Blood-spattered house mystifies elderly couple

By TOM ALEX
REGISTER STAFF WRITER
05/15/2004


The cleaners came Friday to wash the blood out of Elmer and Viola Stacy's carpet.

Now the rural Davenport couple hopes someone will tell them whose blood it was.

"We are both in our 90s, and we are tired," Elmer said. "It was an exhaustive experience."

Police called in bloodstain experts and specially trained dogs when they arrived at the Stacys' home Tuesday to find gore splattered in the kitchen and several other rooms, mostly on the floors and low on the walls.

So far, all they can tell is that the blood is human, and that it "was almost all over the house," Scott County Sheriff's Capt. Mike Brown said. "It looked bad. It makes you take a step back and say, 'Whoa, what happened?' "

Elmer and Viola say they are fine. They apparently were home when the mess was made. Brown said Elmer and Viola were checked by a doctor. Their DNA will be compared with the blood.

The house was as tidy as before the mess was discovered.

"It's just bizarre," Brown said. "We have a ton of questions."

Rex Sparks, a bloodstain pattern analyst with the Des Moines Police Department, went to Scott County to help with the investigation. The couple stayed next door with a daughter in the interim.

Authorities wonder if someone injured in a traffic or a hunting accident wandered into the home.

If so, Elmer and Viola heard nothing.

Cadaver dogs and their handlers came up empty in the surrounding area.

The barricades that blocked access to the house, near Interstate Highway 280 and U.S. Highway 61, are gone now. But the questions remain.

"We're back in our house," Elmer said. "But it's still a mystery."

Last Updated: 11:40 pm, Monday, May 17th, 2004

Mysterious blood came from elderly woman
By Craig Cooper

It was not like misplacing the car keys or forgetting a telephone number. Losing an estimated one pint of blood led to a serious investigation by Scott County sheriff’s and state law enforcement investigators.

The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, or DCI, reported Monday that blood found in the Scott County home of an elderly couple May 11 came from the 90-year-old woman living in the home.

Capt. Mike Brown of the Scott County Sheriff’s Department said the blood loss has been attributed to an arterial hemorrhage on the lower portion of the woman’s leg. The woman did not know she had lost blood, which was discovered by the couple throughout their house in the 14000 block of 115th Avenue.

Brown said there were no obvious wounds found on the couple.

“The medical people we talked to said that the woman may have had a pin-sized hole in an artery that opened up and the blood spilled out,’’ Brown said. “They said it was feasible that the hole then healed itself.

“It apparently doesn’t happen often, but does happen. That is what we believe took place.’’

The couple woke on May 11 and noticed blood at several locations in their home.

“At first we thought it might have been an animal that was cut and walked through the house. We knew that wherever the blood came from, the animal or person was bleeding profusely. There was blood on several walls and on furniture,’’ Brown said. “It’s hard to estimate how much blood was lost, but it was probably a good pint. It was all over the house.

“It looked enough like a crime scene that we had to treat it that way, especially when we found out quickly that it was human blood. Then we really had questions.’’

The couple had to move out of their home for two days while the home was still considered to be a possible crime scene. The couple returned to their home late last week.

“We managed the home as a crime scene because we didn’t know all of the answers. We interviewed a number of people and had to keep open minds about what possibly could have happened,’’ Brown added.

Brown said the DCI worked over the weekend to determine the source of the blood. Typically the results would not have been available until Thursday.

Brown said the woman is being cared for by a doctor.