IOWA CITY – Officials with the Iowa Department of Corrections, today (Thursday), said an inmate serving time for the Union County crime of Murder in the 1st Degree, died Wednesday afternoon from natural causes. 72-year old Rick Fay Bird was pronounced deceased at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. Bird had been serving a life sentence for the Feb. 19, 1997 death of 47-year old Linda Trenkle.

Trenkle was beaten to death with a hammer, in Creston. Bird, who was 49-year old at the time, was living with Trenkle. Two weeks earlier she had gone to his home accompanied by law enforcement to retrieve her possessions. On the day she died, she returned without law enforcement to get more of her property.  Bird’s incarceration for the crime began on October 24, 1997.