By Clare Swanson | Mar 12, 2021
In November 1970, two brothers, ages 11 and 14, were out for a hike in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and found the remains of 18-year-old Paula Oberbroeckling, who had been missing for four months. Her wrists and ankles had been bound, indicating foul play, but the criminal investigation into her murder lasted less than a year and a half, and her killer or killers have never been apprehended.
PW spoke with journalist Katherine Dykstra, author of
What Happened to Paula (Norton, June), about the case, and the ways in which gender, and occupying a female body, intersect with Oberbroeckling’s life and death.