WALL LAKE — On a Thursday morning, in Sarah Schultz's eat-in kitchen, two pairs of muddy children's hiking boots lay scattered on the wood floor underneath a green chalkboard. Printed in big dusty letters on the chalkboard was the message: "Bring Dave home."
Sarah's brown eyes widened as she looked beyond a lit white artificial Christmas tree through glass patio doors. As she stood, she leaned forward and a serious expression washed across her face. For a moment, she thought she saw her missing husband outside. But the man wearing a cowboy hat in a neighbor's driveway wasn't David Schultz.
Last month, the 53-year-old Wall Lake truck driver and father of 10-year-old twin boys disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
His red Peterbilt semi-trailer truck with white stripes was found the afternoon of Nov. 21 parked in the middle of the northbound lane of County Road N-14, not far from where it intersects with D-15 in northeastern Sac County. The trailer he rents was loaded with pigs, but David was nowhere to be found on that stretch of paved roadway, which is flanked by cornfields. A number of farms are visible from all directions, along with wind turbines off to the east.
"I want my husband. It's exhausting. It's awful," Sarah said sobbing, as she clutched a plaid flannel shirt jacket that belongs to him. A similar jacket was found in a ditch on the side of the road opposite David's truck. She gave him that jacket last Christmas.
Since David went missing, the United Cajun Navy, a Louisiana-based nonprofit, and volunteers have scoured more than 100,000 acres in and around Sac County. On a recent weekend, the twins, Joseph and Isaack, donned blaze-orange vests and headed into the golden-brown fields to search for their dad. Sarah said her sons are attending trauma counseling sessions. She said she hasn't really seen the boys cry. But, when her eyes well up, she said Isaack brings her a box of tissues and dries her tears.
"Joseph is real quiet. I don't know what they know. I don't even know, is he alive or is he dead? I don't know," she said.
Sac County Sheriff Ken McClure told The Journal he is confident his office and the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation will eventually solve the case. He said investigators "haven't ruled anything out."
"We're going to run this out until we just can't run it anymore, until we can either find out what happened to David or where he's at and bring him home and give some answers," said McClure, who acknowledged there's a chance David had a medical episode and his body hasn't just been found yet. However, he emphasized the area where David's semi was found was searched at least three times.
Sarah has repeatedly called her husband's disappearance "suspicious." She has expressed frustration with local law enforcement and said she feels the case is more than "small-town police" can handle.
"They need help,“ she said. ”I want the FBI. It's been long enough."
McClure, who has been in law enforcement for more than 36 years and served as sheriff for 20, said his office receives "several tips a day" about David's case. He said every tip is vetted.
"I don't mean this to sound critical, but we're getting a whole bunch of keyboard detectives and Perry Masons out here who are like, 'Well, did you check this?' This isn't Day One, if you know what I mean," he said. "What we're trying to do is prioritize them. Things that we know we can already dispute go in one pile. Things that are just absolutely ludicrous and absurd go into another and, then, the ones we think are valuable (are investigated)."
McClure said the FBI isn't involved in the case, but he said that doesn't mean that, "down the road," it won't be asked to assist. He said there is no indication a federal crime was committed.
"The Division of Criminal Investigation and their resources are just as capable of getting the information we need and, really, we're looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.“
Desperate for answers, Sarah reached out to two psychics at the suggestion of friends. The first psychic, whom she spoke with over the phone, said her husband is being kept in the corner of a room and, at that time, was alive but weak. The second psychic sat at Sarah's kitchen table and, while holding one of her husband's orange hunting hats, said he was hit in the back of the head before being placed in a moving body of water.
Where's David?
David's missing persons case has attracted the attention of locals and online sleuths worldwide. The theories they've posted on true crime forums and social media pages have run the gamut from a medical episode to a cartel-related kidnapping. While some think he was murdered, others surmise he simply walked away from his life.
Colin Gierstorf, who lives in Denison and has been a truck driver since 1994, said there's a lot of people talking about it.
"There's just a lot of things that just don't quite line up right with the whole deal," Gierstorf said standing outside Casey's on the outskirts of Early. He held a slice of pizza in one hand and a disposable coffee cup in the other, not far from where the regional grain truck he drives was parked. Gierstorf, who knows the man David rents his trailer from, said he thinks local truckers' wives are more rattled about the case than the drivers are.
The baffling circumstances surrounding David's disappearance have only continued to fuel wild speculation. Initially, the Sac County Sheriff's Office revealed little about its investigation.
In a Facebook post dated Nov. 22, the day after David's truck was found, the sheriff's office asked property owners in the northeastern portion of Sac County to check their land and outbuildings for "anything out of the ordinary." Then, nearly a week after he went missing, the Woodbury County Sheriff's Office issued a statement dispelling any connection between his disappearance and information circulating on social media about a Nov. 27 traffic stop near Highway 20. A 31-year-old North Sioux City man, who was reportedly driving recklessly near Moville, was arrested for possession of cocaine and felon in possession of a firearm.
"There is no evidence or indication that this traffic stop has any connection to the missing driver referred to in the post. The suspects nationality has nothing to do with the case and all suspects are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law," the statement said.
On Dec. 9, McClure released a detailed account of the hours before David disappeared. He noted that David was not the same David Schultz who had a one-way flight booked from Minneapolis to Phoenix late in the afternoon Nov. 21. He also said David had "not legally gone through a U.S. border crossing."
According to McClure, a Sac County secondary roads employee called in David's truck at 3:04 p.m. Nov. 21 after it was discovered parked on the traveled portion of the road. The truck was shut off, the lights were off and the key was in the ignition. Deputies found David's wallet and cellphone inside. McClure said a towel, cellphone charger and pocketknife were found with the coat on the opposite side of the road.
McClure said investigators have issued search warrants and "taken items out for forensic examination," but haven't dusted the truck for fingerprints.
"That works really good on TV. In 36 years, I've made one case on fingerprints," he said. "The problem is, every time you touch something, depending on the type of surface, whether it's a porous surface, a smooth surface, or whatever, they smudge. And, then, if you have multiple touches on it, then they just smudge even more and you get print on top of print."
Last seen on camera
Sarah last saw her husband about 7:30 p.m. Nov. 20. He had been working all day and asked her to grab him a change of clothes.
"He had to do another Seaboard load from Eagle Grove to Sac City," she said. "He just washed up and changed and gave me a kiss and ran out the door. He's always in a hurry."
She said her husband was eager to get his work done and come back home, since her daughter and grandson were visiting from Fort Lauderdale, Fla. However, at 10 a.m. the next day, Sarah found the man David rents his trailer from on her doorstep.
"He said, 'Have you spoken to Dave?'" she recalled. "I said, 'No.' He said, 'No one can get ahold of him and the pigs haven't been dropped off yet.'"
Sarah repeatedly called David's cellphone, but there was no answer. At 4:30 p.m., she said law enforcement officers called her from David's phone, and she headed out to where his truck was found.
Following the discovery, county investigators searched the area on foot and with a police dog, which tracked David's scent to a field drive. McClure said the track "wasn't very long."
The sheriff's office requested assistance from the Iowa State Patrol air wing unit. A pilot flew the surrounding area, but did not detect a heat signature consistent with a person. For the next two days, law enforcement, area firefighters and volunteers expanded the ground search on foot and used drones — to no avail.
McClure said Sac County sheriff's detectives and Lake View police traveled to the Eagle Grove area in Wright County and, with help from the Wright County Sheriff's Office, found the hog confinement David was supposed to load up from. Load crew members were interviewed and load records were obtained. Investigators learned David had picked up his load, but he had been late to arrive. His truck was the last truck loaded. He left at about 10:50 p.m.
When asked whether David stopped anywhere before arriving in Eagle Grove and why he was late, McClure responded, "No. I can't definitively say either way." Sarah said her husband parks the truck and trailer at his friend's mechanic shop in Wall Lake. So, after leaving home, she said he stopped there and probably spent some time talking to his friend, who was fixing up a yellow semi David had just bought. She said her husband planned to sell his red truck.
"He was so close to getting this truck up and running. It just needed a headlight," Sarah said of the yellow truck. "He had goals. He was excited to drive this truck. He never would have left."
Sarah said her husband throws his wallet on the dash, rather than keeping it in his pocket. She said officers showed her the wallet, which contained David's driver's license. She said it held at least $2,000. From what she could tell, nothing was missing from it.
"He starts off the week with about $2,000. You want to have it for emergencies. He doesn't use credit cards," she said.
McClure said the last time David was seen was on an Iowa Department of Transportation camera on Highway 20 was at 11:15 p.m. Nov. 20. He was heading west of Marker 126, a truck stop and convenience store just east of Fort Dodge. Investigators also obtained surveillance video from an area business near the Wiechman Pig Company buying station. The video shows David never made it there with the load of pigs, according to McClure.
"I think it's very unlikely based on the video evidence that we have of him in Fort Dodge that somebody else was in the truck," said McClure, who declined to go into further detail about the video.
Sarah said she saw a still photo of her husband taken from the video, but she told law enforcement she didn't want to watch the video.
At some point in David's journey, McClure said, cellphone data shows him arriving at the intersection of Highways 20 and 71 at about 12:18 a.m. Nov. 21. The data shows the phone traveling north to where the truck was found and suggests the truck may have been there since 12:40 a.m. before it was called in that afternoon.
While searching Dec. 2 for David, one of the United Cajun Navy's teams found the remains of a missing Rockwell City man, 54-year-old Mark Edward Riesberg, on a wooded property southwest of Jolley. Early on, social media users tried to link the cases.
Riesberg's body was found in a Chrysler PT Cruiser. Preliminary findings suggest Riesberg, who was reported missing Oct. 28, suffered a single gunshot wound, according to a statement from Calhoun County Sheriff Pat Riley. Riley said Riesberg's body was sent to the State Medical Examiner and that foul play is not suspected.
Who is David Schultz?
Sarah has known David, who used to date her best friend's sister, since she was 12 or 13. Years later, Sarah, then a single mother of two, attended a birthday party. David was there.
They had a great time sitting around laughing and drinking with their friends. After David had had a little too much alcohol, one of their friends asked Sarah to drive him home.
"He ended up staying the night and never left," said Sarah. "He told me, 'You're the first girl I ever dated that wasn't crazy. You're normal.'"
Sarah introduced David to her daughter, Sabrina, now 22, and her son Connor, now 18, and they got along great. Less than a year later, the couple married in November 2012. Sarah said David "always wanted a family." Since Sarah's tubes were tied, they turned to in vitro fertilization to conceive. Joseph and Isaack were born eight weeks prematurely by emergency C-section the following October.
David leaned on Sarah, often calling her at EVAPCO in Lakeview, where she works as a safety coordinator, to ask simple questions such as, "Where's the ketchup?"
Sarah said her husband is "hardworking to a fault." He would work without a day off for weeks on end.
"I say, one fault is he works too much. He just loves it," Sarah said. "He knows he's good at it. One of the common things I hear more than one person say that he's loaded for is, when they see Dave's truck coming down the road, they know they're going to have a good day."
Sarah said her David, who has high blood pressure, would often complain he was tired and say, "I can't take this." But when she responded that he needed to find another job, he dismissed the idea.
"It's hard work doing livestock like that. He's 53, but he's spry. He can run. He can jump. He's young at heart, you know," she said of David, who takes pride in being able to transport five loads of hogs a day. "He can outwork a young man, and he's proud of his work ethic."
