Iowa man convicted of second-degree murder nearly 40 years after disappearance of Barbara Lenz
By KCCI staff
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COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa (KCCI) — The family of Barbara Lenz is finally getting some justice.
A Pottawattamie County jury on Tuesday convicted the man authorities say killed Lenz in 1989, when she was 31 years old. The jury found Robert Davis, who was 25 at the time Lenz disappeared from her Woodbine home, guilty of second-degree murder.
Davis, 62, was arrested and charged in the cold case last March — 36 years after Lenz’s death. It was the first arrest and now the first conviction for Iowa’s Cold Case Unit, which was formed in 2024.
Court records say Davis was the last person to see her alive.
A criminal complaint said Davis had assaulted Lenz several times during their two-year relationship, including multiple incidents where he strangled her. The documents show Davis admitted in 1989 to assaulting Lenz and having a violent temper and, days before her disappearance, Lenz told others she was scared of him and feared he would “kill her if she ever left.”
Lenz’s body has never been found.
Lindsy Baumgart was 3 years old and living with her father in Omaha at the time of her mother’s disappearance.
She spoke to media outside of the courtroom Tuesday, saying: “I just held out that one day someone might speak up or maybe I might be able to figure it out myself, but I was never successful. It took an incredible team behind us to get us here today.”
Baumgart hugged her father, John Crews, when the verdict was read.
“It was such an emotional release,” she said.
Crews, Baumgart’s father, called the conviction a relief.
“I’m just really relieved after 37 years of praying for this to happen,” Crews said. “I’m just so thankful that Barbara made the sacrifice of giving Lindsy to me a week and a half before she was murdered.
“I’m just so thankful that the court system got a guilty verdict on this man and brought peace to the families.”
Crews called Lenz a “wonderful, wonderful woman” and a “tough country girl,” with whom he had the joy of sharing a daughter.
Davis will be sentenced on May 22.
“No one should get away with murder,” Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird said in a news release after the conviction. “Barbara Lenz’s family has been waiting nearly 37 years for justice. Today, after long last, they have it. Robert Davis will spend the rest of his life in prison.”
’37 years of relief’ Lenz’s brother, Jim Lenz, called the conviction “37 years of relief.”
“The (legal) team really did a good job getting to this point,” he said. “We’ve been waiting a long time for this.”
Mary Meseck, Barbara Lenz’s sister, said the trial brought back strong feelings about losing her sister.
“She was such a good person, and I was just so happy to be up there (on the witness stand) for her,” Meseck said.
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