An arrest has finally been announced in the nearly 15-year-old cold case murder of a West Des Moines, Iowa, real estate agent.
Ashley Okland
In a press conference on Wednesday, the West Des Moines Police Department announced the arrest of Kristin “Krissy” Ramsey for the 2011 murder of real estate agent Ashley Okland, who was found dead in a model townhome where she was conducting an open house.
Ramsey was indicted by a Dallas County, Iowa, grand jury for murder in the first degree, and the case will now move forward to prosecution. At this time, no other arrests have been made.
Ramsey, who, according to her LinkedIn, is currently a title officer at Midland Title & Escrow, was working in 2011 as an administrative assistant and sales manager with Rottlund Homes of Iowa. Rottlund Homes was the developer of the townhome community where Okland was murdered.
Okland was an agent with Iowa Realty Co., which is the parent company of Midland Title & Escrow. In a statement shared with local station We Are Iowa 5, Iowa Realty Co. said that while it was “relieved” that an arrest had been made, it had received news of Ramsey’s arrest with “tremendous shock and sadness.” Iowa Realty then deferred all further questions and specifics to law enforcement authorities.
Kristin Ramsey
Police were tight-lipped about the case against Ramsey and said that “in order to preserve the value of the investigative information” they had gathered, they would not answer any questions. Assistant Chief of Police Jody Hayes talked about the department’s “unrelenting pursuit of justice” in Okland’s case and its impact on the local real estate community.
“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 the person that was responsible for this act,” Hayes said.
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird also spoke at the press conference, saying, “Today is why we created the Iowa Cold Case Unit.” She credited the West Des Moines Police Department with “never letting it go, never giving up on Ashley and her family, never stopping.”
