Murder at the State Fair: A family shattered
Grandson of murder victims presses for answers about their deaths at Iowa State Fairgrounds in 1996.
Murder at the State Fair: A family shattered Grandson of murder victims presses for answers about their deaths at Iowa State Fairgrounds in 1996. Check out this story on desmoinesregister.com: https://dmreg.co/2bCY8M1
Kathy A. Bolten and Grant Rodgers, kbolten@dmreg.com Published 9:27 p.m. CT Aug. 17, 2016 | Updated 2:28 p.m. CT Aug. 8, 2018
Part 5 in a 5-part series exploring the 1996 double-murder of two funnel cake vendors at the Iowa State Fair
Bobie and Marilyn Blewer, who were killed at the Iowa State Fair on Aug. 12, 1996, are buried in Granby, Mo., a town of about 2,000 in the southwestern corner of the state.(Photo: Nathan Papes/Springfield News-Leader)
Editor's note: Des Moines Register reporters Kathy A. Bolten and Grant Rodgers spent more than three months in 2016 interviewing people connected to one of Iowa's most notorious double homicides that occurred in 1996 at the Iowa State Fair and involved a hit man and family filled with jealousy. The award-winning five-part series – "Greed, Envy, Lies" – originally published during the 2016 Iowa State Fair.
© Copyright 2016, Des Moines Register and Tribune Co.
The questions had tormented Gunnar Borushaski for more than a decade.
Why were his grandparents, Bobie and Marilyn Blewer, bound, gagged and shot to death in their motor home at the Iowa State Fairgrounds?
Were two juries right when they convicted his mother and father, Jamie and Rodney Borushaski, of orchestrating the coldblooded murders?
"Her original plan may not have been for them to die, yet in talking to her even years later, there's just no remorse."
Gunnar Borushaski
About five years ago, Gunnar confronted his mother. He had warned her he wanted the truth. If she lied, they were through.
Mother and son talked for more than three hours.
"She told me she didn't have anything directly to do with the murders, but she had helped with the robbery," said Gunnar, now 24.
He believed her, to a point.
"Her original plan may not have been for them to die, yet in talking to her even years later, there's just no remorse," he said.
He came to believe something else his mother told him, though.
"She told me my dad was innocent. … She was looking me straight in the eye."
Murder at the Iowa State Fair
A five-part Des Moines Register series:
CHAPTER ONE: Greed, Envy and Lies
CHAPTER TWO: A killer confesses and details a bigger plot
CHAPTER THREE: The secret affair
CHAPTER FOUR: A daughter's betrayal
EXTRA: Is he innocent?
Dealing with the wreckage
Twenty years after the murders of the Blewers, longtime funnel cake vendors at the Iowa State Fair, emotions remain raw among their children and grandchildren, and the schism within the family runs deep.
While Jamie serves life in prison for her role in her parents' deaths, her siblings, Beau and Jada, have struggled to piece their lives back together. And Jamie and Rodney's children, Gunnar and Samantha, have grown up with both of their parents in prison.
"If they was in Texas, they'd be in a pine box."
Beau Blewer
Each of them has struggled in different ways to come to terms with the greed, envy and lies that fueled their family to turn on itself.
Gunnar isn't convinced that jurors got it right when they convicted his father.
Beau and Jada are certain that Jamie and Rodney got the justice they deserved.
"You lie enough, you start believing it yourself," Jada said.
"If they was in Texas," Beau said, "they'd be in a pine box."
A son's burden
Beau Blewer, son of Bobie and Marilyn Blewer, pictured Thursday, July 14, 2016, in Ankeny, found his parents after they were killed in their trailer during the Iowa State Fair in 1996. (Photo: Brian Powers/The Register)
Beau was 18 at the time of his parents' murders. For two years, he tried to carry on their funnel cake business.
He would hitch the red funnel cake stand to a pickup truck and travel with Jada to fairs around the Midwest, selling the deep-fried dough sprinkled with powdered sugar.
That first year, they debated whether to return to the Iowa State Fair, where so much anguish had begun. But eventually, they felt they had no choice but to push the turmoil from their minds — they had bills to pay.
During the 11-day run of the 1997 fair, Iowans went out of their way to help the orphaned teens. Lines were so long that the siblings recruited workers and volunteers to keep up with the demand.
"The whole state really supported us," Beau said.
But he put the trailer in storage after the 1998 Iowa State Fair.
"I couldn't handle it," said Beau, 38. "I couldn't walk into the trailer seeing their faces all of the time."
"I couldn't handle it. I couldn't walk into the trailer seeing their faces all of the time."
Leaving his parents' business was hard, because he felt "I was letting them down," he said, but "I couldn't live my life that way."
Beau's ties to family members eroded after the trials for Rodney and Jamie. He still bitterly remembers how Rodney's attorney and Jamie tried to pin the murders on him.
Words can't describe how it felt sitting in the back of the courtroom, listening to the accusations, he said.
Beau traveled the country, picking up jobs as a ranch hand and competing on the national rodeo circuit.
"At the time, I was one of the best" ropers in the country, Beau said.
But he eventually had to leave rodeo competition to find work to support himself.
Beau became certified in hoof care for horses, which he did for several years.
A few years ago, he bought some land in southwest Missouri, where he raises bucking bulls for the Professional Bull Riders tour. He lives there with his girlfriend and their 5-year-old son.
Beau also works for a demolition company, traveling mostly in the Midwest.
He was working in Ames this summer when Jada called and asked to meet for lunch.
It was the first time in 18 years that the two had had an extended conversation.
A daughter abandoned
Jada Blewer Smith poses with her family's funnel cake stand at the Muscatine County fairgrounds in West Liberty on Tuesday, July 26, 2016. (Photo: David Scrivner / Iowa City Press-Citizen)
For several weeks after her parents' deaths, Jada, then a junior in high school, lived at the family's house near Granby, Mo., with Beau and their paternal grandmother.
Jada said her grandmother told her that she'd stay as long as she was needed.
"I thought, 'OK, that meant forever,'" she said.
It didn't.
"As life goes on, you ask yourself, 'Were there signs I should have seen? Was there something I missed?' I wish I would have paid more attention to the things that went on at home."
Jada Blewer
Little more than a month later, Jada came home from school and found her grandmother preparing to leave.
"I said, 'Where are you going?' She said, 'I just got to go,'" Jada said through tears. "I said, 'I thought you was going to stay here.' And she said, 'I've got to live my life, too.' And she left."
The abandonment stung.
Jada moved in with a friend's family and began working full time at a doctor's office, scheduling her hours around school and softball. She needed the money to buy school supplies, clothes, gasoline and other necessities.
For a time, the Blewers' assets were frozen, said Jada, 36. But after Jamie's conviction, the family farm in southwest Missouri and other assets were sold, and debts and taxes were paid.
Beau got the red funnel cake trailer; Jada got her parents' other mobile concession stand.
Hitman Jerimy Sneed had testified that Rodney and Jamie had told him the Blewers were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
It was a fantasy. Neither Beau nor Jada received much money, she said.
"My parents were not rich people," Jada said. "I don't think that they struggled, but they worked hard for everything they had. They were in debt just like every other American."
After high school, Jada continued her work as a fair concessionaire, mostly keeping to the circuit her parents followed. Over the years, she has updated the outside of the trailer she inherited and added a second.
"I think of them every day," she said, sobbing. "Are they proud?"
She sells funnel cakes, corn dogs, deep-fried pickles, turkey legs, pork sandwiches and hamburgers.
The business is in her blood, she said, but Augusts are still hard. Questions resurface, tormenting her about whether she could have done anything to prevent the murders.
"As life goes on, you ask yourself, 'Were there signs I should have seen? Was there something I missed?'" Jada said in a near whisper. "I wish I would have paid more attention to the things that went on at home."
Jada has stayed in contact with Gunnar and Samantha, Jamie and Rodney's children. She has visited them and supported them in small ways, like helping pay for piano lessons. Now, she takes Gunnar's older son to the zoo and lets him "help" with her concession stand.
"It's the right thing to do," she said. "I don't have a lot of family, so I want to be close to the family I have left."
Jada married a fellow concessionaire a few years ago and lives with him in Oklahoma, near his family, which is also in the concession business. She said she often wonders what her parents would think of her life.
Justice for his father
Gunnar Borushaski is pictured at his home on Saturday, July 9, 2016, in Davenport. (Photo: Brian Powers/The Register)
Gunnar was 4 when his grandparents were murdered.
He was about 10 when he first asked his parents whether it was true that they had a role in the deaths.
"(Rodney) said 'no.' Jamie had to make a half-hour story whenever she was asked that," Gunnar said. "To me, if you are innocent, you should just be able to say, 'I'm innocent'; you shouldn't have a story."
After Jamie's arrest in September 1997, Gunnar and his sister, Samantha, lived with Rodney's mother, their paternal grandmother. The children maintained contact with their parents through telephone calls, letters and yearly visits.
"To me, if you are innocent, you should just be able to say, 'I'm innocent'; you shouldn't have a story."
Gunnar was about 12 when he began to more aggressively seek information about his parents' roles in the murders. As he got older, he found information on the internet and read transcripts from the trials.
About five years ago, he decided to confront both of them.
Jamie said she "wanted to leave my dad for Jerimy (Sneed)," Gunnar said.
Jerimy had briefly stayed with Jamie and Rodney while working for the Blewers at their funnel cake stand. Jamie needed money before leaving Rodney, and stealing it from her parents seemed an option, she told her son.
Jamie said her parents "weren't supposed to be in the trailer" when Jerimy stole the cash, kept in a safe at the motor home Bobie and Marilyn lived in while they operated their concession stand at the Iowa State Fair.
"Rather than forgoing the plan of getting the money, Jerimy killed them," Gunnar said. "She told me that my dad did not have anything to do with it, but that she was scared of repercussions from Jerimy, so she never came forward with anything."
"He's been in prison for 20 years for something he didn't do."
Gunnar said he left the prison in Mitchellville feeling that, for the first time, his mother had told the truth.
But when he returned a few weeks later, to ask whether she would tell a lawyer what she had told him, "her story changed," he said.
"That was the final straw," said Gunnar, who hasn't talked with his mother since.
Jamie declined interview requests from The Des Moines Register.
Gunnar said Rodney answered his questions the same way he always had: He admitted lying to authorities because he was afraid his ties to dog fighting would get him in legal trouble.
His acquaintances lied to authorities to save themselves, Rodney told his son.
"What got him in trouble was his mouth," said Gunnar, who lives in Davenport with his wife and two sons. "He was scared of getting in trouble for (dog fighting), and he let his mouth run him down."
Gunnar believes his father is guilty of bad judgment, not murder.
"He's been in prison for 20 years for something he didn't do," he said.
"On that other end of that infirmary is men dying by themselves. I don't want it…"
Rodney Borushaski
Gunnar also has found another advocate for his father's cause, a woman named Rebecca Geiken.
Rodney tried to help Rebecca's son, Waldo, who was sent to the Anamosa State Penitentiary on burglary and drug-related convictions. Waldo credits Rodney for putting him on a better path.
Waldo introduced his mother to Rodney, and they eventually formed a relationship. (Rodney and Jamie are now divorced.)
Rebecca, too, believes Rodney is innocent, and she and Gunnar are seeking an impartial review of Rodney's case with the Midwest Innocence Project.
During a 2001 post-conviction relief hearing, Rodney argued that his case should be retried, in part because evidence that Jamie had an affair with Jerimy was discovered after his guilty verdicts.
"It's not just cut and dried beyond a shadow of a doubt," Rebecca said.
Rebecca Geiken, the "significant other" of Rodney Borushaski, is shown on Saturday, July 9, 2016, in Davenport. (Photo: Brian Powers/The Register)
Sifting hope, lies
Although Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad turned down Rodney's commutation request in 2013, Rodney still has hope that he'll win his freedom.
If that hope runs out, he doesn't know what will happen.
He pointed to a door to the prison infirmary. "On that other end of that infirmary is men dying by themselves. I don't want it," he said. "If you're not enjoying (life), why live it?"
Beau and Jada have no sympathy for Rodney or Jamie, saying both are where they belong.
"They tore the family apart," Beau said.
TIMELINE OF EVENTS:Take a deeper dive into the case
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