The Iowa Department of Public Safety’s (DPS) Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI), along with the Union County Sheriff’s Office, Tuesday, arrested 43-year old Jennifer Jean Hartley, of Thayer,  on a charge of Murder in the First Degree, a class A Felony, in the death investigation of Loretta Dillinger.

On December 2nd, 2015, a hunter located a decomposed body in a pond at 1024 Redwood Avenue near the Union County and Madison County line. The Iowa Office of the State Medical Examiner in Ankeny performed an autopsy and determined the body to be that of 37-year old Loretta Dillinger.

Jennifer Jean Hartley

Through the investigation, DCI Agents determined that Jennifer Hartley acted with Jerry Dillinger to kill Loretta Dillinger. Hartley was part of a plan to have Loretta set fire to two residences, one in Greenfield and one in Thayer. Hartley provided her pistol to Jerry Dillinger to kill Loretta so she wouldn’t disclose any information about the fires. After the fires and death of Dillinger, Hartley knowingly helped conceal Loretta’s death.

Jennifer Hartley is being held in the Ringgold County Jail on $1 million cash-only bond. Jerry Dillinger plead two counts of first degree murder back in January. He was found dead in his jail cell last month, in what officials at the Iowa Medical and Classification Center in Oakdale said, was an apparent suicide.