Nebraska 1983 Cold Case Solved — Arrest Shocks Community

 

43 years ago, an Iranian student at the University of Nebraska in Omaha disappeared after leaving campus. Her body was found under a bridge in Iowa with all her personal belongings still intact next to her, leaving her family in Tehran and a community in Omaha stunned with no answers. Authorities collected samples from more than a hundred students, pursued hundreds of leads, but found no suspect, and the investigation eventually came to a complete standstill for nearly four decades. However, through all those

years, one old classmate in Nevada never stopped calling the police year after year. Then in 2020, his call reached the right person. A detective born in 1983 reopened the file, discovered a left-hand glove that had been sitting in storage for 40 years, and DNA technology accomplished what four decades of investigation could not, shocking everyone involved in a way no one could have imagined.

 Before diving deep into this story, please let us know where you are watching from, and if you like videos like this, don’t forget to subscribe to the channel. Firoozeh years old, was an Iranian student studying at the University of Nebraska in Omaha, one of thousands of international students who came to the United States in those decades to study.

But she arrived in the context of her home country, Iran, undergoing intense upheaval after 1979. Deciding to leave and continue her studies in America was not a small thing for a young woman in that situation. She came to America because she believed her future could be built here, that Omaha and UNO were where she could learn the things she wanted to learn and become the person she wanted to become.

 People who knew her at UNO described her. Everything about this young woman was wonderful. She was destined for amazing things in life. She was the best. At UNO, Firoozeh not only studied, she built friendships, participated in the student community, and lived the life of someone building her future day by day.

 The Iranian student community at UNO was a place where she could speak her native language, share memories of home, and not have to explain her background. Steven Martin, a UNO business student, was one of the friends she grew close to at school, the person who would become the most important figure in this entire story.

 August 13th, 1983 was a normal day in Omaha with nothing in the weather, in the class schedule, in any recorded detail indicating this was a day different from any before it. Firoza left the UNO campus as she had many times before, carrying the things of a student studying in the middle of the semester, clothes, glasses, notebooks, computer printouts, not the belongings of someone preparing for a long trip, not the belongings of someone who was scared or worried about anything, just the normal things of a normal day.

 No one thought this would be the last time. Firoza did not return afterward, but in the first few hours, no one reported it to the police because no one was sure there was anything unusual. The student community began to worry when she did not show up as usual, but none of them had enough information at that time to act decisively.

 On the morning of August 14th, 1983, two people fishing near Pigeon Creek north of Council Bluffs, Iowa, discovered the body of a woman under the bridge, and the first thing they saw was the things around her, bra, underwear, blouse, shoes, glasses, notebooks, computer printouts, a can of beer, pens, and a left work glove, all still intact, not taken, not disturbed, as if someone had placed them down carefully or they had fallen from the body that was brought here.

 The body was in a naked state while the belongings were intact. That detail was the first important clue that investigators noted, even though in 1983 no one knew that that most important clue at the entire scene was not the clothes or papers, but the left-hand glove among those items. The Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s Office took over the scene and began collecting evidence according to standard 1983 forensic procedures.

 The autopsy results determined that Firouzeh died from blood loss due to multiple slashes to the throat and four stab wounds to the abdomen. She was also beaten. There was no evidence of sexual assault. Investigators determined that Firouzeh did not die at the scene under the bridge. She was killed elsewhere and her body was brought to Pigeon Creek afterward.

 Blood and hair were found on the bridge railing. Tests showed some blood stains were not Firouzeh’s, blood from someone else, blood from the person who brought her body here or was present during that process. While the hair was hers. This was evidence that the perpetrator had left traces at the scene. But 1983 had no technology to turn that trace into a someone.

 In the months after the body was discovered, investigators interviewed Firouzeh’s acquaintances at UNO and collected fingerprints and hair samples from more than 100 UNO students of Middle Eastern origin. An investigative effort in the context of no DNA technology. From the computer printouts found at the scene, investigators identified four latent fingerprints and compared them with Firouzeh and the UNO computer technician who had printed them.

 Two of the four fingerprints did not match any of them, meaning someone else had touched those papers. But someone else was something investigators could not identify with 1983 technology. No suspect emerged from that entire effort. There were no reliable witnesses who saw Firouzeh being attacked or saw anyone suspicious in the area at the relevant time.

 After about a year of active investigation, interviews, sample collection, comparisons, pursuing every lead, there was no breakthrough that led to a suspect. The case went cold, not because investigators gave up, but because there was no path left to follow with the technology and information available at the time.

 But the physical evidence, the left-hand glove, clothing, computer printouts, all the items collected at the scene in 1983, was kept in storage at the Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s Office. The decision to retain those items through 40 years would be the most important decision in the entire case, even though no one knew that in 1983.

 In 1983, Iran-US relations were at their lowest point in the history of the two countries. The 1979-1981 hostage crisis, when 52 American citizens were held for 444 days in the US Embassy in Tehran, had left an unhealed wound in the American psyche, and that wound directly affected how Americans viewed any Iranian living on US soil at that time.

The Iran-Iraq War was ongoing. The US was leaning toward Iraq, and every piece of news from the Middle East added tension to an already heavy atmosphere. The Iranian student community in the US, including Firouzeh and her friends at UNO, was living under double pressure. Far from home at a time when their country was at war and in turmoil, while also facing prejudice from American society after the hostage crisis.

Firouzeh was part of that community. A woman who chose to continue her studies despite all those pressures weighing on the community she belonged to. After Firouzeh’s identity was confirmed, two theories emerged. The first theory, political or ethnic motive, in the context of peak Iran-US tensions, some suspected Firouzeh was targeted because she was Iranian.

 That her death was related to the ethnic or political hatred enveloping relations between the two countries. The second theory pointed in the opposite direction, and it was the direction that Detective Gregory Thompson leaned toward. Firouzeh’s belongings left intact next to her body was evidence that this was not a random attack by a stranger, Thompson said bluntly.

 If she had been grabbed on the street, you would think she would have dropped all those things, meaning the perpetrator could be someone Firoza trusted enough not to run away or be on guard when near him. Investigators leaned toward the acquaintance theory, but in 1983, there was no technology to identify who among more than 100 people who had been sampled was the one.

 Both theories existed in parallel for many decades, none fully proven or disproven until the DNA from the left-hand glove answered the question that neither could. The case shocked three communities at once in three different ways. UNO lost a student and faced questions about safety on campus. Omaha faced an unsolved murder with no suspects.

 The Iranian community in the US lost another person during a period when they were under pressure from every direction. Firoza’s friends at UNO not only lost a classmate, they lost someone they called the best person. And the more painful question that followed no one dared say out loud. Did she die because she was Iranian? Firoza’s family in Tehran received news of their daughter’s death in circumstances with no direct diplomatic relations between Iran and the US after 1979.

No embassy, no legal mechanism for the family to come to the US to participate in the investigation, no way for them to see where their daughter died or meet the investigators. They could only wait on the other side of the world, and the answer did not come for 38 years. Steven Martin was a business student at UNO in the early 1980s, Firoza’s friend and neighbor at school, who had known her during the years she lived and studied in Omaha before everything changed in August 1983.

After graduating, he left the Omaha area and eventually settled in Nevada. Life went on with a new job, a new city, new relationships. But he never forgot Firouzeh. He remembered her enough to do what no one asked him to do, no one paid him to do, and no one would blame him if he didn’t do it.

 He described, “She was the best person.” There was no legal obligation forcing him to do anything for the case. He was just an old classmate living in Nevada, geographically distant, but not distant in memory. And that memory was the only thing strong enough to create what he did in the nearly four decades that followed.

 Martin called the Omaha Police Department, then called again, then called the Council Bluffs Police Department, then called again. Not once or twice, but over many years, over many decades, he repeatedly contacted law enforcement agencies in the area to urge them not to abandon Firouzeh Deganpour’s case, an Iranian student who was not famous, had no family in the US to apply pressure on her behalf, in a case that occurred before forensic DNA was advanced enough to create a breakthrough.

 Each call, he received responses like, “We will look into it.” or no response specific enough to create real progress. He was not a celebrity who could make one phone call and get the system to pay attention. He had no money to hire a private detective to pursue the case from outside. He had no political connections to create pressure from above.

 Only a phone number and the persistence of someone who knew that if he didn’t call, no one else would call for him. And he called year after year, even though the results were always the same. The Iranian student community at UNO had gradually dispersed over the years as graduates left and each person’s life continued in its own direction.

The press no longer covered a case with no progress. There was no organization behind the case to keep it alive in the system. Only Martin remained, the man in Nevada who remembered his classmate and picked up the phone to call, was the only thing standing between the case and complete oblivion.

 Nearly 38 years after Firoza left the UNO campus for the last time, Martin made one more call, this time to Council Bluffs, and was connected to someone he had never spoken to before, someone who had never heard the name Firoza Daganpour. And this time, everything went differently from all the previous times. Lieutenant Mannings, in late 2020, Martin’s call to Council Bluffs police was transferred to the Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s Office, and the person holding the phone this time was Sergeant Jim Doty.

 Doty was born in 1983, the same year Firoza was killed, the same year investigators sampled more than 100 UNO students and found no suspect, the same year the left-hand glove was placed into storage. When Martin called and told him about the case, Doty knew nothing about it. He said later, “I was born in 1983.

 I was not familiar with the case and knew nothing about it until he mentioned it.” This was a detail that no one in the case could have planned in advance, and no one could have predicted would be important. The person who solved the case was born in the same year the crime occurred. Martin suggested Doty investigate a specific suspect he had suspected for many years, someone he believed was connected to Firoza’s death and had proposed to many agencies before without results.

 Doty investigated that suspect and quickly confirmed what Martin’s previous calls had never led to a definitive answer. This person had a solid alibi for that night and could not be the perpetrator. The suspect Martin suggested was ruled out, but that was not the most important thing Doty found when reading the file.

 What was more important was what the file revealed about the physical evidence. The left-hand glove, clothing, computer printouts, all the items collected at the scene in 1983 had been sitting in storage at the Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s Office for nearly 40 years, preserved, waiting for technology strong enough to exploit them.

 Doty read the file and saw what those before him had seen, but did not have the tools to pursue. When reading the reports, we still had evidence, and I thought that this could benefit from the DNA technology we have today. Doty worked with forensic specialist Hadley Kava, who would directly handle the evidence and send it to the lab.

 Kava and Doty reviewed the entire list of items still retained from 1983 and decided to send them for DNA analysis. The left-hand glove, bra, underwear, blouse, notebook, computer printout, beer can, pen, items that had been in storage for nearly 40 years, preserved in conditions good enough for DNA to still be extracted from them, even though so much time had passed.

 The evidence samples were packaged and sent to the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation Lab for DNA analysis. The first time in nearly 40 years that evidence from the August 1983 scene was brought into the lab with technology that could truly do what 1983 could not. Doty and Kava sent them and waited, not knowing the left-hand glove held the answer that Martin had been calling to find for nearly four decades.

The lab results came in March 2021, and it changed everything. In March 2021, the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation Lab reported the analysis results. DNA on the left-hand glove, which had been in storage at the Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s Office since August 1983, contained Forro’s DNA and the DNA of an unidentified male.

That male’s DNA was entered into CODIS, the national DNA database containing profiles of millions of people with criminal records across the United States. The result, a match. The probability of finding this DNA profile in a random population was less than 1 in 6.1 octillion, a number that means nothing in daily life, but in forensics means no mistake possible.

 After 38 years, the left-hand glove that no one paid special attention to in 1983 had spoken the name of the perpetrator. But the DNA from the glove was not the only evidence. In the process of re-examining the evidence, investigators confirmed a second piece of evidence completely independent of the DNA, fingerprints of the same person on the computer printouts found near Feroseb’s body in 1983.

 Two of the four latent fingerprints that investigators at the time could not match to anyone. Two independent pieces of evidence from two different sources at the same crime scene both pointed to one name, Bud Leroy Christensen. Not a coincidence. Statistically and legally, it could not be a coincidence. Bud Leroy Christensen was 30 years old in August 1983, a Nebraska man, not a UNO student, not a member of the Iranian student community in Omaha.

 Nothing in the public record in 1983 connected him to Feroseb or to the UNO campus in a way that investigators at the time could see and pursue. That was why he never appeared in the initial investigation, even though investigators had sampled more than 100 people. He was not in the circle that the 1983 police knew to search. In the 38 years after the case, Christensen lived his life in Nebraska with nothing in the public record connecting him to the death of Feroseb Dean poor.

 No clues, no accusers, nothing leading investigators to him from the direction of the case until 2014 when he was convicted of second-degree sexual assault. As a convicted sex offender, Christensen was required to submit a DNA sample to CODIS under Nebraska law. A decision he could not refuse, could not control, and could not foresee would connect him to a glove stored in Iowa since 1983.

 That was the only reason his DNA was in the database when Doty and Cava sent the samples from the glove to the lab. If the 2014 sex crime had not occurred, his DNA would not have been in CODIS and the left-hand glove would have continued to sit in storage without an answer. After CODIS identified Christensen as a suspect, investigators took the next confirmation step, obtaining a direct DNA sample from him for definitive comparison.

 In March 2021, investigators approached Christensen at CHI Immanuel Hospital in Omaha, where he was receiving treatment, and executed a court order to collect saliva and blood samples. The direct comparison results matched with nine pieces of type A blood group evidence from the 1983 crime scene, two pieces of evidence from CODIS, plus confirmation from the direct sample, plus fingerprints from the computer printouts. No doubt remained.

 And in that result was confirmation of what Detective Gregory Thompson had been right about since 1983. Firoza’s belongings left intact next to her body because this was not a random attack by a stranger on the street. 2021 confirmed Firoza did not die at the scene under the Pigeon Creek Bridge, but was killed elsewhere and her body was transported there afterward.

 Thompson was right in his instinct from 1983, but 1983 did not have the technology to turn that correct instinct into a person’s name. And it took another 38 years, a left-hand glove, and a national DNA database to do that. On April 30, 2021, US Marshals arrested Bud Leroy Christensen in Omaha, Nebraska, 38 years after he left his DNA on the left-hand glove at the scene under the Pigeon Creek Bridge and continued living a normal life in Nebraska while the case went cold.

 While Martin called with no one listening, while Firoza’s family in Tehran and London had no answers. Christensen was 67 years old at the time of his arrest. The 30-year-old man who had gone through 38 years with no one coming for him until the left-hand glove in the CODIS database did what four decades of investigation could not. On May 6th, 2021, he was officially charged with first-degree murder in Pottawattamie County, Iowa, where Firooz’s body was found under the bridge on the morning of August 14th, 1983.

Bail was set at $1 million cash. Jeff Theulen, chief deputy of the Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s Office, stood before the cameras at the press conference and said what no one in that room could have said with certainty at any time in the previous 38 years. We hope that we are beginning to deliver justice for her this morning.

 To notify Firooz’s family of the arrest, authorities had to coordinate through agencies in Washington, D.C. and London because there were no direct diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Iran after 1979. No ordinary communication mechanism that a county-level law enforcement agency in Iowa could use to call straight to Tehran.

 Firooz’s brother living in London was the family member who received the news first. The person who received the answer on behalf of the whole family after 38 years with no answers. Doty described the conversation with Firooz’s brother in the way people describe moments they know they will not forget. I spoke with her brother for about an hour on Tuesday and he was in shock.

 Not able to process it yet, but being able to talk with him for an hour and learn more about her and what she was like is what makes all the effort worthwhile. The rest of the family in Tehran received the news through the brother in London. The answer traveled from the Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s Office through Washington, D.C.

 to London and then to Tehran across two time zones and two countries with no direct diplomatic relations to people who had lived 38 years not knowing who had killed their daughter, sister, loved one. UNO issued a brief and focused statement. Our thoughts and best wishes go out to the Deegan poor family, Firouzeh’s classmates, and her closest friends.

Naser Al-Sharif, Firouzeh’s old friend and neighbor at UNO, said what many in the community felt, but not everyone could put into words. We are relieved. We are happy. We hope that she is resting in peace after all these years, and we hope there is relief for her family. The three communities shocked in 1983, UNO, Omaha, Iranians in the US, received the arrest news with different emotions depending on their closeness to the case.

Those who knew Firouzeh directly received it with relief mixed with inseparable pain. Those who only knew her story received it with the satisfaction of seeing justice late, but better than no justice. But all shared one content. After 38 years, the answer had come. Doty called Stephen Martin, the person who had called the police for nearly four decades, the person without whose final call in 2020 there would have been no call from Doty to London in 2021 to inform him that they had identified a suspect and he was in custody. Martin in

Nevada heard the news after 38 years of not giving up. In March 2021, when investigators went to CHI Memorial Hospital in Omaha to execute the court order to collect DNA samples from Christensen, he was hospitalized because of a stroke. The stroke occurred in the same month as the DNA results from the lab, two months before the arrest warrant was executed.

 The stroke left what Pottawattamie County Attorney Matt Wilwer later described as multiple physical and cognitive deficits. And right after Christensen was arrested in April 2021, the defense raised an argument that would prolong the legal process for nearly two more years. Christensen was completely unable to speak, unable to communicate, unable to assist in his own defense during the trial process, and therefore not competent to stand trial.

Prosecutors did not accept that argument. Wilbur described the situation bluntly with no cover-up. The state’s position is that the defendant has exaggerated his symptoms in an attempt to evade responsibility, and the defense’s position is that the defendant is completely unable to speak and unable to assist himself.

 Multiple psychiatric evaluations were conducted over many months. Doctors from both sides examined Christensen, assessed the true extent of the deficits, and reached conclusions that the two sides continued to dispute. Christensen had escaped justice for 38 years, not because he was smart or had a sophisticated plan, but because no one found him.

 And now, when the evidence pointed straight at him with odds of 1 in 6.1 octillion, he was trying to escape in the only way left, convincing the court that he was not competent to face what that evidence proved. In December 2022, more than a year and a half after the arrest, nearly 40 years after the left-hand glove was placed into storage, the final psychiatric evaluation was completed.

 On January 31st, 2023, a full competency hearing was held before Judge Greg Steinsland, who would hear arguments from both sides and reach a conclusion on which everything that followed would depend. Judge Steinsland ruled Christensen was competent to stand trial. Wilbur spoke about that outcome not with triumph, but with the relief of someone who had pursued the case through two years of legal arguments that were far from certain to lead anywhere.

 After multiple doctors evaluated the defendant, I am grateful that Judge Steinsland concluded he is competent to stand trial, and we have been able to resolve the case. On April 6, 2023, Bud Leroy Christensen pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree murder in the killing of Firozeh Dehghanpour, not first-degree murder as originally charged, but the result of a plea agreement between prosecution and defense with no jury trial, no defense presented in court, no moment of direct confrontation between the defendant and those who had waited

38 years for an answer. Christiansen was sentenced to prison not to exceed 50 years under Iowa law at the time of the 1983 crime, and because Iowa had no mandatory minimum sentence for second-degree murder at that time, the Iowa Board of Parole would decide when, if ever, he would be released. Wilber said what no diplomatic formula could express better than the blunt truth.

This is certainly not perfect justice for Firozeh. She was killed nearly 40 years ago and her killer evaded justice for decades. I at least hope that resolving this case brings some closure to Firozeh’s family. Not perfect, but after 38 years, this was all the system could deliver, and Wilber did not pretend it was anything else.

The case ended with Bud Leroy Christiansen’s 50-year prison sentence. In addition, the case also left a legacy lying in three separate decisions made at three different times. The first decision belonged to the 1983 Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s Office investigators keeping all the evidence collected at the scene.

 The left-hand glove, bra, underwear, blouse, computer printouts. No one in 1983 knew how important those items would become four decades later. No one could know that DNA technology would advance to the point of extracting DNA from 40-year-old evidence and matching it to a national database. But someone put those items into a box and placed them into storage, not because they knew they would be needed in 2021, but because that was the right way to do forensic evidence collection.

That decision, over 40 years, led straight to April 6th, 2023. Hadlikova put the lesson into words better than any other phrasing. Let Firozi’s case be an example that it is never too late to seek answers. The second decision was not made by a good person, but a decision Christensen had no choice in and could not control the consequences of the 2014 sex crime that forced him to submit his DNA to CODIS.

 Firozi’s case is concrete and irrefutable proof of why CODIS is important for cold cases in a way that no other investigative method can replace. Christensen was not found because investigators came to him from the direction of the case. He was found because the system forced him to leave a trace in the database when he committed a second crime.

 If the law requiring DNA submission from sex offenders did not exist, Christensen’s DNA would not have been in CODIS. If Christensen had not committed the 2014 crime, his DNA would not have been in CODIS. If either of those two conditions had not occurred, the 1983 left hand glove would have continued to sit in storage without an answer.

 This is a lesson about why expanding CODIS and requiring DNA submission from those convicted of violent crimes matters for the thousands of cold cases sitting in storage across the United States. Cases with DNA evidence but no name to compare it to, waiting for the moment the perpetrator’s DNA appears in the system. The third decision was not about technology or policy, but about an ordinary person, Steven Martin, the old classmate living in Nevada.

 Not the victim’s family, not a resource-rich organization, just the person who picked up the phone to call when no one asked him to and kept calling when no one listened. Martin called the Omaha police, then Council Bluffs, then again and again until the right person was holding the phone at the right time when the technology was strong enough to do what all the previous calls could not lead to.

 If Martin had stopped at any point in those 38 years, Christensen might never have been caught. This is not a story about the system working perfectly. This is a story about an ordinary person filling the gaps the system left, year after year, call after call, until that gap was finally filled.

 Firouzeh’s brother in London, who was so shocked he could not process it when he heard the arrest news in 2021, now had the full answer after the April 2023 ruling. The family in Tehran finally knew the name of the person who killed Firouzeh, knew he was in prison, knew the question they had lived with for 38 years finally had an answer, even though that answer came later than any family deserves to wait.

Bud Leroy Christensen’s 50-year prison sentence is a deserved legal ending, but there is one question that sentence cannot answer. If Martin had stopped calling in any year of those 38 years, if the 1983 investigators had not kept the left-hand glove, if the 2014 DNA law had not forced Christensen to submit his sample to CODIS, if any one of those three conditions had not occurred, Christensen would have died a free man.

 That is not comfort. That is the reality this case exposes more clearly than any other. Justice is not something the system automatically delivers, but something that depends on a series of small decisions by ordinary people who do not know they are making history. Firouzeh deserved to live. She deserved to graduate, to return to Tehran or stay in Omaha, to grow old in the way any 27-year-old woman deserves to grow old.

Instead, she received 38 years with no answers and a trial with no jury at the end of the road. Justice came, but it came so late that it could only be the ending of a tragic story, not redemption. And the most important thing this case leaves behind is not the emotion about that injustice, but a more practical question.

 What is in our hands right now to prevent the same thing from happening to the other cases sitting in storage across the United States at this moment. There are three lessons from Firouz Odina Pour’s case. First, if you know anything about an unsolved case, whether it is something you heard long ago, whether you are not sure if it has value or not, make the call.

 Martin was not sure the suspect he suggested was right, and in fact that suspect was ruled out, but his call led to a result unrelated to that suspect. It led to Doty reading the file and realizing old evidence could be exploited with new technology. OSBI, the FBI, and most county-level law enforcement agencies in the US have anonymous tip lines.

 A call does not have to be perfect to create results. Second, support expanding CODIS and laws requiring DNA submission from those convicted of violent crimes. Christensen was found because Nebraska law forced him to submit DNA after his 2014 sexual assault conviction, not because of brilliant investigators, not because of brave witnesses, but because the system forced the perpetrator to leave a trace.

Right now, there are thousands of cold cases across the United States with DNA evidence, but no name to compare it to because the perpetrator’s DNA is not in the database. Every time a state expands the list of offenses requiring DNA submission, some of those cases will get answers. Contacting your elected representatives about this is not politics.

 It is practical action that can put killers in prison. Third, if you work in law enforcement, forensics, or evidence storage, keep everything. No one in 1983 knew the left-hand glove would solve the case 40 years later. No one could know, but someone put it in a box, and that decision, made with no certainty about its consequences, was the most important decision in the entire case.

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