While police believe they know who killed Donna Doll and Elna Jarvi, they say they are truly baffled by the 1978 murder of Barbara Wagner.

Shift Sgt. Chuck Kross, former head of investigations for the DeKalb Police Department, said that until a year and a half ago, he thought of the Wagner case every day. But he still “doesn’t know who did it,” he said. In the Doll and Jarvi cases, police at least said they had an opinion about what happened.

Wagner’s body, naked from the waist down, was found at the corner of Pearl and Gurler streets. She had died from massive head injuries. There was no evidence of sexual assault.

Wagner, 25, a former waitress at DeKalb’s Shamrock Tavern on Lincoln Highway and the Saloon in Cortland, was an English graduate student at NIU. She had long, straight dark hair and wore green contact lenses. Wagner had married and divorced a Robert Fitzsimmons.

Wagner officially died of cranial cerebral injury with a skull fracture on May 12, 1978, the night before NIU’s graduation. She apparently fell backwards and a car battery broke her fall, cracking open the back of her head.

That much is known. How she fell and who removed most of her clothing is a mystery.

Barbara’s last day alive was a typical hectic day at the end of the NIU spring semester. She took a final exam Friday morning. She spent the rest of the day sunning, visiting with friends and doing laundry. That evening, she attended a party for English students at Professor James Mellard’s house.

“She’d gone to a party earlier in the evening, taken by a male friend of hers, and then they left and went down to the local taverns,” said Lt. Richard Moudy, current DeKalb Police head of investigations.

“Her friend dropped her off (at a bar) at perhaps 8:30 or 9 in the evening,” Moudy said. Witnesses saw Wagner at the Uprising, (now Otto’s) and the Shamrock. “The last time someone saw her was at about 11:30 or 11:45 that night walking in the parking lot behind the Fife and Drum (now Matthew Boone’s Restaurant) west towards First Street,” Moudy said.

“There was another witness, and I don’t think this person was quite sure, but he thought it could have been her over on Pearl Street. She lived over by the river on Clifford. So her path would have taken her down First Street, down Gurler, across Pearl Street home …

“There was a large party taking place at the corner of Gurler and Pearl Street because this was graduation weekend. There were lots of people out and lots of cars around. And someone thought they saw her near that house, but they didn’t know if she was going to that party, or if she was going home, or what happened,” Moudy said.

At 7:45 a.m. Saturday, Wagner’s body was found.

Cliff Seldal owns a plumbing and heating business, then located on the corner of Pearl and Gurler streets. “Friday night, it was raining really bad. It was a real downpour,” Seldal remembers.

Seldal woke up that night to the sound of the phone ringing. “My neighbor called me around 2, 2:30 in the morning. And I went down there, it was just three or four houses away from me, and the water was backing up pretty bad in his house,” he said.

Seldal, his neighbor and another man went to Seldal’s shop around 3 a.m. to pick up some pipe and equipment. The party was still going on across the street on Pearl and cars were parked in his lot, but Seldal said the men paid no attention to the commotion.

“We got what we needed and we got my neighbor fixed up. We were there at the shop only about 20 minutes. We didn’t notice anything,” Seldal said. “And then I went back to bed.”

Seldal said every Saturday morning he drank some coffee and then headed for his shop to read the newspaper and do paperwork. On Saturday, May 13, he headed for his shop as usual.

“As I was coming down Gurler Street, I could look down (the street) and see my shop. I had a truck parked outside. There was something sitting by the left front wheel of the truck that wasn’t there Friday afternoon” when he left his office, he said.

Seldal pulled up, parked and stepped out of his car. “It was a purse, a lady’s purse.”

Seldal walked around the truck parked in front of the building and noticed a foot sticking out from the narrow space between the truck’s bumper and the wall. He walked all the way around to the other side of the truck, not believing what he saw.

“I see what I see, and I don’t believe it. I thought it was a mannequin.”

Seldal walked back around the truck again, and he still did not accept what he saw. “I didn’t realize it was a body until I reached down and took ahold of a toe.”

Barbara Wagner’s partially clothed body lay face-up in the cinders between Seldal’s truck and the building. The body was about 15 feet off Gurler Street with her head to the north and her feet pointing south. Her white painter’s pants were in a heap with her shoes and coat next to her crossed ankles. A rusty car battery sat close to her head.

Seldal went in to his shop and called the police. “I said, ‘I’ve just found a body out here, and I think she’s been murdered.'” The police arrived quickly, roped off the area and began the investigation.

According to inquest records, more than 300 people were interviewed in connection with the case, and more than 1000 man-hours were devoted to the investigation. Seven polygraphs were given, but to whom the police will not reveal.

Wagner’s autopsy was conducted by Edward Shalgos, a pathologist from Frankfort, Ill. The autopsy concluded the car battery was “the apparent weapon.” Wagner’s blood and hair were found on it. But Wagner also had been struck on the head by a small, hard object.

“Traumatic appearances suggest subject was struck innumerably over forehead with a relatively small and relatively light object … with some resemblance to a hammer.” Shalgos decided Wagner had stumbled backwards and fell, striking her head on the car battery.

The hammerlike blows were light and not responsible for her death. Despite Shalgos’ findings that “Wagner had stumbled backwards,” the coronor’s inquest ruled her death a homicide, not an accident.

Why are the police positive Wagner’s death was murder and not an accident?

Sgt. Kross testified at Wagner’s inquest she was found with visible cuts, lacerations and bruises on her forehead and a great amount of blood on the back of her head.

William Brady, a DeKalb attorney, was the first assistant state’s attorney in 1978. Police would discuss serious offenses with members of the state’s attorney’s office, he said. Brady lived on South Second Street at the time and was at the scene right around 8:00 a.m. that Saturday.

Brady said for three to four weeks after the murder he worked with the police on the case every night, sometimes until midnight, to find out what might have happened to Wagner.

The investigators spent time in Barbara’s apartment at 528 Clifford Drive and went to the Shamrock trying to reach a conclusion. Efforts were hampered by the murder’s occurrence on graduation weekend. Brady said half the town and many people they wanted to question disappeared the day after Barbara’s death.

This, in Brady’s opinion, was the case’s Waterloo. The investigation could never be narrowed down to who was in the area Saturday night. DeKalb, in some ways, is a transient city with people coming and going from out of town to classes, to parties, to see friends.

Moudy, Kross and Sheriff Roger Scott agree. So many undocumented people come to DeKalb and leave without anyone knowing they have ever been here. This fact has affected the Doll, Jarvi and Wagner cases.

And as in the Jarvi case, the night’s heavy rain might have washed away physical evidence from the scene and Wagner’s body, Kross said.

Brady, like Kross, does not know what happened to Barbara. He discounted, however, the possibility she was killed by a stranger. Brady said people do not normally “jump out of the bushes” in DeKalb, and his gut feeling is Barbara met someone she knew on the street, argued with them and fell, fatally smacking her head on the battery.

Brady said he thinks whoever killed Barbara removed her clothes to make the incident look like an attempted sexual assault. This circumstantial evidence led him to believe the person who killed her was someone she knew who tried to make it look like a stranger did it.

Whatever happened to Donna Doll, Elna Jarvi and Barbara Wagner, Sgt Kross said one thing is clear: “Over the last 20-plus years I have been here, the attitudes people have today are different … People are just more violent.

“It’s ‘We’ll take care of this problem right now’ and whether it’s beating or clubbing somebody … People are a lot more violent and it’s more hedonistic—‘This is good for me, I want it right now, this girl, she’s mine.'”