Iowa man who had satanic shrine sentenced for killing missing woman and putting her head on a stick

MITCHELL COUNTY, Iowa (TCD) — A 24-year-old man will spend the next several decades in prison for killing a missing 29-year-old woman, decapitating her, and leaving her head on a stick in a park.

Court records show Nathan Gilmore was sentenced Oct. 16 to 50 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for the death of Angela Bradbury. He was initially charged in August 2022 with first-degree murder.

Bradbury’s family reported her missing to the Cerro Gordo County Sheriff’s Office on Feb. 1, 2022, and said she had not been seen since April 6, 2021. A body was found in July 2021 at the Greenbelt Trail, and in March 2022, the Cerro Gordo County Sheriff’s Office announced the remains were positively identified as Bradbury’s.

The Iowa Department of Public Safety said in a statement last year that Mitchell County Sheriff’s Office deputies and officials from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation executed several search warrants in Osage and St. Ansgar on Aug. 19, 2022, as part of their investigation into Bradbury’s disappearance. Investigators arrested Gilmore three days later on Aug. 22, 2022.

According to the criminal complaint, in the early evening of July 12, 2021, a teenager was reportedly walking on the Greenbelt Trail when she noticed “what appeared to be a human skull, which had been placed on a stick.” The teen called her mother, who then contacted the Mitchell County Sheriff’s Office. A deputy arrived at the scene and “took custody of the skull.”

DNA testing showed the skull was that of a female.

Bradbury’s family submitted DNA samples to law enforcement after reporting her missing. The Iowa Office of the State Medical Examiner positively identified Bradley on Feb. 4, 2022. Investigators discovered some of her other remains in the same park two months later. The medical examiner determined Bradbury died by homicide.

The criminal complaint says Bradbury was arrested late at night on April 5, 2021, for trespassing at a car dealership. She was released at noon the next day. She was reportedly last seen leaving a friend’s house at approximately 5 p.m. April 6 and getting into Gilmore’s car.

Detectives spoke with Gilmore on Aug. 19, 2022, and he “provided an accurate description of the skull.”

He reportedly said he knew the details because of what he read in news articles and what people in town were saying, but he said he did not know anything else about the human remains or who they belonged to.

Then, during the interview, Gilmore walked back his previous remarks and confessed to picking up Bradbury, then changed his story a third time. GPS data showed Gilmore was in the Greenbelt Trail area the night of April 6, 2021.

According to the complaint, investigators discovered a drawing that “depicted a satanic goat’s head in the shape of a pentagram with what appears to be blood spatters drawn on it.” Then, next to the drawing, Gilmore had written “04-06,” “0590,” and “43.3, -92.8.”

The complaint says 04-06 refers to the date Gilmore was last seen alive, 590 is an acronym from Urban Dictionary that means “someone is tired of living,” and the last numbers are coordinates for Greenbelt River Trail Park.

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