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Josh Hauser was just 10 years old when his mother, Rebecca, was brutally murdered by four 15-year-old runaways on the side of a Marshall County road outside of Liscomb on Oct. 4, 1994. Nearly 30 years later, all of the men who carried out the heinous crime have been released from prison after a 2013 Iowa Supreme Court decision declaring mandatory life sentences for juveniles illegal, and while Josh isn't surprised that the last of the perpetrators, Derek Smith, is now out on parole, he's still frustrated and disgusted with the outcome.
"It doesn't seem fair. It doesn't seem right, but anything that we've ever tried to do (or) say, it's completely fallen on deaf ears," he said. "It seems like anything we have said or done to show our displeasure with everything, it's just been completely omitted from their thought process and the process that they use to let these criminals out. They just kind of go forward with it."
He acknowledged that the four men probably met the established criteria for granting parole, but he still wishes all of their requests would have been denied indefinitely.
"It kind of all stems back from the Supreme Court ruling that it's unconstitutional, but I guess in my defense, I was a juvenile when my mom was taken from me. Where are my constitutional rights?" Hauser asked.
Back when the first of the killers, Blake Privitt, was granted parole back in 2017, Josh and his wife Beth began reaching out to legislators about potential changes that would keep the murderers behind bars regardless of their age at the time of the offense. He said they mostly received condolences but were otherwise told there was nothing to be done.
"We don't have capital punishment in Iowa, and this probably would have been a capital punishment crime in some states," Josh said. "The most we can do is take their time away from them and keep them incarcerated indefinitely, and that's what they did essentially to my family is they took my mom's time away from us and our time away from her. And when they initially handed down that sentencing, life in prison without parole, that means that you stay in prison indefinitely, forever. You will die in prison, and that's the end of it. That's about as fair as you can be."
He added that no decision any court or parole board handed down could bring back his mother, but keeping Privitt, Jayson Speaks, Derek Smith and his twin brother Burt behind bars for the remainder of their lives would have at least provided closure and allowed for the Hauser family to move on and heal.
"Now that's all been stripped from us," Josh said. "And not that I'm scared, but they're in the state of Iowa and I'm not sure how long they have to be in the state of Iowa once they're on parole. But Iowa's not an extremely large state. The chance of running into one of them is probably very slim, but it's also a possibility. And I've got several kids, and they could scatter throughout the state when they become adults. So that's always something in the back of my mind too, and it's kind of scary."
Josh, a 2002 BCLUW graduate who now resides in Sumner, is the oldest son of Becky and Danny Hauser, and his younger brother was eight while his twin sisters were both six at the time of the murder. He said he does not believe any of his siblings have had contact with the killers through any attempts at reconciliation or communication.
"It sounds like they've reached out, but I'm not willing to hear it," he said. "It's not gonna change."
Through it all, the Hauser family remains tight-knit, and they do their best to stay positive and push forward as they continue to live with the fallout of a senseless and random crime.
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Contact Robert Maharry
at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or
rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.