At about 2: 00 p. m. ET on April 8, 2011, authorities responded to a model townhouse in West Des Moines, Iowa, where Ashley Okland had been holding an open house. Inside the home, she was found dead from two gunshot wounds. Nearly 15 years later, a new development has reshaped the case: an arrest and a murder charge.
What happened to Ashley Okland at the West Des Moines model townhouse?
The case centers on the death of 27-year-old Ashley Okland, a central Iowa realtor who was working an open house inside a West Des Moines home when she was killed. Authorities responded to the model townhouse around 2: 00 p. m. ET on April 8, 2011, and found her dead from two gunshot wounds.
In the years since, the investigation has remained a constant presence for her family and for local law enforcement. The West Des Moines Police Department said in 2025 that investigators had interviewed hundreds of people and reviewed more than a thousand leads, reflecting both the scale of the work and the difficulty of reaching a courtroom moment in a case that has lasted more than a decade.
Ashley Okland: Who was arrested and what charge has been filed?
A woman has been arrested in connection with the 2011 murder, and 53-year-old Kristin Ramsey has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of Ashley Okland. The charge followed a Dallas County grand jury indictment.
West Des Moines police have scheduled a news conference for Wednesday morning at 9: 00 a. m. ET. The timing signals that investigators and officials are preparing to publicly lay out what they can about the arrest and the steps that led to it, after years in which the case remained unresolved.
How the cold case shaped a family’s memories and public push for answers
For Josh Okland, the passage of time has not dulled the sharpness of the last ordinary day he shared with his sister. In a 2025 interview marking the 14th anniversary of her death, he described spending the afternoon before she was killed with Ashley at a Panera in Ankeny.
“April 7th, we spent the entire afternoon together. Her real estate career was booming, and she hired me to be her assistant to work on small stuff for her, make pamphlets. So we sat at Panera in Ankeny for four hours, and she was training me, but yeah, I will never forget that day, ” Josh Okland said.
He said he noticed nothing unusual in the hours before her death. “No. Not at all. And we were very close. If there was something going on, she would have told me, ” he said.
Those details—mundane in any other family’s story—have become part of the human record of what was lost: a sibling relationship, a career that appeared to be accelerating, and a sense of safety around a routine workday that ended in violence.
Josh Okland has also taken part in public efforts that keep pressure on the justice system to revisit older cases. At the 2024 launch of Iowa’s Cold Case Unit by Attorney General Brenna Bird, he joined other families still seeking answers. The moment placed his family’s grief alongside many others, each marked by years of waiting and each dependent on investigative breakthroughs that can arrive late—or not at all.
Ashley Okland’s legacy is also carried in a physical place meant for life and community. She is memorialized at Ewing Park through a specialized, inclusive playground built in her name. “I am proud to be her brother. She impacted so many people in such a positive way and such a good role model for a short 27-year life. Her legacy lives on, ” Josh Okland said.
Now, with an arrest made and a first-degree murder charge filed, the public story is entering a new phase—one that may bring clearer answers, and one that will test how evidence, time, and memory hold up under the demands of the legal process.
