KAREN LAY

All three of Leo and Sarah Garcia’s children had inherited their father’s elongated chin and his height, but his daughter Karen Lay looked the most like him. She had strong features like Leo, but hers were feminine. She had thick long brown hair and a slender figure. As she grew up, she became more and more beautiful.

Leo Garcia owned a number of horses, which he kept in rented pasture land a few blocks away. Des Moines was far more rural in the fifties and sixties, and there were several meadows a block or so from “downtown.” Today, most of the fields are covered with sprawling apartments and...