunsalus and Gwendolyn R. Snarr Gunsalus were the parents of Lee Gunsalus Rotatori when she was born on September 29, 1949 in Fargo, which is located in Cass County, North Dakota. She was the eldest child of the Gunsalus family, which consisted of four children, and she spent her childhood on the outskirts of Rochester. At the University of Wisconsin, Lee received both her Bachelor’s degree and Master’s degree in Food Nutrition. Both degrees are in the field of Dietary Services. She had a son from her first marriage, and for reasons related to her career, she decided to keep the surname from that marriage. Her son lived in Chicago with his father.
Madison, Wisconsin was the location of Lee’s wedding to her second husband, Gerald Stanley “Jerry” Nemke, which took place in August of 1978. After being married for one more year, they ultimately decided to end their marriage and divorced each other. She started working for Service-Master Inc., a company based in Chicago that provided outsourced food service managers to hospitals, in the year 1980. In June of 1982, she was sent to the Jennie Edmundson Hospital in Council Bluffs. Lee had slept at the Best Western Frontier Motor Lodge motel during the first week of her training as it was her temporary home.
What Happened With Lee Rotatori?
On the afternoon of June 24, 1982, Lee had spent time with some of the new friends she had made at her new job by going out on Lake Manawa in a boat with them. They had no idea that it would be the last time they would see Lee alive at the moment, but it turned out to be the case. Lee’s bosses became concerned when she did not show up for her first day of official work the next day and called the motel to check about her whereabouts. When the workers of the motel went to check on her in her room, they discovered that Lee had been slain.
The body of Lee, who was dressed in pyjamas, was found on the bed, face down, in a pool of blood. The cops were unable to uncover any indication of a struggle or an unlawful entrance into the building. The findings of her autopsy revealed that she passed away as a result of a single stab wound to the chest, and it is estimated that she had been dead for approximately twelve hours prior to the discovery of her body. The fact that she had been the victim of sexual assault was also included in the report. It was stated that her ring, wallet, and watch had gone missing; however, it was unclear whether robbery may have been the cause of their disappearance.
The Assassination of Lee Rotatori
Lee Rotatori was an American lady who was 32 years old and originally from Nunica, Michigan. In June of 1982, she had recently moved to Council Bluffs in order to begin working at the adjacent Jennie Edmundson Hospital. Due to the fact that she was new to the area and did not have a place to call home permanently, she ended up spending numerous nights at the Best Western Frontier Motor Lodge hotel.
When Rotatori’s manager realised that she had not shown up for her first official day of work on June 25, 1982, he called the hotel to inquire about her whereabouts. The staff discovered her dead in her room when they went to check on her, and they immediately notified the authorities about the crime scene. They discovered that she had been sexually molested and that she had died as a result of a single knife wound to the chest where she had been murdered. For decades, there were no names put up as possible suspects.
Investigation of Lee Rotatori’s Case
According to a report that appeared in the Omaha World-Herald on July 4, 1982, which was published ten days after the body of Rotatori was found, then-Sergeant Larry Williams was quoted as saying that “the killer may have been five feet away or a thousand miles away.” Her workplace and a number of other local groups offered monetary awards totaling thousands of dollars in an effort to obtain answers, but their efforts were fruitless. As a direct consequence of this, a cold case was initiated in which there were neither suspects nor explanations, and for many years no suspects were identified.
In 2019, the authorities attempted to identify a suspect by providing DNA evidence to Parabon NanoLabs so that they might identify the offender. Eric Schubert, a student at Elizabethtown College and volunteer genealogist, was also there to help them out. In February of 2021, it was discovered that Thomas Oscar Freeman was the likely owner of DNA that was found at the scene of the crime. Because Freeman’s daughter was willing to provide a DNA sample, it was determined that he was the person responsible for the murder.
In 2022, it was stated by police that the offender had been identified as Freeman. Additionally, it came to light that Freeman himself had been the victim of a homicide in the vicinity of July 1982. On October 30, 1982, his decaying remains was found in an abandoned building. It was discovered that his body had been subjected to a number of bullet wounds before being placed in a shallow grave. According to investigators, there was a link between the two homicides.
Lee Rotatori’s husband, Gerald “Jerry” Stanley Nemke, was initially looked at as a person of interest in the murder of Lee Rotatori; however, he was immediately ruled out as a suspect after officials discovered that he had a reliable alibi.
Jerry Nemke had a history of arrests and convictions. On April 29, 1960, in the city of Chicago, Illinois, while he was just 17 years old, he murdered a waitress named Marilyn Duncan, who was only 16 years old at the time. He was put on trial for the murder, convicted of the crime, and ultimately sentenced to death. Nemke’s preliminary hearing was not handled in a fair manner, according to the decision made by the Supreme Court of Illinois, which led to his conviction being reversed later on appeal. He was found guilty at the second trial as well, but this time he received a sentence of seventy-five years behind bars. At some time over the course of his term, he was granted an early release on parole.
Nemke was designated as a person of interest in the murder of Thomas Freeman after it was determined that Freeman was the person responsible for the death of Rotatori. The authorities stated that Nemke’s college was around 25 kilometres (16 miles) away from the location where Freeman’s body was found, and that Nemke and Freeman had known each other in the past. Nemke died in March 2019.
Who Killed Lee Rotatori?
Jerry, who had a very extensive criminal history, was initially a suspect in the investigation. After serving time at the Marseilles Youth Camp for the theft of an automobile, Jerry was tried and found guilty of the accusations that he killed Marilyn Duncan, a waitress who was 16 years old, by beating her to death in April of 1960. In May of 1960, when Jerry was only 17 years old, he admitted his guilt to police while being detained for stealing another automobile. He was subsequently sentenced to death for the crime. However, less than two years later, the judgement was reversed, and he was found guilty in a second trial; however, this time he was sentenced to between seventy-five and one hundred years in jail.
In spite of the fact that Jerry was free by the time he met Lee, the authorities conducted a comprehensive investigation into him due to his history of violent behaviour. However, due to the fact that he was in Michigan at the time of the murder and had a rock-solid alibi, he was not considered a suspect in the case. Because of the location of the motel in close proximity to the intersection of Interstate 29-80 and South 24th Street, the police suspected that the murderer could be anywhere from “five feet away to a thousand miles away.”
At the scene of the crime, the police discovered some forensic evidence; however, because advanced forensic technology was not available at the time, they were unable to use this evidence to identify or apprehend the killer. A reward fund in the amount of around $3,000 has been established by Edmundson Hospital, Service-Master Inc., and the proprietors of the motel where Lee was found murdered, Kinseth Enterprises Inc., in the hopes of obtaining any credible information on Lee’s murderer. However, there were no new leads that emerged, and the reward went unclaimed as the investigation petered out.
The evidence that was obtained from the crime scene in 1982 and resubmitted to the State of Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) Lab in 2001 reflects the progression of forensic science over the course of the intervening years. Although the DNA profile of an unidentified male was discovered, neither the state nor the federal DNA databases contained a match for it. The DCI lab made routine checks of the databases, but they never turned up any useful information. In the year 2019, the DNA profile was forwarded to a firm called Parabon Nanolabs, which was located in Virginia and offered DNA phenotyping services to governmental organisations.
The case was solved by Parabon Nanolabs in 2021 when they discovered that the DNA belonged to Thomas O. Freeman through the process of determining familial relationships from the genetic information. This discovery was made in collaboration with Eric Schubert, who was a student at the time and was 18 years old. Today, Eric Schubert is a Pennsylvanian genealogist who is nationally acclaimed. After nearly 40 years of searching, the police believed they had finally solved the case when they discovered a match between Thomas’s daughter’s DNA and the suspect’s.
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How Did Thomas Freeman Die?
The investigation had not yet been finished. In February of 2022, the Council Bluffs Police Department divulged to the general public the identity of the person who they had determined to be Lee’s murderer. However, due to the fact that Thomas was the victim of a murder, it was impossible to place him under arrest. In October 1982, just four months after Lee’s murder, the decaying remains of a 35-year-old man was discovered in a shallow grave close to Cobden, Illinois. This is according to the documents kept by the police. He had been shot a number of times, and the results of his autopsy revealed that he had been dead for close to three months at the time of the examination.
After discovering some apparent ties between the two individuals, the investigators once again deemed Jerry to be a person of interest in Thomas’ murder. Both men were previous acquaintances of Jerry’s, and Jerry’s college was around 15 miles away from where Thomas was found dead. However, Jerry had passed away in March of 2019 from natural causes, and the Illinois police are still investigating the circumstances surrounding Thomas’s murder.
