(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird traveled to Sioux City Tuesday to highlight the importance of the state’s new cold case unit. “We must never lose hope when it comes to cold cases and unsolved cases. And as a prosecutor, I fight for victims and for families and to bring criminals to justice, and nothing weighs on my heart more than a family that’s left in the dark or a murderer out there walking free,” Bird says. Bird was joined by family members of Maureen Brubaker Farley, a Sioux City teen who disappeared in 1971 while working at a Cedar Rapids diner. Her cold case was solved in 2021.

“Maureen, I think, shows us the importance of never giving up, because her case was solved 50 years after her passing, and while Maureen’s murderer had died by that point, at least at that point, those answers had come to light,” she says. Maureen’s body was found on the trunk of an abandoned car in Cedar Rapids in 1971 and D-N-A from the scene eventually matched George Smith to her murder in 2021. Smith had been dead for eight years when investigators told her sister Lisa Schenzel and the rest of family of the match on the 50th anniversary of Maureen’s death.

Lisa Schenzel with AG Brenna Bird talks about the cold case involving her sister. (KSCJ photo)

“It was no surprise to my mom, as she had known that name and discussed that name with the police back when the event happened in 1971 when Detective Denlinger called to tell us the case had been solved, we cried. We cried so much over the years, especially our mom, but we also felt a calmness or peace come over us as we finally had answers,” she says. Maureen was 17 and the oldest of seven kids when she died. Schenzel says the smallest bit of evidence can help solve a case and anyone with information in a cold case should contact law enforcement.