How to Catch A Criminal: Troubled Youth

Every officer with a decent amount of time on the job knows the unexpected turns an investigation can take. Seeing a major case through to completion often involves giving up on a theory and taking your investigation in a different direction as new information becomes available. In How to Catch A Criminal, we look at the many ways not-so-perfect crimes are solved. This month, a pair of unlikely criminals try to stay ahead of their own incompetence.

Every person on Earth will, at some point, reach the age of maturity and they will be faced with a choice: Become a sensible, responsible adult, or disregard responsibility,  and hold onto childish behaviors. For most people the choice is obvious. Unfortunately for the public at large plenty of people make the wrong choice.  For law enforcement, this equals job security. Especially when these overgrown children do harm to others.

On June 11, 1997, law enforcement in Keokuk County, Iowa, were in for one of the roughest days that are had ever seen. The trouble began when officers respond to welfare check at a farmhouse in the city of What Cheer. 52-year-old Barbara Garber didn't show up for work that morning. This was so out of the ordinary that her boss called 911 to ask that she be checked on. Upon arrival at her residence at 9:30 a.m., officers found the front door wide open and Barbara inside, sitting in a chair, shot multiple times in the head and chest by a .22 caliber gun. There was no forced entry and no signs of a struggle, indicating Barbara unwittingly welcomed her killer into her home and didn't see the attack coming until it was too late. Barbara's car green pickup truck, was missing from the driveway. Before officers arrived at the scene, a neighbor had noticed a gray station wagon backing out of the driveway. Given that the station wagon and the truck were both gone, it was clear that the shooter had an accomplice.

The day got worse at 10 am when a robbery was reported at a bank in Gibson, Iowa, just a few miles from What Cheer. A pair of armed men had entered the bank wearing ski masks and demanded the teller fork over all the money in the vault, which netted them $65,000. With the money in hand, they made a run for it. The only witness to their getaway was a ten-year-old girl  who observed the robbers get into a blue sedan and flee the area. Since Gibson is a small area, it didn't take officers long to find the vehicle. It had been abandoned on a side road, and as you would expect in a small town, the officers recognized the car right away. The car belonged to 18-year-old Island Schultz. Island wasn't the  type of person you would expect to be involved in a bank robbery, but this was a solid lead. After a homicide and a bank robbery within 30 minutes of each other, the officers welcomed an obvious clue like this. They headed to the Schultz residence to determine if Island was involved in the robbery, only to find more bad news.

Island Schultz's lifeless body was found on her living room floor with gunshot wounds to the front and back of her head. These wounds came from a .22 caliber handgun. The same caliber bullets as the ones that killed Barbara Garber. Officers soon learned from a neighbor that at 9:30 am, the same time officers were arriving at the Garber home, a neighbor saw a green pickup parked at the Schultz home. This detail made it clear that both murders and the bank robbery were connected. The obvious theory was that the pair of bank robbers killed Barbara, stole her truck, drover to Island Schultz's home, killed her and stole her car, and used Island's vehicle as the getaway vehicle. At a press conference that afternoon, police received a tip regarding Barbara Garber's green pickup truck. A resident noticed local 22-year-old, Jamie McMahan driving the truck that morning. Naturally, the McMahan family residence in Oskaloosa was the next stop in the investigation. Jamie wasn't home, but his parents said he was hanging out with his step-brother, 18-year old Christopher Kaufmann, something Jamie had been doing a lot lately. Jamie McMahan recently lost his job and Christopher just graduated from high school. With no other direction in life, the pair grew closer and decided to bask in their lack of responsibility by smoking methamphetamine. Officers questions the boy's friends but no one knew where they were. One friend stated Jamie recently borrowed his gray station wagon, as well as a .22 caliber pistol. Hooked on drugs, armed, in a stolen vehicle with $65,000 cash, Jamie and Christopher needed to be apprehended immediately.

As the case continued to unfold in Keokuk County, officers in Mahaska County learned of more startling information: Two local teenage girls were missing, and they were last seen hanging out with Jamie and Christopher. The search intensified due to concerns for the girl's safety and the boys were even profiled on “America's Most Wanted”. Luckily, the missing girls turned up on June 21 and willingly spoke with police. They informed officers they were having a blast vacationing with the boys and they had driven to Orlando, Florida to check out the amusement parks. When the girls asked about the endless supply of money the boys had, they didn't expect the answer they received. The boys explained that they asked to use Barbara Garber's telephone before killing her in her home and stealing her truck. They decided it was a cool car so they kept it. They then asked their friend Island Schultz for gas money before killing her as she handed them $5. They used her car to rob the bank in Gibson and ran off with $65,000. Stunned and terrified, the girls asked to go home. They were given money and caught the next train to Iowa while the brothers continued to live it up in Florida.

On June 30, a citizen of Pensacola called to report she had just seen the green truck in the area. Police launched a search and located Barbara Garber's vehicle parked at a hotel. The clerk confirmed McMahan and Kaufmann were staying there. The building was surrounded and a hostage negotiator was called in to phone the boy's room. The person who answered the phone, was just as surprised as the negotiator. It turns out the boys made a new friend after they dropped off the girls. They picked up a hitchhiker who was happy to join them in drinking and doing drugs. Upon learning what kind of mess he got himself into, the hitchhiker exited the room and surrendered. McMahan and Kaufmann realize it was game over, and McMahan allowed Kaufmann to surrender. He weighed his options for a bit longer, but finally Jamie McMahan gave up too. Between June 11 and June 30 the brothers spent nearly $36,000 of their score, buying liquor, drugs, and prostitutes, and they were kind enough to keep the stolen truck and murder weapon with them wherever they went.

It wasn't terribly difficult to build a case against Jamie McMahan and Christopher Kaufmann. Aside from the clear physical evidence, the eyewitnesses that saw the vehicles at the Garber and Schultz residences, and the local man who recognized Jamie driving the stolen truck made it easy to place the boys at the scenes of the crimes. The two runaway girls who the boys confessed to wrapped up the story from there. State and Federal charges hung over the boys heads, leading to them striking a deal with prosecutors: full confessions to avoid the death penalty. They robbed the bank for drug money, and Jamie McMahan shot and killed two women, because he couldn't decide which car he wanted to use as the getaway vehicle. In the end they each received multiple life sentences for their crimes. Jamie Mcmahan only made it to age 42, 20 years into his sentence, before taking his own life in 2017. Christopher Kaufmann remains in prison to this day.