IA Geralyn Jean Kean, 17, July 29, 1975, Des Moines, IA

[waunakeegan]

On July 29th, 1975 Geralyn Jean Kean, a 17-year-old housewife, was found face down on a waterbed in her Des Moines home, nude and riddled with bullets. Her husband of 8 months, Michael Kean (21), returned home from his job with the Union Carbide Corp in Des Moines at about 2:45 p.m to find Geralyn murdered. It appears that no signs of robbery or sexual assault were found. Police said Mrs. Kean was shot five times in the face, back, and side with a .38 caliber handgun.

The medical examiner said there was no laboratory evidence of sexual assault in the case and no other obvious marks on Geralyn's body other than the gunshot wounds. The autopsy also indicated that she has died around noon — “an hour one way or the other” — on July 29th, and that some of the shots may have been fired at extremely close range.

Geralyn Kean

By the following day, two unidentified men were being held and questioned by Des Moines police, but no charges were filed, according to a Des Moines Register article published July 30, 1975.
Police said Mrs. Kean, a housewife and part-time student at Des Moines Lincoln High School, apparently was last seen alive by her husband about 8 a.m. Tuesday before he left home for work. News articles published in the days following the murder said authorities would not confirm a report that a neighbor had seen a suspicious man in the vicinity of the Kean home about 10 a.m. that morning.

There were also unsubstantiated reports that Geralyn Kean’s murder and that of 21-year-old Diane Schofield (IA - IA - Diane Schofield, 21, Des Moines, 7 July 1975) were somehow connected and that they may be drug related. Diane Schofield’s badly decomposed body was found in the trunk of a tan 1966 Rambler in a parking lot near the Des Moines airport on July 10, 1975, just a few weeks before Geralyn was murdered. Diane was murdered by strangulation. Sadly, Diane's murder remains unsolved as well.