
The independent film maker trying to finish a documentary on the mysterious disappearance and death of a Chadron State College professor and a Chadron author’s book on the case has met his $30,000 goal on the crowdfunding website Kickstarter.
Dave Jannetta’s 30-day Kickstarter campaign ends at 7 pm tomorrow, but has already received pledges of $32,976 from 141 individuals as of 10:30 this morning.
Janetta has been working for nearly 2 years on his film about the 2006 death of professor Steve Haataja, which he expanded to include Chadron author Ed Hughes, who writes under the name Poe Ballentine, and the Ballentine book Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere.

Janetta named his film “Love and Terror, the documentary” because, like the book, it tells not only the story of Haataja’s disappearance and the discovery of his bound and burned body, but also Hughes/Ballentine’s personal recounting of his own life.
The money raised on Kickstarter will go for “post-production” work as well as website and marketing expenses, including the costs of promoting it at festivals to try to convince a distributor to step forward.
Janetta spent two months filming in Chadron in two segments about a year apart and has a roughly 100-minute rough cut of the documentary.