John Gordon Iverson

• Missing Since 01/04/1991
• Missing From Lake Havasu City, Arizona
• Classification Endangered Missing
• Sex Male
• Race White
• Date of Birth 01/14/1948 (76)
• Age 42 years old
• Height and Weight 5'8, 190 pounds
• Clothing/Jewelry Description A gray size large Jerzees sweatshirt, matching sweatpants and black sneakers with velcro fastenings.
• Distinguishing Characteristics Caucasian male. Gray hair, brown eyes. Iverson has previously fractured his left hand. He chain-smoked at the time of his 1991 disappearance.

Details of Disappearance

Iverson lived in the 1700 block of south Palo Verde in Lake Havasu City, Arizona in 1991. He shared his residence with his girlfriend, Kathy Munro. She was also his ex-wife; they'd married in 1987, then divorced shortly thereafter, supposedly for financial reasons, and Iverson transferred all her assets to her name.

On the evening of January 4, Jack Weber, a machinist from Las Vegas, was present in the couple's home. He had worked with Iverson and supplied him with cabinet parts.

According to Munro, Weber arrived at the house at 5:00 p.m. to drop off a project he'd been working on. Normally he would meet with Iverson at his own shop across town, but he'd gone there and Iverson wasn't there. While they waited for Iverson to arrive, Munro, who acted as Iverson's bookkeeper, wrote Weber a check for $1,000 in payment for his work, although she couldn't find the invoice.

Iverson finally showed up, and Munro told him about the check and then fell asleep. When she woke up later, both men were gone. She went to sleep again. At 9:30 p.m., she woke up and saw a flashlight coming down the hallway towards her bedroom. Weber, who was wearing gloves and carrying a pistol, went into her bedroom and said he had Iverson tied up in his van. He demanded money.

Munro gave Weber $4,000 in cash. He asked her how much money Iverson had in the bank and demanded she write him a check. She drafted a check for $2,500, deliberately making mistakes as she did so, as an indication that she was under duress. Weber followed her down the hallway towards the kitchen.

Munro was able to escape by ducking into the family room, locking the door behind her, and exiting the house through another door. She ran screaming down the driveway, past Weber's van, and went to a neighbor's home to call the police. When authorities arrived, Weber, his van and Iverson were all gone.

Iverson's motor home was left parked in his driveway. Inside, a table was damaged and there was a small spot of blood on the carpet, which had been cleaned with household cleaner and covered with a rug. It's unclear, however, whether the blood was Iverson's or if it was even fresh.

The police were initially unable to find Weber. He wrote to his wife and told her where to find his van, a silver 1985 Ford. He suggested she give it back to the bank so she wouldn't have to keep paying for it. The postmark on the letter was illegible.

Acting on the information in the letter, investigators found Weber's van where he said it would be, in a parking lot in an industrial area ten miles from his home. There were no indications of a struggle in the van, or any signs of violence, such as bloodstains.

Weber finally turned himself in on April 23, after Iverson had been missing for nearly four months, to face charges of kidnapping and armed robbery. His version of what happened differed markedly from Munro's; he said he'd been deliberately set up by her and Iverson.

Weber said Iverson had asked him to help him build a new kind of gun, a rapid-fire weapon that didn't need live ammunition. He agreed, on the condition that he was paid in full on delivery. (Iverson had fallen behind on payments to Weber for previous work.)

Weber said he arrived at the house at 5:00 p.m., an hour later than Munro claimed, expecting to be paid $8,400 in current and back payments due. He said Munro seemed nervous after she wrote the $1,000 check and he told her the amount was insufficient. After Iverson arrived home at 6:30 p.m., Weber said, Munro went to her bedroom without saying anything.

While Iverson and Weber were talking in the kitchen, Iverson got a phone call which he said was from someone asking about the gun. Weber had the prototype, but refused to leave it with Iverson unless he was paid. They went together to Weber's van at the bottom of the driveway, got inside and swiveled the front seats so they could look at the gun, which was in the backseat.

Iverson told Weber he had a customer for the gun and offered to pay him $2,500 up front and the full amount in a week, after he'd had a chance to show the gun to the buyer. Weber agreed and left Iverson in the van with the gun, going back inside to get the money.

Munro asked him to return the check she'd written to help cover the $2,500 she was about to give him. He gave her the old check and she wrote a new one. When she asked for a receipt, he suggested he use the $1,000 invoice he'd left on the kitchen table, which was marked paid, and simply change the amount.

They started to go to the kitchen, but when Weber got there he realized Munro wasn't behind him anymore. As he turned around and started walking back to the office, he heard her out in the driveway screaming.

Weber went outside to the van and asked Iverson what the matter was. He said he didn't know and that they should just leave, and Munro would calm down. Iverson picked up a box in his garage and asked Weber to drive him to Bullhead City, Arizona, a town about 65 miles north of Lake Havasu City.

En route, Iverson stopped and made a call, supposedly to Munro. He told Weber the police had been to his house, but Munro had told them there had been a mistake and sent them away. He said he and Munro were having "problems" and that he'd told her to call Weber's wife to tell her Weber wouldn't be home that night.

Weber and Iverson spent the night in his van so they could test-fire the gun the next morning. They tested the gun in the desert, firing ball bearings, all of which they retrieved when they were finished. The gun needed revision but it did work. Later that day, Weber called his wife and she told him the FBI was looking for him because they thought he'd kidnapped Iverson.

Weber told his wife Iverson was with him and was fine, and that he hadn't kidnapped him. He told Iverson what his wife had said and Iverson made a call, then told Weber that Munro said the police come back to their home and issued the kidnapping warrant after she couldn't confirm his whereabouts.

Weber said he wanted to go back to Lake Havasu City to settle things, but Iverson refused, saying he might get in trouble for "violating parole" and he wanted to talk to an attorney first. (He was on probation for stealing telegraph wire in 1990, and had to visit his probation officer once a week.) He promised to call a lawyer he knew in Phoenix, Arizona, so Weber and Iverson spent another night in Weber's van.

The next day, Weber stood next to Iverson and listened while he made the call to the attorney. Iverson said he set up a meeting with the lawyer on Friday, in five days. They hid the gun and the blueprints for it near Laughlin, Arizona and drove to Phoenix.

The two men separated and agreed to meet again Friday morning. Weber drove back to Las Vegas, went home, packed some clothes, left again and lived out of his van across town for the next several days. Thursday night he returned to Phoenix, but Iverson never showed up at the agreed-upon time on Friday morning, and when Weber checked the hiding place in Laughlin, the gun and blueprints were gone.

Weber realized he'd been set up and went into hiding, hoping the police would find Iverson and and realize he was innocent of kidnapping. He visited California three times to see his adult daughter, who was dying of cancer, and then to attend her cremation. The rest of the time he spent hiding at his home in Las Vegas. It was at his wife's urging that he finally went to the police.

Because the police still hadn't found Iverson, they had no evidence against Weber besides Munro's statement. She failed a lie detector test about the events of January 4, something which she blamed on a reaction to psychoactive drugs; she was taking Prozac, an antidepressant, and Valium, a muscle relaxant which was sometimes prescribed for anxiety.

Investigators asked her to take a second test, but she refused to be tested again by the same polygraph examiner and hired her own. She passed the second test, but police discounted those results as unreliable.

In June 1991, the case against Weber was dropped for lack of evidence. He could face charges again, however, if more evidence surfaces.

Within two months of Iverson's disappearance, Munro liquidated her assets and moved to California. Various members of Iverson's family are suspicious of her story about his alleged kidnapping.

She stated she and Iverson had a good relationship, but other witnesses believe there were problems between them. They had a serious fight in the summer of 1990 and Iverson told his brother he was thinking of leaving her. He was also reportedly being pursued by the IRS for payment of back taxes and was facing a business audit.

Iverson was known as a genius at inventing and electronics and his company, Electron Kinetics, produced some of the best audio amplification systems in the world at the time. However, he had a difficult and unpredictable temperament and he drank heavily.

His friends and family admit he was violently prejudiced against gays, Jews and other minorities, and frequently told wild stories about himself and his accomplishments. For instance, he claimed he had been a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a prestigious university known for its science and engineering programs, but was expelled before graduation. In fact, he had never attended MIT. Iverson also said the FBI and other government agencies had "stolen" some of his inventions.

Many people believe Iverson staged his own kidnapping and deliberately disappeared to escape the problems in his life, but the circumstances of his disappearance are unclear and he may have met with foul play. There has been no trace of him since 1991.