DES MOINES — KCCI News has reported that Derek Smith, one of four men convicted for his role in the murder of Rebecca Hauser on the side of a rural Marshall County road near Liscomb in 1994, has been granted parole and released from an Iowa prison.

As all of the killers — Smith, his twin brother Burt, Blake Privitt and Jayson Speaks — were 15 years old at the time of the murder, they became eligible for parole after a 2013 Iowa Supreme Court ruling declaring mandatory life sentences for juveniles illegal. In September, Burt Smith was granted work release, and Derek Smith’s request for parole was denied on a split vote at the time. According to KCCI’s reporting, state records show that Derek Smith was granted work release in November and got out of prison in December.

Privitt and Speaks were both granted parole in 2017 and 2020, respectively, with Privitt now living at a community-based correctional facility in Fairfield and Speaks serving in Cedar Rapids. Privitt is expected to be fully released in 2029.

With Derek Smith’s release, all four of the men are now out of prison despite the repeated objections of Hauser’s family members, who have vocally opposed any decision that would allow her killers to leave prison.

The Smith brothers, Speaks and Privitt were runaways from northern Missouri who planned to rob people to fund a trip to Canada. They impersonated police officers and pulled over Hauser, a wife and mother of four from Union who was on her way home from shopping and a visit to the Meskwaki Casino, before firing a shot into her vehicle and subsequently stabbing her 32 times.