Krissi Atkisson never knew her mother, Wilma Nissen. Krissi told Dateline her adoptive parents fostered her until she was 5 years old. In fact, her adoptive parents had also fostered Wilma years earlier. Krissi’s adoptive parents, then in their 60s and 70s, rarely spoke about Wilma, and initially wouldn’t even mention her name. Krissi grew up wondering where her mother was and imagining the life they could have if they were reunited.
“I was always, always trying to find her,” Krissi said. “I would call random phone numbers of people that had a matching name.” Krissi imagined one day they’d reunite. “I always had this fantasy that I’d find her one day, and I didn’t expect her to be my mom, but I, you know, I thought I’d find her and had this whole delusional fantasy of, like, sitting on a front porch drinking coffee and talking to this mother I’d always dreamt about.”
That dream came to an end in February 2006 when a friend’s mother came over and asked her, “What’s your mom’s name?” Krissi told the woman her mother’s name. “And she’s like, ‘Oh, my God. I’m so sorry. She’s dead.’”
There had been a short entry in the Long Beach Press-Telegram on February 17. The headline read, in part, “Fingerprints ID body in Iowa.”
“They put a little blurb — little article in a newspaper in Long Beach,” Krissi said. “That a 27-year-old cold case Jane Doe had been identified as Wilma June Nissen.”
After hearing the news from her friend’s mom, Krissi immediately called the authorities in Iowa. “They had me go down to the local police department in my area and do a DNA test to make sure, and I did,” she recalled. “It’s all kind of a blur, but it seemed like they had the results almost immediately. I think it was the next day, and they said yes, it was my mother.”
That’s when Krissi learned that the mother she never knew had been murdered in 1978 — and it was brutal. She is now dedicated to getting answers.
“I doubt I’ll ever know why, but I at least want to know who,” she said.
WILMA’S PAST
Krissi says Wilma was born in San Francisco and spent much of her childhood in foster care. She learned about her mother’s background from investigators over the years, as well as from Wilma’s first foster family, who took her in when she was 10. “She couldn’t read, she couldn’t write, not even her first name. And she did not know how to use a fork,” Krissi said.
Wilma cycled through several foster families before settling with the same couple who would one day adopt Krissi. According to Krissi, Wilma had been married multiple times prior to giving birth to her, and had other children whom Krissi hasn’t met.
Krissi says her mother also started getting arrested for prostitution.
“She did marry my biological father in — I think she met him in ‘76 and she married him, if I’m correct, in June or July of ‘77.” Krissi was born in California in August 1977. “And that’s supposedly when she just left the hospital and never came back,” she said. Wilma’s last foster parents picked Krissi up from the hospital and later adopted her.
“They believe she was murdered right around my first birthday,” Krissi said, though Wilma wouldn’t be identified for nearly three decades. Krissi feels the loss deeply. “I feel like such a fraud because I never actually met her, but I see so much of me in her.”
OUR GIRL
For 27 years, Wilma Nissen remained an unidentified Jane Doe in Rock Rapids, Iowa.
“She was found off of an unmaintained, rural gravel road,” Krissi said. She’d been dragged into a ditch. “There were like six-foot-tall weeds, so her body was hidden.”
Krissi says the body was found by a 19-year-old who was laying cable for a phone line. “He almost stepped on her, and he thought it was a mannequin at first,” she said. “And then there was the horrific discovery that no, that’s not a mannequin.” Krissi said the teen called the police, who responded to the scene.
Dateline contacted the Lyon County Sheriff’s Office for an interview about the case, and provided a list of questions to Sheriff Brian Hilt via email. He replied he was unable to answer some questions, in part, due to the ongoing investigation. He did say Wilma’s cause of death has “never been released to the public,” and his department was not going to do so at this point. He directed us to the information listed on the Iowa Cold Cases website, saying that it has been well updated over the years. The website states that the body was located on Wednesday, October 4, 1978, and the remains were unrecognizable due to decomposition. Authorities believe the body had been there since July or August of that year.
According to Krissi, locals gave the Jane Doe a nickname. “They started calling her ‘Our Girl,’” she said. “They tried everything to figure out who she was.” But authorities in Iowa faced some difficulties. “No one ever reported her missing,” Krissi said. “She wasn’t local, and this is the ‘70s. So, I mean, they were able to get two usable fingerprints, but it wasn’t what it is today.”
Those fingerprints would prove to be important later on. “At first, they didn’t have, you know, the technology to do it nationwide,” Krissi said. Finally, in the early 2000s, the sheriff asked the lab techs to run the prints again, according to Krissi, this time nationwide. And that’s when they got a hit. “It came up with a match for [an] arrest in, I believe, Long Beach, from the early ‘70s,” Krissi said.
“She was identified January 31, 2006, after her fingerprints were matched to those of Wilma Nissen,” Sheriff Hilt told Dateline via email. “An investigation changes tremendously when the name of the victim is known,” he wrote. “It went from having no real direction to follow with the investigation — to having direction and information to develop.”
WHAT HAPPENED TO WILMA NISSEN?
In 2006, with Jane Doe’s identity now known, authorities were able to learn more about where Wilma had been and with whom she had been spending her time. Wilma spent the spring of 1978 traveling from California to Atlanta, and then somehow wound up in the Sioux City, Iowa area.
Over the years, police have had multiple suspects in Wilma’s case. In September 2007, Blythe Bloemendaal, then the sheriff of Lyon County, told the Sioux City Journal that he had a suspect list containing eight names. “Those (suspects), if they were in this region, were looked at because of the proximity to where their crime was in relationship to — could they have been in this area,” he said. They also looked into associates of Wilma’s and anyone who may have come in contact with her.
Then, in 2016, there was a major development in the case. Jerry Birkey, then a chief deputy at the sheriff’s office, announced that they had a suspect and released a photo a woman authorities believed to be responsible for Wilma’s murder. “Our suspect was an escort, a prostitute, a dancer, who liked to rob other escorts, prostitutes, and dancers,” Birkey said in the DakotaNewsNow interview. He described the motive as robbery. Wilma and the suspect both worked for an escort service in Sioux Falls at the time. He also noted his office believed the suspect did not act alone — that another woman, also an escort, helped her.
Current Lyon County Sheriff Brian Hilt told Dateline via email, “There was/has been a possible motive of theft, but until it is solved that remains a possible motive that we are unsure about.”
The sheriff noted that his department still has the evidence in Wilma’s case and is working with the “Iowa DCI Lab regarding further testing.” There was no further information available.
“SHE DESERVES JUSTICE.”
In recent years, Krissi decided to take matters into her own hands. “I want answers,” she said. She created accounts on social media to help bring attention to her mother’s case — including an X (formerly known as Twitter) account, an Instagram, a TikTok, and a website. “I understand the case is old. She wasn’t a local,” Krissi said. “But if I don’t try to advocate for her, no one’s going to.”
Krissi also created a petition inspired by Lonnie’s Law, a proposed bill in Pennsylvania, that would mandate transparency and require that regular updates be provided to family members in cold case investigations. “I’ve seen firsthand the anguish and helplessness that clouds the families left behind,” Krissi wrote in the petition. “I’ve experienced the gnawing pain of not knowing who is responsible for taking away our loved ones. That is why I firmly believe in the necessity of enhanced transparency and family engagement in cold case investigations.” She wrote that the petition aims to require law enforcement to give family members access to case files and provide an update to the immediate family after a case has been cold for 10 years. “In addition, it hopes to mandate these agencies to provide families with regular updates, at least monthly, if the family so chooses,” she stated.
That’s one thing Krissi wishes she had more of: information. But at the end of the day, she is just hoping to be able to see her mother get justice. “She lived such a tragic life that she — if nothing else — she deserves justice,” Krissi said. “I mean, whoever killed her, if they’re still alive, they’ve been walking free for almost 50 years after murdering my mom.”
Krissi urges anyone with information to speak up. “They need a witness to come forward,” she stressed. “They need people to come forward.”
Sheriff Hilt says Wilma Nissen’s is the only cold case his department has. “Someone is still around that knows what happened, either from being involved or being told about it. We need that person(s) to come forward and share the information with investigators,” he wrote in his email to Dateline. “Advancements in forensic technology may help, but we really need those who know what happened to come forward.”
Dateline also contacted the Iowa Attorney General’s Office for comment on Wilma’s case. In June of 2023, their department created a Cold Case Unit, “with the goal of aiding local law enforcement in prioritizing and investigating cold cases of homicide, missing persons under suspicious circumstances, and unidentified human remains.” Communications Director Jen Green told Dateline they do not comment on specific cold case investigations, but she directs anyone with a cold case tip to contact the Iowa Attorney General’s office at 1-800-242-5100 or [email protected].
You can also contact the Lyon County Sheriff’s Office at 712-472-8300 or submit a tip online.
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