More than a decade after an Iowa real estate agent was gunned down in a model townhouse, police say they've made an arrest. West Des Moines police on Tuesday charged 53-year-old Kristin Ramsey with first-degree murder in the 2011 killing of 27-year-old Ashley Okland, who was shot while working alone at a model home on April 8, 2011, according to the Iowa Attorney General's Cold Case Unit. Officials announced the arrest Wednesday but declined to explain what new evidence led to charges, citing the ongoing case, ABC News reports. Dallas County Attorney Matt Schultz said only that a grand jury, after reviewing the evidence, returned an indictment against Ramsey.
Ramsey worked in 2011 for Rottlund Homes, the company that built the townhouse where Okland was killed, her former boss Steven Kahn told ABC. He said he never suspected her of any involvement, calling her "the nicest lady" and recalling that he sat next to her at Okland's funeral. "There's nothing from a business standpoint that I could see why it would have happened," Kahn said. I have no idea about anything in her personal life." Files show that before her arrest, Ramsey had no criminal record and her only brush with the law was a speeding ticket from 2001, the Des Moines Register reports.
Police described the killing as a case that rattled Iowa and lingered over the real estate industry for years. Under a safety pledge, realtors in the area now meet clients in public places and require them to show identification before they are shown homes. "Ashley's story has kept many of us awake at night, revisiting the details over and over in our minds, searching for that missing piece that would tie everything together and lead us down the right path to identifying a person who was responsible for this act," Assistant Police Chief Jody Hayes, who has been on the case from the start, said Wednesday, per the Register.
At the news conference, Okland's sister, Brittany Bruce, said the family had begun to lose hope that the case would ever be solved. "That Friday afternoon when Ashley was taken from us seems so long ago," she told reporters, adding that they now "have full confidence" in investigators and prosecutors "to see this through." Okland's brother, Josh Okland, thanked investigators for their efforts. "Today is a day my family has thought about very often over the last 14 years," he said, per Fox News.
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