Boots in the Snow (Yvonne Menke)

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Speaker 4 They were waiting for the smoking gun.

Speaker 4 They were waiting to find the gun and they never found the gun. And it was at a point where it's either we try it and we lose or we never try it, but there's never justice in that.

Speaker 4 It needed to to be tried.

Speaker 1 I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff.

Speaker 5 I'm Anasega Nicolazi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction.

Speaker 1 And this is Anatomy of Murder.

Speaker 5 How long is too long to wait for justice? Four months? Four years?

Speaker 1 Four decades?

Speaker 5 For victims, families, balancing the demand for accountability and the deeper need for healing can be a long and traumatic process.

Speaker 1 Some survivors see a guilty verdict as a necessary step for closure, but for others, a long investigation or stalled prosecution can be painful roadblocks to moving forward with lives already forever forever changed by the loss of a loved one.

Speaker 5 When is it okay to stop searching for someone's killer? Our answer is never, but sadly, it's a question many survivors have to ask.

Speaker 5 And their answer is personal and unique to each family or individual.

Speaker 1 But for many investigators and prosecutors, there's really no question at all. As long as there is enough evidence and enough hope, the pursuit of justice never stops.

Speaker 4 My name is Holly Wood-Webster. I am an assistant district attorney and I work with the Polk County District Attorney's Office.

Speaker 5 In 2020, Holly Wood-Webster was a new prosecutor suddenly thrust into a very old homicide investigation, the 1985 murder of Yvonne Menke in St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin.

Speaker 4 St. Croix Falls is your average small-town America.
It's largely a farming community. St.
Croix Falls is right on the border with Minnesota, right on the border of the city.

Speaker 4 It's a town where most everybody knows most everybody else.

Speaker 1 And that included Yvonne, a 45-year-old mother of four who had grown up in the same town and raised her family there.

Speaker 5 Yvonne was a kind, quintessentially salt of the earth Midwesterner known for her warm personality and dedication to her children.

Speaker 5 even when that meant working long hours at multiple jobs just to keep food on the table.

Speaker 4 I believe at this point she was working as a seamstress at a local factory. She'd also worked at a car wash, and she sometimes would work at a bar in town.

Speaker 1 In December of 1985, the single mother was living with her 20-year-old daughter, Julie, in a second-floor apartment located above a storefront in what passed for a downtown in tiny St. Croix Falls.

Speaker 5 She was up early for work. It was December 12, 1985, which being winter in Wisconsin was a typically frigid morning.

Speaker 4 December in Wisconsin, it was bitter cold. But Yvonne had a routine actually because of how cold it was in the mornings.

Speaker 4 She would go outside in the morning, start up her car, drive it around the building, and leave it on the street to continue warming up for a little while before she got back in and headed to work.

Speaker 1 And so at approximately 6.15 a.m., despite being out until nearly midnight at a birthday party the night before, Yvonne bundled up and began her morning routine.

Speaker 4 Her daughter Julie was home in the apartment. She had just woken up.

Speaker 4 Her mom indicated she was going to go out and start her car like she normally does and made a comment to Julie that she had something to tell her.

Speaker 4 So Julie was waiting at the kitchen table essentially for her mom to come back in and tell her whatever it was she had to tell her.

Speaker 5 Yvonne headed out the door of her apartment and down the enclosed exterior stairwell of the building, which led directly to the parking lot on the ground floor.

Speaker 4 As Julie was sitting there, she was listening to some music. She heard some noises outside.
She didn't initially recognize the noises. To her, they sounded to be like a whip-like noise.

Speaker 4 So Julie ran to the windows, thinking someone was outside hurting her mom.

Speaker 1 The sudden noises were so startling and so out of the ordinary for a cold, dark Thursday morning that Yvonne's daughter immediately sensed something terrible had happened to her mother.

Speaker 1 She had no idea just what.

Speaker 4 She couldn't see anything out the front windows, so she ran to the back windows. And at this time in December, it was again freezing cold outside.

Speaker 4 All of the windows on the front side had been iced up, fogged up with the cold.

Speaker 4 She ran to the back windows and looking out the back bathroom window, she was able to see a figure underneath a light post in the back parking lot.

Speaker 4 She saw the person walking quickly away from the area of the stairwell where her mom would have gone down to start the car.

Speaker 4 And the person continued to quickly walk north through the alley behind the buildings.

Speaker 5 Julie struggled to make out a description of the person who appeared to be fleeing the scene, but there was no mistaking the overwhelming sense of menace and dread.

Speaker 4 It would have been dark outside. The person happened to stop briefly underneath that streetlight and turn to look back at the stairwell.

Speaker 4 So Julie was able to see the person when they were underneath the light, but she wasn't able to see a face.

Speaker 1 Several minutes passed and Yvonne didn't return to the apartment. Fearing for her own safety and that of her mom, she picked up the phone to call for help.

Speaker 4 She was scared of whoever the person was because when they looked back, she thought maybe they had seen her in the window.

Speaker 4 She immediately went to the phone and she called called her sister first, the one who lived about a block north.

Speaker 4 So she called her sister Sue and her brother-in-law Keith, told them about the whip-like noises, and they told her to call law enforcement.

Speaker 1 The call went out to all available officers and within a matter of minutes, one was on his way. But with little information available, he really had no idea what to expect.

Speaker 4 First person on scene was the St. Croix Falls police officer, Mike Seaverson, and Officer Severson just lived a few blocks away.
So I think it was about seven minutes for him to get over there.

Speaker 4 Julie had been sitting in her window watching for him to come.

Speaker 4 And when she saw him come, she went down the stairs and she actually walked around the other way around the building from where she knew her mom would have been.

Speaker 4 She very much did not want to be the one to find her mom.

Speaker 4 So she walked around the building, saw Officer Severson out back, and directed him over toward the stairwell where she thought her mom probably was. And sure enough, she was.

Speaker 4 Officer Severson found Yvonne Menke lying in the stairwell.

Speaker 5 Yvonne's injuries were so grave that she was actually lying in a pool of her own blood. She appeared to have suffered severe traumatic injuries to her head.

Speaker 4 He checked for signs of life and knew that she was deceased.

Speaker 4 Deputy Dave Lindholm arrived very shortly after he found her, and together they made the call then to call for a coroner and call for additional law enforcement.

Speaker 1 Yvonne Menke, a 45-year-old mother of four on her way to work on a typical Thursday morning, had been fatally shot once in the neck and twice in the back of the head.

Speaker 4 All three appeared to be relatively at close range.

Speaker 4 The medical examiner noted the soot of the ones in the back of her head and thought that that must have been a very close range for that to have occurred with those two shots.

Speaker 5 Investigators at the scene noted that Yvonne's purse, car keys, and car all remained untouched, suggesting the motive for the attack was not a robbery.

Speaker 1 The position of her body and the trajectory of the.22 caliber bullets that killed her also revealed crucial information about the crime and possibly her killer.

Speaker 4 Her body is positioned facing back, heading up the stairs, which is unusual because she was heading down to her car.

Speaker 5 It suggested that the shooter was not behind Yvonne, but lying in wait at the bottom of the stairs. In other words, this was no chance encounter.
This was an ambush.

Speaker 1 And the close-range shots to the head made the shooter's intention clear. Yvonne's murder was premeditated and personal.

Speaker 4 The odds of it being a homicide, a stranger murder were very low. The fact that there wasn't a robbery, the fact that it wasn't a sexual assault, and the fact that it was such a personal killing.

Speaker 4 It It wasn't a person who shot her from a distance away. It was somebody within feet of her when they murdered her.

Speaker 5 Despite the cold weather, Yvonne's body temperature when police arrived confirmed her daughter's story that the attack had occurred within the hour, which meant the killer had a head start, but not a big one.

Speaker 4 Initially, what they did was call for a canine deputy to come out and assist and see if they might still be able to track the individual that Julie saw. So that canine deputy comes out to assist.

Speaker 4 He does do a track. He ends up doing a track leading up through the alley from that area where Julie saw somebody.

Speaker 4 Ultimately doesn't find a person, but he does notice a set of boot tracks leading through the snow, up through that alleyway.

Speaker 4 And then law enforcement, as they're looking around at the scene and around Yvonne's body, end up noticing that same boot print next to Yvonne's body.

Speaker 1 Footprints in the snow. I could tell you as a former cop in Florida, I can definitely say I was never that lucky.

Speaker 1 But I will say as a former canine handler myself, starting the track with a warm body and a scene that just occurred is a great start.

Speaker 4 The crime lab actually sent out a field response team to come help collect any potential evidence at the scene. They tried to take a sulfur cast of two bootprints.

Speaker 4 One was in a snow area, and they were successfully able to cast that bootprint.

Speaker 5 And if you're wondering how you use molten sulfur to cast a mold from a bootprint in the snow, you're not alone.

Speaker 4 The really neat thing about sulfur is when it hits the cold, it almost immediately starts to harden. It doesn't melt the snow.

Speaker 4 Instead, it's able to take a cast of the snow, of the bootprint that was there.

Speaker 1 The mold was an almost exact replica of the unique tread on the bottom of a size 5 snow boot. Find the boot, find the killer.

Speaker 5 Promising, but it was still not a ton to go on. And unfortunately, Yvonne's daughter was not able to offer many more details about the person she saw fleeing the scene.

Speaker 4 She did later describe that the individual was wearing a long gray coat, a scarf, and a hat. And from her angle, she thought that they were approximately 5'9.

Speaker 1 When police asked her if she could think of anyone who might have potentially had a recent ongoing conflict with her mom, she could only think of one person.

Speaker 4 The night before, actually, Yvonne had gone out with her longtime on-again, off-again boyfriend, Jack Owen.

Speaker 4 It had been Jack's birthday the night before, and he chose to spend it with Yvonne.

Speaker 4 So, when Yvonne had mentioned to Julie that she had something to tell her that morning, Julie thought it had something to do with what happened that night before when she went out with Jack.

Speaker 5 According to Yvonne's kids, Jack Owen had been the source of considerable drama and heartbreak for their mother over the years since their parents' divorce.

Speaker 1 And besides Yvonne's daughter, Julie, he was also likely the last person to see Yvonne alive before she was gunned down in cold blood.

Speaker 5 What went on between them in the hours before that ambush was a mystery that just might hold the key to solving her murder.

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Speaker 1 When 45-year-old Yvonne Menke was murdered as she left her home, her family and friends in St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin were left wondering why.

Speaker 5 But this being a tight-knit community, there were some ideas about who. According to her children, Yvonne had been romantically involved with a local man named Jack Owen for years.

Speaker 4 Jack was someone that Yvonne had known her entire life. He was also divorced, and so the two of them often had spent time together.
The children all knew Jack very well.

Speaker 4 He was at a number of different events. They had photographs of Jack being essentially part of the family as they were growing up.

Speaker 1 Jack Owen was also who Yvonne was with the night before she was killed. And according to witnesses, she had attended a birthday party for him at his father's house in nearby Eureka.

Speaker 5 But to those in the know, Jack and Yvonne's relationship was not always the picture of stability.

Speaker 5 Jack had a reputation as a playboy, and his relationship with another woman was a frequent source of friction between them.

Speaker 4 Jack was very involved with training horses and with showing horses. And during the horse season, he would break up with Yvonne and would date another individual named Mary Jo Lundsman.

Speaker 4 Mary Jo was also very much into horses. She had horses that she would show.
So Jack and Mary Jo would often show horses together and clearly also engaged in a relationship during that time as well.

Speaker 1 And anytime a homicide investigator hears love triangle, their ears are going to perk up because with infidelity comes a viper's nest of motives, including jealousy, obsession, and revenge.

Speaker 5 So obviously, investigators were keen to interview Jack to both size up and secure his alibi for the morning of Yvonne's murder.

Speaker 1 So he claimed that at 6.30 a.m. on the morning of December 12th, he was still asleep at his parents' house and didn't learn about Yvonne's death until he had visited the bank later that morning.

Speaker 1 But his reaction to the news of her murder did strike investigators as odd.

Speaker 4 He didn't have a whole lot to say about what happened. He was frankly somewhat evasive with law enforcement, but he did confirm having been with Yvonne the night before.

Speaker 5 When asked about rumors of a romantic affair with Mary Joe Luntsman, he was equally defensive.

Speaker 4 He essentially denied that he was dating them both. He would tell law enforcement that the relationship with Mary Jo was a business-only relationship.

Speaker 4 Law enforcement would ask him about it being sexual.

Speaker 4 And I think he did eventually admit that there had been a sexual component to the relationship, but he essentially denied that he was seeing both women in a romantic way.

Speaker 1 He also denied that Yvonne and Mary Jo even knew each other, let alone were romantic rivals. But Yvonne's family provided investigators with evidence to the contrary.

Speaker 4 They didn't know Mary Jo, but they knew that Mary Jo was another woman who had dated their mom's boyfriend.

Speaker 4 So there was an incident maybe a month before where Sue was actually at her mom's apartment and they were sitting around the table.

Speaker 4 And at some point, there was a knock on the apartment door and her mom went to answer the door, talked briefly with the individual.

Speaker 4 individual, and then when she came back to the table, she said, Oh, that was Mary Jo.

Speaker 4 And they had never directly talked about their mom and Jack and Mary Jo and essentially this love triangle that was going on, but they all knew about Mary Jo.

Speaker 5 And in fact, there were some of Yvonne's own friends that said the tension between her and Jack had finally come to a head.

Speaker 4 Law enforcement learned that Yvonne had actually given Jack an ultimatum. She had told him, you have to choose.

Speaker 4 It's either going to be Mary Joe or it's going to be me, but this back and forth needs to stop.

Speaker 1 Jack Owen was sticking to his alibi and his parents, they vouched for him. So next, it was clearly time for investigators to talk to the other woman in this situationship, Mary Joe Lundsman.

Speaker 4 The next day they decided to go interview Mary Jo at her workplace. She worked at the bank in the town of Luck, which was a nearby small town, small community as well.

Speaker 4 So they showed up at the bank to interview her and immediately law enforcement noticed this look. One officer described it as a, oh, you got me look.
And then Mary Jo started to cry.

Speaker 5 Safe to say, if she wasn't a person of interest before, she certainly was now. But soon enough, Mary Jo was able to compose herself and an excuse for her strange behavior.

Speaker 4 And then they went and sat down with her in the back conference room to interview her.

Speaker 4 And she explained that she had cried because she thought they were there to tell her something about her daughter, who lived about an hour away in the Twin Cities at the time.

Speaker 4 So she was able to sort of brush aside the initial response, but law enforcement still took note of that and thought it was a very unusual response to seeing two law enforcement officers come in the day after Yvonne had been murdered.

Speaker 1 And so investigators press Mary Jo about what she knew about Yvonne and whether there was any animosity between them.

Speaker 4 She admits that she knows who Yvonne is. She denies, however, that she's ever really met Yvonne.
She denies knowing what Yvonne looks like or where she lives.

Speaker 5 In that answer, it directly contradicted what Yvonne's kids had told police. Remember, her daughters had overheard Mary Jo and their mom talking at the door.

Speaker 1 When asked about their mutual friend Jack Owen, Mary Joe claimed she had ended her relationship with the horse trainer years earlier, meaning she would have had no reason to be jealous of another woman.

Speaker 4 She denied having a romantic relationship with Jack, although interestingly to me, both Mary Jo and Jack admitted that Jack had just been there a couple days before the homicide.

Speaker 4 He had stopped over apparently to pick up up some photos that Mary Joe had taken.

Speaker 4 And so the two of them hung out for a few hours, but both of them denied that there was anything romantic between the two of them.

Speaker 5 So this is a small town, and Jack Owen and Mary Joe Luntzman are both in the horse business and have known each other for years.

Speaker 5 It's not unthinkable that they would have interacted in the days before Yvonne's murder.

Speaker 5 But given the rumors about their ongoing relationship and the tension between Jack and Yvonne, it did raise suspicions that Mary Joe could be hiding something.

Speaker 1 So what about Yvonne's kids? Well, they were already convinced that Mary Joe was not just jealous, but obsessed.

Speaker 4 Both talked about how they would get phone calls. Somebody would call the residents anytime after Yvonne and Jack would leave for a date.

Speaker 4 They would get this phone call with nobody on the other end of the line.

Speaker 4 They never actually talked to whoever it was, but the suspicion was that it was Mary Jo because of the timing of it being whenever their mom and Jack would go out on a date.

Speaker 5 Which is more than a little creepy because it kind of suggests that she was either watching them or somehow knew when Jack and Yvonne had plans to go out.

Speaker 5 And according to investigators, these mysterious phone calls to Yvonne's house were backed up by phone records.

Speaker 1 Okay, so maybe Mary Jo is hiding something or just embarrassed of her affair with the boyfriend of a murdered woman. Not entirely surprising.
But what about her alibi for the morning of the murder?

Speaker 4 According to Mary Jo, she had done chores that morning at her farm with the horses and then that she had gone into town into luck where she lived for a fish delivery at about nine o'clock that morning.

Speaker 4 She had actually taken that day off of work.

Speaker 4 She told her work that she was going to do Christmas shopping, but she had no alibi that morning.

Speaker 5 So let's just talk for a beat about alibis. In this case, Mary Jo did provide details of where she was during the time of the murder.
She said she was at home doing chores.

Speaker 5 But from an investigator's perspective, a solid alibi is one that can be verified, either by a witness or even digital evidence like a cell phone ping or credit card activity.

Speaker 5 And in this case, Mary Jo provided none of that, just her word.

Speaker 1 And so for me, if I'm the detective working this investigation, I'd be questioning, could it be just a little coincidental that she just happened to be taking off the day at work when essentially she was unseen until about nine o'clock that morning?

Speaker 1 That's what I'd be asking.

Speaker 5 And on top of that, Mary Jo also admitted to police that she owned a gun that matched the caliber of the bullets that killed Yvonne.

Speaker 4 They ask her about her knowledge of guns. She admits that she owned a.22 pistol.
However, interestingly enough, she had just traded that pistol to a friend for him to sell it.

Speaker 4 And instead, she had a 22 rifle on the property that she told law enforcement she used it for shooting at dogs who come on the property.

Speaker 4 She had her horses and she was very protective of her horses and so she viewed stray dogs as being a threat to her horses.

Speaker 1 Let's go to the town where this actually happened, right? So St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin.

Speaker 1 And one of the things that immediately jumps out to me is the likelihood that practically everyone there might own some type of firearm.

Speaker 1 Now, I'll tell you from my experience in law enforcement, I know that the.22 caliber rifle is the most common in America. So that wouldn't surprise me in the least.

Speaker 1 But what really piques my interest here are those snow boots and the prints. And if I'm digging deeper, I want to find out whether she owned a pair that matched the prints left behind.

Speaker 1 at the crime scene. Those very same boots.
That kind of detail can crack a case wide open.

Speaker 4 At some point during the interview, law enforcement asked her if she had any boots. She shows them her front entry.

Speaker 4 She shows them different cowboy-style boots and other more dress boots.

Speaker 4 They ask her if she has any winter boots, and that's when she finally brings out this pair of size five Arctic Cat snowmobile boots.

Speaker 4 And investigator Smith will tell you he immediately recognized that print, the bottom of those boots, as having the same pattern as the print in the snow that was around Yvonne's body.

Speaker 5 Investigators asked Mary Jo's permission if they could collect the boots and have them analyzed.

Speaker 4 She was very reluctant, but eventually agreed for law enforcement to be able to take the boots. They did send in the boots from Mary Jo.

Speaker 4 They sent those to the crime lab to be analyzed to see if they could possibly be a match for the prints that they saw in the snow.

Speaker 4 They were analyzed, and as much as an analyst could say that they appeared to be consistent, they were almost as close as you could get.

Speaker 1 So Anna Sinka, put on your defense attorney hat. And I know that's a stretch for you, but just for a second, how bad is this for her?

Speaker 1 I mean, if the boots are a match for the prints left at the scene, this feels like game over.

Speaker 5 It's not great, but if I'm part of the defense, I'd quickly point out that Mary Jo is surely not the only person in the world that owns that particular brand of snow boots.

Speaker 5 And I'm sure the investigators in this case knew that too.

Speaker 4 Certainly, boot prints don't work the same as fingerprints, but the boots were the same size, the same tread, the same wear pattern.

Speaker 4 Unfortunately, there were no unusual characteristics to the boots, like there weren't any specific notches or different things left in the snowprint to be able to have a more specific match.

Speaker 4 But these boots were certainly consistent with the boots that had been near Yvonne's body.

Speaker 1 But, like you said, while this is decent circumstantial evidence, it is not definitive.

Speaker 1 After all, this is Wisconsin and snow boots in the wintertime is as common as a hot cup of coffee in the morning.

Speaker 5 But as Holly pointed out, there was another way they could narrow that down because remember, those prints, they were really, really small.

Speaker 4 I'm like, you guys, size five boot? Size five is tiny. My nine-year-old son can't fit into a size five women's boot.
And law enforcement back then, I think, understood that.

Speaker 4 They had reached out to Arctic Cat. They had talked to an individual who was very familiar with how many of those kind of boots were sold.

Speaker 4 There were about 1,100 of that size boot that were even in circulation at that time.

Speaker 4 And then when you narrow that down to how many are in this area and how many would happen to be at the crime scene, the odds of that size five boot, and quite frankly, most of those are going to be children wearing that size of boot at that time.

Speaker 4 There just aren't that many people that would wear that size of boot and then would also have a motive for killing Yvonne.

Speaker 1 Unsurprisingly, Mary Jo was sticking to her story.

Speaker 4 She denied that those could have been her boot prints. She indicated it had to have been from someone else, that she hadn't been in the area.
She denied even being in St. Croix Falls anytime recently.

Speaker 5 But as the investigation went on, Yvonne's family became more and more convinced that Mary Jo must have had something to do with this homicide.

Speaker 5 And all those calls and rumors that once seemed harmless, they now seemed more like warning signs of a coming disaster.

Speaker 1 So one call in particular that Yvonne's daughter Julie had answered at the apartment now felt eerily relevant to the investigation.

Speaker 4 Whether it was the day before or maybe a few days before, but Julie let law enforcement know that

Speaker 4 she had received a call in the morning at about seven in the morning. At the time, the individual had what Julie described as being sort of a raspy voice.
It was a female.

Speaker 4 At that time, Julie thought that it was the owner of the bar that her mom sometimes worked at and didn't think a lot about it. But the person asked if her mom was there.

Speaker 4 She said, no, she's left for work.

Speaker 4 The person asked when her mom leaves for work and not thinking anything of it, Julie gave information to the caller about when her mom normally leaves for work, had the impression that the person was going to try back the next day and try and reach her mom earlier.

Speaker 1 Given what had happened to her mom, Julie could not help but think that she had mistakenly given crucial information about her mother's routine to the very person who killed her.

Speaker 4 So that caller in Julie's mind was the murderer and Julie had given them the information to be able to murder her mom that morning.

Speaker 5 Julie thought the call sounded like it came from a payphone, another bit of lost technology from the past. But unfortunately, that would make tracing the call in 1985 nearly impossible.

Speaker 4 So law enforcement did look at phone records for some payphones in the area. They didn't find a corresponding phone call.
So they weren't able to track exactly what payphone that call came from.

Speaker 1 The circumstantial evidence pointing at Mary Jo Lundsman as Yvonne's killer was certainly there. She had a motive.

Speaker 1 She had no alibi for the morning of the murder and she owned a pair of boots that matched the prints at the scene. But investigators in St.
Croix Falls, they wanted more.

Speaker 1 They wanted the murder weapon.

Speaker 4 So law enforcement did collect any and every firearm that they could get their hands on. They collected the 22 pistol that Mary Jo had owned.

Speaker 4 They collected the 22 rifle that Mary Jo had in her possession. They collected every firearm of Mary Joe's brother, of every firearm that they could locate, of Mary Joe's son-in-law.

Speaker 4 Pretty much anyone who had a connection to Mary Jo, they collected firearms from and sent those all in. Unfortunately, none of them were a match for the bullets.

Speaker 4 They were not able to find the firearm.

Speaker 5 And unfortunately, that singular focus on finding the murder weapon, it had a devastating impact on the investigation.

Speaker 4 Unfortunately, it stalls. They were focused on trying to find the murder weapon.
And when they weren't able to find the murder weapon, the case basically went cold.

Speaker 1 Which goes to show, once again, suspecting you know who killed someone and proving it in court are two different animals.

Speaker 5 And without the gun or a witness who could ID, not to mention DNA or other strong physical evidence, prosecutors in 1985 were just not convinced that they had enough to charge Mary Jo Lundsman with Yvonne's murder.

Speaker 1 Investigators in St. Croix Falls continued to receive tips over the years, and plenty of suspicion continued to swirl around Mary Jo Lundsman.

Speaker 4 Every time they would have a firearm come in, they would send it to the lab to see if it happens to be a match. It was never a match.

Speaker 5 Despite their persistence in urging law enforcement to keep working on their mom's case and their strong suspicions that they knew who killed her, Yvonne's children were forced to carry on with their lives, knowing their mother's killer had gone unpunished.

Speaker 4 Years go by and Yvonne's kids would have to occasionally see Mary Jo in the community and frankly know that she murdered their mom, but not be able to do anything about it.

Speaker 4 But there was never anything else that happened. There was never any sort of concrete information that came forward to be able to move the case along any further.

Speaker 1 Yvonne's children faced an agonizing reality, one that many survivors do when their loved ones' murder goes cold. They had to move on.

Speaker 5 At least in their day-to-day, as best they could. But the loss of their mom and the unresolved questions surrounding her murder would have a deep and lasting impact on their family.

Speaker 4 Their mom was murdered. You know, she's the connecting piece.
When you take the mom out of the picture, you take out that sort of natural opportunity for people to get together at moms.

Speaker 4 And so it had a disjointing effect on the family. You know, they all still clearly cared about each other.

Speaker 4 It's one of those impacts you don't really think about or realize when you're looking at a case like this, just how much impact that has on a family when somebody's killed.

Speaker 1 But here's the interesting thing about the evidence in Yvonne's case: it wasn't going anywhere. And 38 years later, it was primed to come back in a very big way.

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Speaker 5 For nearly 40 years, the 1985 unsolved murder of Yvonne Menke hung like a dark cloud over St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin, and Yvonne's family.

Speaker 4 I believe they knew about the bootprint. I think everybody knew about the bootprint.
And then I think everyone thought that that was enough to say that Mary Jo was the one that did it.

Speaker 4 But prosecutors didn't think that that was enough.

Speaker 1 But as we know, times change, and so do prosecutors. And with a changing of the guard at both the sheriff's office and the DA, the Menke murder was granted another look.

Speaker 4 So in 2020, the sheriff's office decided to assign one of their investigators specifically to look at cold cases.

Speaker 4 And so investigator Andrew Vitalis had been looking at this case and he and former district attorney Mark Biller, who was consulting for the sheriff's office, decided to try to give it a more open look.

Speaker 5 Incredibly, Mary Jo Luntzman was still living in the area. So imagine Mary Jo Luntzman's surprise when investigators phoned her at home.
Here's a portion of that call.

Speaker 4 They made it clear to her, we're trying to give this an open look. We think law enforcement may have honed in on you too quickly.

Speaker 4 We're just trying to gather information and make sure that we're looking at all possible avenues of investigation.

Speaker 1 This is a classic technique by investigators to hopefully get their person of interest to drop their guard. Something like, hey, we're here to just cross some T's and dot some I's,

Speaker 1 get your name cleared, and maybe you'd be willing to talk to us and sort of help us out here.

Speaker 5 And you never know, right? Shake the tree and see if anything new falls out. But it was clear that the now 80-year-old Mary Jo was not ready to change her tune.

Speaker 6 Well, I'll just ask it. So what was your relationship back then with Yvonne? Was there a relationship or what was your interactions with her I had never really met her

Speaker 4 of most significance was what she didn't give

Speaker 4 well first of all she acted almost like she didn't know who Yvonne Menke was she did not want to say Yvonne's name she really acted like she didn't understand why law enforcement ever looked at her as a person of interest to begin with so she definitely gave cues to law enforcement to think that that she was perhaps hiding something.

Speaker 6 Do you remember law enforcement ever talking to you about a boot, like a type of boot that you had back then?

Speaker 7 No, I don't remember.

Speaker 1 Her answers were often vague and inconsistent. In one interview with investigators, she claimed to not know that Yvonne had children.
In the next, she knew their names.

Speaker 4 There was, I think, one time that she actually referenced Yvonne by name and she called her Vonnie. And that was weird because that was a nickname that the family used.

Speaker 4 We never once called her Vonnie. We called her Yvonne.
So to have Mary Jo say Vonnie was just very, very strange to me.

Speaker 5 Once again, she denied being near Yvonne's apartment on the day of the murder.

Speaker 5 But she couldn't explain the matching footprints or her sudden decision to take a vacation day on the same morning of the murder.

Speaker 1 The part of the conversation I found most fascinating was when she admitted that a few years after Yvonne's murder, she bought a new car and chose some personalized license plates that attracted quite a bit of attention around town.

Speaker 6 So there was a rumor at some point that you actually

Speaker 6 had license plates on your car that were like the Widowmaker or some personalized license plate on your car.

Speaker 7 Is there any truth? Well yeah, that was about 10 years later. Yeah.
I bought a little black Mitsubishi TKS spider, and I put the light and blade Black Liddle.

Speaker 6 Black, that's what it was, Black Widow. That's my car.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I named my car the Black Widow.

Speaker 5 She called her car the Black Widow. At best, a tasteless joke by a known person of interest in a murder.
At worst, a cruel taunt to police and Yvonne's family.

Speaker 4 We recollected that.22 caliber pistol that Mary Jo had because she still had it. She actually had it hanging on her wall when law enforcement went down to talk to her.

Speaker 4 So they recollected that at one point to send back in, but unfortunately the bullets had started to corrode and it just, there wasn't anything they were able to compare to at that point.

Speaker 1 So far, the fresh look at Yvonne's case was just yielding old answers, but a closer look at items still being held as evidence turned up a clue that the original investigators had missed.

Speaker 5 Yvonne's purse had been collected from the crime scene, but one thing they hadn't noticed in 1985 was a note folded inside that bore the initials MJ and the cryptic phrase, quote, touch of class, in Yvonne's handwriting.

Speaker 4 They learned that touch of class was actually written on a bug shield of the truck that Mary Jo drove around.

Speaker 1 A bug shield is yet another relic from the 80s, but it was a strip of tinted plastic people would attach to their car or truck to help deflect bugs from splattering their hoods and their windshields.

Speaker 1 Whether that added a touch of class to your pickup was really a matter of opinion.

Speaker 5 But more importantly, why would Yvonne have written this information down? Maybe she thought she was being followed or had felt threatened by someone driving a truck with that distinctive message.

Speaker 4 So it was of importance to Yvonne to have written down this touch of class on a piece of paper that she kept in her purse. Perhaps it was a truck that she had seen around town.

Speaker 4 They weren't real sure why she had written it down, but it was inside of her purse.

Speaker 1 In fact, when running down this lead on Mary Jo's truck, investigators found more evidence that she had been harassing Yvonne in the weeks leading up to the murder.

Speaker 4 There was another witness, Helen Vere was her name, who was a friend of Jack's.

Speaker 4 She had talked about how there was a different time where she had been driving through town in the middle of the night and noticed Mary Jo's vehicle out in front of Yvonne's apartment.

Speaker 4 And it was when Jack was there. So there was definitely a stalking behavior that was happening by Mary Joe toward Jack and Yvonne.

Speaker 5 There was still no murder weapon, but the case was looking even more convincing than it did back in 1985, especially to the new prosecutor assigned to the case.

Speaker 4 To me, it seemed incredibly obvious. I mean, frankly, I think law enforcement solved this case back in 1985, 1986.
It was clear to me that the person that murdered Yvonne Menke was Mary Jo.

Speaker 4 And it had been 38 years, and nobody had been willing to prosecute this case. Nobody had been willing to take a chance.
And at this point, witnesses are dying. Jack Owen was dead.

Speaker 4 If we waited any longer, we weren't going to have witnesses alive to be able to prosecute it, let alone have a defendant anymore to be able to prosecute it. And this family deserved justice.

Speaker 4 They deserve to at least see the person who murdered their mom be charged, if nothing else.

Speaker 1 You know, sometimes we look back at these cold cases that sat dormant for years or even decades, and you wonder why they never just pulled the trigger, so to speak, and bring charges against your potential suspect.

Speaker 5 And I think that sometimes investigators and prosecutors are waiting for that last piece of the puzzle, that clear evidence that connects all the dots, instead of rolling the dice in court.

Speaker 5 But unfortunately, sometimes that evidence never comes. And I think that was the case here.

Speaker 4 They were waiting for the smoking gun, literally. They were waiting to find the gun and they never found the gun.

Speaker 4 And it was at a point where it's either either we try it and we lose or we never try it, but there's never justice in that. It needed to be tried.

Speaker 1 But even in 2023, the debate whether to bring charges or to go to trial was still very much alive.

Speaker 4 Investigator Vitalis had written up essentially a probable cause statement for us and asked us to review it to determine if we felt like there was enough to charge.

Speaker 4 One of my colleagues looked at it and said, I don't think there's enough there. I read over it and had a different opinion.

Speaker 4 When I looked at it, I felt that either we charged this case or it never gets charged.

Speaker 4 But it was circumstantial and it was going to be a tough case, but we were at a point, you know, 38 years later, that either the case gets charged or it never gets charged.

Speaker 5 Another important element of the decision, the approval and blessing of Yvonne's family.

Speaker 4 The other side of that was figuring out what the family wanted done. If they had wanted us to just walk away and not do anything else with it, we would have done that.

Speaker 4 So, internally, we made the decision that we were willing to prosecute it if the family wanted us to.

Speaker 1 Holly invited all four of Yvonne's children and their spouses to sit down and discuss the benefits and the risks of proceeding with the trial.

Speaker 4 I think my feelings anyway on being successful were probably 50-50 as to whether we would be successful or not.

Speaker 4 But also I think everyone felt and knew who had murdered their mom and wanted to know how they felt about whether we should proceed or not with charging it, knowing that we might lose. So

Speaker 4 it was, I think, an overwhelming opinion. Please charge it.

Speaker 4 I think every single kid felt strongly that we should charge it, that they knew who had murdered their mom, that she had been free for the last 38 years, and that at a minimum, if she's at least charged, that would give them some solace.

Speaker 5 Yvonne's youngest child, Julie, would be a star witness at the trial. She had been the primary witness on the day of the murder, and I'm betting she unfortunately felt the pressure.

Speaker 4 She was the one that had taken that phone call. She was the one living with her mom at the time.
She was the one that called it in.

Speaker 4 And ultimately, it would be her testimony testimony on which much of the prosecution would rely on it was going to be bringing up all of those memories and bringing all of that back she was wanting it prosecuted as were her siblings

Speaker 5 in 2023 mary jo bailey formerly known as mary jo lunceman was met by officers at her home in arizona we have a warrant for your arrest Okay,

Speaker 1 so we're going to have to end up arresting you and we're going to take you down to jail today, okay?

Speaker 1 Following her arrest, the 81-year-old sat for yet another interview, which, considering her long history of stonewalling, should have been a formality. But this time, she slipped.

Speaker 8 Hey, you know, there are some investigators. I think they're trying to pin something on me from

Speaker 8 that way back in, what's her name? Craig I killed, you know.

Speaker 8 Have they talked to you at all?

Speaker 8 I'm very blackmail.

Speaker 5 While in the sheriff's office waiting room, Mary Jo decided to check in with an old friend named Linda to ask if she had recently spoken to police.

Speaker 4 And Linda essentially played dumb. Law enforcement had talked to Linda, but Linda said, no, no, I haven't heard anything.

Speaker 4 And Mary Jo's response to Linda was, well, when they do talk to you, just tell them you don't remember anything.

Speaker 8 Okay, well, they want to be.

Speaker 8 Some people just don't remember, so you don't even have to get involved.

Speaker 1 Just don't remember. A clear indication that the key to her conviction could lie with her best friend.

Speaker 4 And that was huge. Why was she calling her friend somewhat out of the blue to tell law enforcement that you don't remember anything?

Speaker 5 But it turned out that Linda remembered quite a bit and she was willing to share it in court.

Speaker 4 We learned that there had been an incident where Linda was defending Mary Joe to different community members.

Speaker 4 There had been a group that had gone out on a snowmobile trip and they were talking about Mary Jo and about how she had murdered Yvonne and Linda was defending Mary Jo.

Speaker 1 But one of their mutual friends pulled Linda aside just before they left and made a confession.

Speaker 4 and said, hey, I burned some clothing, some things for Mary Jo shortly after the murder. Essentially implying that he had probably burned some clothing that Mary Jo had used for the homicide.

Speaker 5 During the trial, Holly presented new analysis of the boots, matching them to the prints of the scene, as well as the other circumstantial evidence linking Lundsman to the murder.

Speaker 5 And Lundsman's own daughter, well, she testified, and ultimately to a very interesting characterization of her mother, labeling her as fiercely protective and possessive.

Speaker 4 And I think I phrased it along the lines of, if anything or anybody came between your mom and her horses, would she take them out?

Speaker 4 And her answer was yes. She essentially acknowledged that if you get between her mom and her horses, she'll take you out.

Speaker 1 As for motive, Holly speculated that there may have been actually more than just love at stake.

Speaker 4 Part of our prosecution theory was that it was sort of a double whammy for Mary Joe.

Speaker 4 If Jack ended the relationship, it ended both the physical relationship, but it also ended the business relationship.

Speaker 4 So if Jack really chose Yvonne and if he made those intentions clear to marry Joe, now Yvonne is coming between not just this

Speaker 4 perhaps sexual, perhaps romantic relationship that she had with Jack, but also between her and her horses. Jack was the premier horse trainer in the area.

Speaker 4 And so now Yvonne's coming between that as well.

Speaker 5 And Lundman was willing to do whatever it took to eliminate what she perceived to be a threat to both her love and her livelihood.

Speaker 4 As a prosecution team, we believed that Mary Jo got up in the morning, whether she did her chores first or not, I don't know, that she went to Yvonne's apartment,

Speaker 4 went to the building probably around six in the morning, and waited in the bottom of the stairwell for Yvonne to come down those stairs.

Speaker 4 Mary Jo was likely huddled, hiding down in the corner in the stairwell when Yvonne started walking down. Mary Jo shot her.

Speaker 4 It appeared that Yvonne probably turned around to try to run away, but then fell to the ground.

Speaker 4 And Mary Jo would have walked up a couple of steps, put a couple of more shots in the back of her head, and then left.

Speaker 4 So it definitely appeared to be a very cold-blooded murder that occurred.

Speaker 1 On July 2nd, 2024, Mary Jo Lundsman Bailey was convicted of first-degree murder, and which by 1985 sentencing guidelines meant she would automatically be eligible for parole in 20 years, when she would be 101 years old.

Speaker 5 She would have plenty of time to contemplate her decisions and actions in the brutal murder of Yvonne Manke.

Speaker 5 But immediately after the verdict, it was clear that one thing she did not have was remorse.

Speaker 4 She told the bailiff when she was held back after the guilty verdict came in, she told the bailiffs, she said, well, at least now I don't have to worry about my retirement. Zero remorse.

Speaker 4 I never saw any bit of remorse from this woman.

Speaker 1 The verdict brought long-awaited justice to Yvonne's family and countless Polk County investigators and prosecutors who had worked on the case, closing a nearly 40-year-old cold case.

Speaker 4 Tears, gratitude, relief, all of it, all of it came flooding forward. Obviously, you try not to do this when you're doing a closing argument, but I gave the closing argument.

Speaker 4 And at one point, I made the mistake of looking over at Julie and I had to collect myself.

Speaker 4 It was very emotional to be able to see that relief and finally have that family be able to know that their mom's murderer is finally behind bars. It was huge.

Speaker 5 Impact on Yvonne's family was immeasurable and certainly worth the wait. But a case like this also leaves a lasting impact on a prosecutor as well.

Speaker 4 I do my job and I try to bring justice and I try to bring fairness and I try to make sure that the victims are heard. And it had a lot of impact to be able to bring justice for that family was huge.

Speaker 1 For nearly four decades, the murder of Vaban Menke left a family shattered, a community in limbo, and a case frozen in time.

Speaker 1 But justice has a way of catching up, sometimes quietly, sometimes when you least expect it.

Speaker 1 A pair of boots, a phone call, the smallest details dismissed in 1985 became the key to unlocking the truth in 2024. And at the heart of it all, jealousy, control, and a choice that turned deadly.

Speaker 1 Justice delayed? Yes, but in the end, not denied, because the past never really stays buried.

Speaker 5 Murder has many motives, never a good one. But often things things we can put a name to, jealousy, greed, anger, revenge, this one seems to capture all those.

Speaker 5 To this day, the senselessness and cruelty of homicide are things I still struggle to understand. How can one person choose to end the life of another and just not care?

Speaker 5 Yvonne Minky was a mom raising her kids, a woman forging her way in the world and a friend to many. Her daughter was waiting inside their home to see what story her mom was about to tell.

Speaker 5 And within an instant, that story and every other interaction they should have had for many years to come was over.

Speaker 5 Justice for Yvonne meant that a prosecutor had to take a chance and try a very circumstantial case. That the many years that had gone by showed that was likely never going to get any better.

Speaker 5 And that's what the Polk County DA's office in Hollywood-Webster chose to do. You weren't forgotten, Yvonne.

Speaker 5 And to the many people out there waiting for some accountability in a courtroom, let Yvonne's story be your motivation. And Yvonne, that means part of your legacy is giving hope.

Speaker 5 Tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder. Anatomy of Murder is an audio chuck original produced and created by Weinberger Media and Frasetti Frasetti Media.

Speaker 1 Ashley Flowers is executive producer.

Speaker 5 This episode was written and produced by Walker Lamond, researched by Kate Cooper, edited by Ali Sirwa and Phil Jean-Grande.

Speaker 3 So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?

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