Cold case arrest: Minnesota man charged in 1995 homicide in Iowa
BLACK HAWK COUNTY, IA (FOX 9) - Authorities arrested a Minnesota man Friday they believe is responsible for the 1995 murder of a woman whose body was found along a creek in Iowa.
Iowa cold case leads to arrest of Minnesota man
1995 murder:
The Black Hawk County Sheriff's Office said deputies first responded to a report of a woman's body found east of Waterloo in the 900 block of Pilot Grove Road on Aug. 11, 1995.
The woman was later identified as 37-year-old Angela Renee Buck of Waterloo. The sheriff's office said her death was ruled a homicide after an autopsy determined she died of a gunshot wound.
2026 arrest:
Kelly Grant, 59, of Bertha, Minnesota, was arrested on Friday on first-degree murder charges in connection with Buck's death, according to the Black Hawk County Sheriff's Office.
The arrest was reportedly carried out with assistance from the Todd County Sheriff's Office in Minnesota and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension as well as authorities from Iowa.
Decades-long murder investigation
Timeline:
The Black Hawk County Sheriff's Office said investigators determined Buck did not own or have access to a car and that she was living in Waterloo at the time of her death.
Authorities then found that Buck was at a home in the 300 block of Cottage Street in Waterloo during the late evening hours of Aug. 10, 1995, through the early morning hours of Aug. 11, 1995.
There were reportedly multiple people at the home, including Buck, Grant and "another identified male," according to the complaint.
The complaint states a witness told investigators that they saw a person who looked like Grant, as well as another man, "forcibly removing Buck from the residence and forcing Buck into a vehicle before driving away."
Buck's body was then found by turtle hunters about eight miles east of the Cottage Street home.
In January 1996, another associate of Grant spoke to law enforcement. The complaint states that Grant insinuated that he and the other male referenced by the witness had killed Buck because they believed she stole from them. That associate added that Grant said that Buck "wouldn't be doing this to anyone else again."
A Black Hawk County Sheriff's deputy then interviewed Grant, who "initially denied knowing the identified male" before changing his account and admitting to "knowing and hanging out with the identified male in the summer of 1995," according to the complaint. Grant also said he hadn't talked to that maN since and denied hanging out in the Sumner/Cottage Street area.
The complaint also states Grant initially said he did not know Buck, but admitted to knowing her as a former coworker at IBP when he was shown a picture of her.
Grant was then interviewed again in July 2001 and told law enforcement he was not in town when Buck was killed. Grant said he had been living in Florida and read about Buck's death in the newspaper when he moved back, according to the complaint. He later changed his story again, saying he had been living in Waterloo several weeks before Aug. 10 but continued to deny any involvement in Buck's death.
Decades later, Grant was interviewed in March 2025, during which he said he remembered stopping by a home in the Sumner/Cottage Street neighborhood, where "the identified male, a couple of other males and a woman who appeared under duress were waiting." The complaint states Grant said the woman resembled Buck and continued to refer to her as Buck throughout the interview.
Grant continued the interview by saying the man, Buck and other men got into Grant's car, and that he dropped them all off at another location in Waterloo, and that the man gave him a bag of weed for the ride, according to the complaint.
Law enforcement officials say they learned of another motive in 2025, which is the false belief that Buck was "providing information to law enforcement regarding drug activity in the Sumner/Cottage Street area.
The complaint states the witness accounts, Grant's changing stories, and the motive brought investigators to conclude that Grant participated in the kidnapping and murder of Angela Buck on or around Aug. 11, 2026.
The Source: This story uses information from the Black Hawk County Sheriff's Office.