THE DARK SIDE OF IOWA
Chad Welsh
#6864013
photo courtesy Quad City Times
Full Name: Chad Michael Lee Welsh
DOB: March 24, 1978
Charge: 1st degree murder
County: Scott
City: Rural Scott County
Current Status: Iowa Medical & Classification Center
Date of Crime: January 3, 2007
Tentative Discharge Date: Life
Victim: Angela "Angie" Hennes
DOB: March 24, 1978
Charge: 1st degree murder
County: Scott
City: Rural Scott County
Current Status: Iowa Medical & Classification Center
Date of Crime: January 3, 2007
Tentative Discharge Date: Life
Victim: Angela "Angie" Hennes
Born on November 4, 1965, in Omaha, Nebraska, Angela "Angie" Hennes had attended Davenport Catholic and public schools and graduated from high school in 1985. She'd gone on to attend Scott Community College and eventually gave birth to two sons, Matthew and Daniel.
Angela "Angie" Hennes, courtesy Iowa Cold Cases
Somewhere though, a shift took place in her life and she began using drugs. Those with whom she'd started to socialize were only too happy to suggest an alternative way to pay for the highly addictive drugs: sex. Even her boyfriend thought it would be okay, and often could be seen walking with her along the streets between Angie's 411 W. 4th Street residence at the Ledo Apartments and Myrtle Street, or at a safe distance on the other side of the street.
Wednesday, January 3, 2007, turned out to be an unseasonably warm Davenport day, the temperature reaching 50 degrees. Both Angie and her boyfriend went out that evening, and no one would ever see Angie alive again. Ten days later, on January 13, at approximately 4 PM, the 41-year-old's badly burned body was found face down in a fetal position in a farm field off Seven Sisters Road in rural Scott County. A vehicle's tire tracks were discovered nearby.
The boyfriend told police he last saw Angie heading to a grocery store about 9 PM on January 3, and that a little while later, he may have seen her get into a vehicle. Pathology reports indicated Angie had been dead two to three days. Toxicology reports showed no drugs or alcohol in her system. The cause of death was determined as strangulation.
Gerald Bolt, the farmer who discovered Angie's body on his property, estimated he'd last checked that area of his property on January 10. Angie's cell phone had last gone off on January 3 - the day she disappeared.
In 2011, a man in federal prison on child pornography charges faced first-degree murder charges in connection with Angie's murder. Chad Michael Lee Welsh, 33, is accused of killing Angie back in January 2007, whose burned remains were found along the side of a road in the 15000 block of 100th Avenue. Authorities collected DNA samples from the scene in 2007, and that information was used to match with Chad's DNA four years later. The DNA was collected in the form of seminal fluid. The evidence was entered into a nationwide database which resulted in a match to Chad after he entered the federal prison system on the pornography charges.
Chad was a car salesman in the Burlington area around the time of Angie's death and then a landscaper before his arrest. An affidavit states that Chad told others that he physically assaulted a woman, strangling and dragging her from a vehicle and leaving her on the side of a road in the Davenport area. No one could explain what Chad was doing in the Davenport area in Janaury 2007. It did not appear that he was a friend of Angie's or knew her family at all. Tire impressions located at the scene were consistent with tires from a vehicle Chad drove at the time.