A teenager at the Greenbelt River Trail Park Mitchell, a city with a population of 124 people located 140 miles north of Des Moines on the state's border, came upon "what appeared to be a human skull, which had been placed on a stick."
A judge in Iowa sentenced a man to 50 years in prison for murdering a woman just hours after meeting her outside the county jail.
That sentence comes after Nathan Gilmore, 24, entered a guilty plea to the charge of murder in the second degree for the 2021 killing of Angela Bradbury.
Gilmore, who had initially been charged with murder in the first degree, will have to serve out at least 35 years of his sentence before he is eligible for parole and pay restitution in the amount of $150,000 to Bradbury's family, according to court records.
Authorities believe that Gilmore murdered Bradbury on Apr. 6, 2021 but her remains were not discovered until July 12 of that year, according to a criminal complaint obtained by Inside Edition Digital.
A teenager at the Greenbelt River Trail Park Mitchell, a city with a population of 124 people located 140 miles north of Des Moines on the state's border, came upon "what appeared to be a human skull, which had been placed on a stick," according to the complaint.
DNA testing determined that the skull belonged to a woman but it was not until February 2022 that the Iowa Office of the State Medical Examiner identified the victim as Bradbury after her family reported her missing, says the complaint.
Nine days after Bradbury's family filed that report, the medical examiner matched her dental records to those of the skull.
A search of the area where Bradbury's skull was discovered eventually turned up more remains, and the medical examiner working in conjunction with a board-certified forensic anthropologist was able to determine the case of death to be homicide, says the complaint.
Authorities then mounted a lengthy investigation, which capped off in August with the arrest of Gilmore.
Over the course of their investigation, authorities learned that Gilmore was scheduled to be arraigned at the Cerro Gordon County Jail on the same day Bradbury was released from the facility following an arrest for trespassing, according to the complaint.
An associate of Bradbury then told investigators that they had seen her later that day with a "younger male" who was travelling to St. Ansgar, the town where Gilmore lived with his parents, according to the complaint. The complaint says that Bradbury's associate never seen her again after she left the house and her phone showed no outgoing activity from the Facebook account she used to communicate.
Investigators were also able to obtain Gilmore's Google records, which led them to discover a Snapchat communication between the suspect and a male associate of his ex-girlfriend, says the complaint.
According to the complaint, Gilmore wrote in that message: "You'll be looking like the body they found outside Mitchell boy."
That was sent a month after the skull was discovered but a full year before Gilmore's arrest.
Gilmore was taken in for questioning on Aug. 19, 2022, and while he initially denied any involvement his statements quickly began to change over the course of the day, according to the complaint. He eventually admitted to picking up Bradbury but claimed he dropped her off five blocks from her associate's home, according to the complaint.
Investigators were able to obtain search warrants at that point however, which placed Gilmore in the area where the skull was discovered on the day that Bradbury had last been seen leaving her associate's house with a young man.
"GPS records obtained from Gilmore’s Facebook account showed that on the evening of April 6, 2021, Gilmore’s Facebook account was active in an area northwest of Greenbelt River Trail Park at approximately 7:21 pm and active in an area southeast of the Greenbelt River Trail Park at approximately 8:37 pm, before records show his account active back in the St. Angsar area," reads the complaint.
The complaint goes on to say that while searching Gilmore's bedroom, "a drawing was found affixed to a whiteboard in Gilmore’s living room. This drawing depicted a satanic goat’s head in the shape of a pentagram with what appeared to be blood spatters drawn on it. Written on the drawing, next to the goat head, were the numbers ‘04-06,’ ‘0590,’ and ‘43.3, -92.8."
Those numbers allegedly represent the date of Bradbury's murder (04-06), an urban dictionary acronym suggesting someone is tired of living (0590), and the GPS coordinates for the area where Bradbury's skull and remains were discovered (43.3, -92.8), according to the complaint.
Court records show Gilmore's attorney, Charles Kenville, had been trying to suppress the evidence that placed his client at the scene on the day of the murder, but before the judge could rule on that motion the defendant agreed to a plea deal.
Kenville did not respond to a request for comment.
