New details lead to arrest in 20-year-old murder case

There have been many times over the past 20 years when Jason Kersten tried to come to terms with the fact that his mother’s killer might never be found.

That changed Friday when Jason Kersten learned the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office had arrested Steven John Klein, 54, at 11 a.m. in Muscatine and charged him with first-degree murder for the 1995 death of Susan Pearl Kersten.

“There were certain times when you felt like you’ve put a lot of effort into knocking on every door and talking with everyone you know,” the 37-year-old Williamsburg resident said. “Twenty years is just a long time. You try to keep hope in the back of your mind, but you also need to learn to be OK with letting it go.”

In the months between the various anniversaries of Sept. 24, 1995 — the day police found the badly burned body of his mother — Jason Kersten said he sometimes felt he was alone in trying to keep his mother’s case on the public radar.

But he would contact the detectives at least once a year, and during some of the big anniversaries he, his sister and other family members would put out news releases and contact local television stations to keep Susan Kersten’s death “out in front of everyone again.”

Now only one year younger than his mother at the time of her death, Jason Kersten said he was in the process of writing updated releases for 20th anniversary of the murder when he was contacted Friday and told that an arrest had been made in the case.

Klein, of Muscatine, was booked on a first-degree murder charge at the Johnson County Jail, where he was being held Friday on a $1 million cash bond.

Nearly a full 20 years ago, Susan Kersten’s body was found in the charred remains of her car, which was stopped in a field two miles south of Iowa City near her home at Regency Mobile Home Village.

Although investigators initially believed her death to be accidental, an autopsy revealed she had been murdered. Authorities believed Kersten’s car had been driven intentionally to its resting place, and the fire was set on purpose.

When officials searched her car, they discovered burned fireworks, a paper towel soaked with an unidentified liquid and a seat cushion that appeared to have blood on it.

Authorities Friday were not saying what led them to Klein, the man who Lt. Doug Gwinn of the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office said was a person of interest from the onset of the investigation.

Gwinn said Klein and Kersten had children together, but had never been married and had never lived together. They were estranged at the time of the murder, he said.

Gwinn said there was “overwhelming evidence” that pointed to Klein, though he declined to go into detail about the breakthrough in the case. He said Klein was not the only person of interest over the years.

“We were able to get new information, and it was enough new information where we were confident the person was guilty, and we made the arrest,” Gwinn said.

Gwinn said the cold case had been assigned to different investigators over the years.

“They’re never closed,” Gwinn said. “We were able to close this case due to the hard work of a lot of different investigators, and I’m just one of them.”

Jason Kersten said he was a teenager when his parents divorced. He was living with his father at the time of his mother’s death. He declined to comment about Klein, other than to say Klein was the father of his half-sisters and had a very brief relationship with his mother.

He said the news of the arrest had triggered a range of emotions — including “the pure joy” of being able to finally put this behind him. It’s also made him begin to wonder about when and how he is going tell his own 9-year-old twin daughters more details about their grandmother’s death.

His sister, Sandra Rohrer, posted the following Friday on the Facebook page the family created for Susan Kersten: “We miss our mother and want her to be remembered as a highly creative and talented women who loved her kids. We are confident that thru the judicial system that Steve Klein will be held legally accountable for his deliberate actions of brutality towards our mother.”

Friday’s arrest was made without incident by the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office with the assistance of the Muscatine County Sheriff’s Office.

Klein’s arrest marks the end of an almost two-decade, multi-agency investigation that included Johnson County, the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigations, the State Fire Marshall’s Office, the Hills Fire Department, the Johnson County Medical Examiner’s Office and the Johnson County Attorney’s Office.

Klein was scheduled to make his first appearance Saturday morning in Johnson County District Court.

Reach Josh O’Leary at joleary@press-citizen.com or 319-887-5415, and follow him on Twitter at @JD_OLeary. Reach Jeff Charis-Carlson at jcharisc@press-citizen.com or 319-887-5435, and follow him on Twitter at @jeffcharis.