MITCHELL COUNTY, Iowa — An Iowa man was arrested on murder charges more than one year after investigators said he killed a woman and left her decapitated head on a stick in a park.
Officials said in a news release that Nathan James Gilmore was arrested and charged with first-degree murder for the death of Angela Bradbury.
Court documents allege that Gilmore and Bradbury had a chance meeting at the Cerro Gordo Courthouse in April 2021, when Bradbury was arrested for trespassing at a car dealership and Gilmore had been at the courthouse for a hearing. Following her release from jail, Bradbury went to a friend’s house to change her clothes. Detectives said she then left with a man and was never seen again.
Bradbury was one day away from turning 30 when she was last seen, the Des Moines Register reported.
On July 12, 2021, a teenager found what appeared to be a human skull on a stick at River Trail Park. DNA testing and dental records revealed the skull belonged to Bradbury, according to court documents. Additional remains, identified as Bradbury’s, were found in the same park in April 2022.
In the criminal complaint, detectives said that Gilmore had sent texts referencing the skull found in the park while threatening a male associate of an ex-girlfriend. Investigators said that when they interviewed Gilmore, his story changed multiple times. First, Gilmore told detectives that he had been present in the park when the skull was found and that he spoke to police, before then saying his knowledge of the skull was from “media reports and information around town.”
Detectives said in the criminal complaint that Gilmore eventually admitted to picking up a woman who matched Bradbury’s description but told investigators that he had dropped her off, at her request, “at a vague location.”
When investigators served a search warrant at Gilmore’s home, they found a drawing on a whiteboard in the living room depicting a satanic goat’s head in the shape of a pentagram “with what appeared to be blood spatters drawn on it.” Numbers significant to the case were also written on the board, including the GPS coordinates of where the skull was found, KCRG reported.
Gilmore was taken to jail with cash-only bond set at $1 million, the Des Moines Register reported.
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