Who Killed Mindy Morgenstern?

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Speaker 13 Tonight, on dateline.

Speaker 14 You could see her window and her light was on

Speaker 14 and her curtains were blowing.

Speaker 17 I knew she was laying up there, but there was nothing I can do.

Speaker 18 I just immediately like collapsed.

Speaker 14 Who would hurt Mindy?

Speaker 20 The outgoing, fun, caring, compassionate girl that everybody loved.

Speaker 22 We had some suspects that we were looking at.

Speaker 23 Clearly, you want to talk to those neighbors.

Speaker 22 Absolutely.

Speaker 25 I knew her in passing. I helped her out to her apartment.

Speaker 22 You have to look at Jordan, the current boyfriend. We interviewed her ex-boyfriend, Kyle.
His father was still talking to Mindy, interacting with her.

Speaker 25 I don't understand the relationship that you have with her.

Speaker 12 But an ex-boyfriend's father.

Speaker 10 That's odd.

Speaker 22 Very odd.

Speaker 27 Just a total big mystery of who this person was.

Speaker 20 Who are they after next?

Speaker 28 He thought he got away with the perfect crime.

Speaker 29 Mindy's the one that helped us catch this guy.

Speaker 30 She was not going to go down without a fight.

Speaker 12 A young college student murdered in her apartment, and the clue that cracked the case is one she left for investigators.

Speaker 31 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 4 Here's Keith Morrison with Who Killed Mindy Morgenstern.

Speaker 34 Mindy Morgenstern was the type of friend everyone needs.

Speaker 36 A good listener, generous with advice, and always willing to stand by her girlfriends.

Speaker 37 She was just always there, and you could tell her anything. She was never judging.

Speaker 39 The kind to help you out of a bind.

Speaker 43 And Mindy's friend Tony Bauman was in a fix as she sat at a bar outside of Valley City, North Dakota.

Speaker 44 It was a September night in 2006.

Speaker 34 Mindy was at home.

Speaker 6 Well, Tony was out with another friend, Danielle.

Speaker 37 We ended up going out, had a couple drinks there, had some drinks.

Speaker 8 The problem was Tony's boyfriend.

Speaker 23 He didn't like Tony out at bars with certain girlfriends, like Danielle.

Speaker 38 He liked Danielle, but we actually got into trouble.

Speaker 52 Then Tony's boyfriend called and she came up with a little cover story.

Speaker 46 I said, oh, I'm with...

Speaker 37 We're with Mindy. We're just, you know, hanging out.

Speaker 54 Mindy was the good girl, the safe friend, the college senior who lived off campus, but still followed the rules.

Speaker 37 She was a good person, knew, you know, she didn't drink a lot, she didn't do drugs.

Speaker 23 The boyfriend thought something was up, asked to speak to Mindy.

Speaker 34 So Tony and Danielle headed to Mindy's apartment.

Speaker 37 I said, Danielle, we need to let's hustle up and get to Mindy's faster so we can drag her out so she can be in the background. So she's your alibi.
She was my alibi.

Speaker 56 You're phoning her along the way.

Speaker 57 Uh-huh.

Speaker 35 And she didn't pick up.

Speaker 35 Hey, it's Mindy, and I'm not hearing right now. Hey, Mom.

Speaker 35 Hey, Mindy, you're not going. Hey, Danielle's trying to get a hold of you.

Speaker 35 I emerged.

Speaker 35 Meet you right away.

Speaker 33 When they arrived, Danielle stayed in the car.

Speaker 4 Tony went in, up the stairs to Mindy's door.

Speaker 37 For some reason, I knocked, and then I just grabbed the door handle, and it just pushed open.

Speaker 37 And I took about two, three steps in, and that's when I noticed something or something on the floor and then I looked down and I noticed it was Mindy and I saw her eyes and that's when I knew that something bad had happened.

Speaker 59 Tony came running back out and then she was screaming.

Speaker 61 Neighbors heard the commotion and pretty soon a guy from another floor came to see what was going on.

Speaker 59 I just said,

Speaker 59 could you come with me

Speaker 59 and check on my friend? And I took like two, three steps in maybe, just enough that I could see all of her. I backpedaled as fast as I could.
I remember I backpedaled till I hit the hallway wall.

Speaker 59 I think he checked for a pulse and he just said, you know, I'm sorry, friend, or I'm sorry, but your friend is gone.

Speaker 59 And I just noticed that, like,

Speaker 59 I don't know, her throat had been cut and it was obvious.

Speaker 65 It kind of so imprinted on your mind, Spokey.

Speaker 59 Yeah.

Speaker 59 Even if I lose my mind, I think I'll probably never lose that day.

Speaker 15 That day,

Speaker 55 when their their whole idea of life and how it was supposed to go collapsed,

Speaker 33 they managed to call 911.

Speaker 68 And then the phone rang at the home of Police Sergeant Dave Swenson.

Speaker 22 Dispatch called and said they're not sure exactly what they've got. The caller that called it in was really hysterical and upset.
They told me the address.

Speaker 22 and asked if I would just run over there because where I lived, I was only a block from the apartment building.

Speaker 12 One of those rare occasions where you can actually walk to a potential crime scene.

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 71 He arrived to find Tony and Danielle outside the building.

Speaker 22 The girls were pretty frantic and said she's down here and they showed us where the apartment was at.

Speaker 72 But before he'd even opened Mindy's door, he sniffed a pretty obvious clue in the air.

Speaker 22 I could smell an odor of pine salt. As soon as I went into the apartment, it was very strong.

Speaker 67 And then?

Speaker 22 And I saw her laying on her back. There was a knife that was still in her neck.
The handles broke off. There was another knife right next to her that was broke.

Speaker 60 What's it like to encounter that?

Speaker 22 But it was pretty,

Speaker 22 pretty horrific.

Speaker 24 A young woman, a college girl,

Speaker 74 dead that way.

Speaker 10 Yes.

Speaker 22 Valley City is a small community, and for me, I worked a lot of college dances, so I knew who she was. Didn't know her personally.

Speaker 12 But you had seen her before.

Speaker 10 Oh, yeah. Oh, yes.
Alive and well. Oh, yes.

Speaker 34 after all valley city is a small college town a relative dot in this great flat land where summers are brief and winters long and unforgiving and people tend to look out for each other so right away my mind changed to let's find out who did this to try to get justice for her sure yeah and her and her family Mindy's family.

Speaker 44 Almost 200 miles due west in little New Salem, North Dakota, Mindy's sister Rebecca and her husband Jason received a visitor around 11 p.m.

Speaker 35 A deputy the family had known for decades.

Speaker 41 Rebecca could see his torment.

Speaker 18 He had a not-so-good look on his face.

Speaker 78 He was a very worried look.

Speaker 18 And he said, I'm sorry to inform you, Rebecca, but

Speaker 18 Mindy's dead.

Speaker 18 And I remember I just immediately like collapsed.

Speaker 3 The deputy didn't know much except that Mindy's death was no accident.

Speaker 81 Suspicious circumstances, right? And that's all that they knew from the Valley City Police Department.

Speaker 63 But now they needed to deliver the news to Mindy's parents.

Speaker 60 Rebecca and Jason followed the deputy to the family farm.

Speaker 42 There was just no easy way to face Mindy's father, Larry, and her mother, Eunice.

Speaker 83 I said, was there a car accident? Then finally Rebecca said, Mom,

Speaker 83 that Mindy is dead.

Speaker 83 And it was just like somebody took a spear and just put it right through me. Nobody should have to go through that.

Speaker 44 No, they sure shouldn't.

Speaker 77 You would try to figure out what happened.

Speaker 84 It was kind of,

Speaker 84 I don't know, uneasy feeling not knowing exactly what happened. Why would somebody want to hurt Mindy?

Speaker 32 This little little apartment building was turning into a major crime scene.

Speaker 36 And maybe the answer to that question of why, and more importantly, who,

Speaker 35 was right there among the gathering crowds.

Speaker 8 It was late at night when Ashley Wallace got the dreadful news.

Speaker 86 And I just remember

Speaker 10 just saying no, no, no.

Speaker 27 All I could say was no.

Speaker 61 Mindy Morgenstern was her childhood best friend.

Speaker 88 They'd grown up together, enrolled in the same college.

Speaker 8 The news that Mindy was dead just couldn't be true.

Speaker 48 She headed to Mindy's apartment.

Speaker 14 I saw her curtains.

Speaker 14 We parked by her. You could see her window.

Speaker 14 And her light was on.

Speaker 14 And her curtains were blowing because the windows had been opened.

Speaker 38 And I just wanted to go in there so bad. Like, I just, I was like, is somebody trying to help her? That's what I kept thinking.
Is somebody trying to help her?

Speaker 15 God.

Speaker 38 It's like, I know she's up there and there's nothing I can do.

Speaker 89 Ashley wasn't alone outside, far from it.

Speaker 4 Within hours of Mindy's murder, college friends, work friends, and neighbors gathered outside her apartment building wanting to know what happened.

Speaker 22 The word spread so fast within 30 minutes there was a lot of people in the front yard of this apartment complex.

Speaker 34 An outpouring that was no surprise to anyone who knew her. Mindy had always been a magnetic force.

Speaker 21 She was the loud, energetic, welcoming gal.

Speaker 35 Becky Coos and Liz Klameke met Mindy freshman year at Valley City State University.

Speaker 21 She connected with everybody. She had, like, we were Mindy's friends, but Mindy also also had a hundred other friends on campus.

Speaker 38 I think Mindy knew everybody on campus within the first week.

Speaker 66 My gosh, that's a special talent. Yeah.

Speaker 20 She was a ray of sunshine.

Speaker 93 She'd been like that ever since she was a kid, growing up on the family farm with her three older siblings.

Speaker 6 Jason married her sister Rebecca when Mindy was 12.

Speaker 81 Family dinner table was a huge...

Speaker 94 deal

Speaker 81 and Mindy sat at the head of the table and would orchestrate the conversation and the laughter.

Speaker 90 She sat at the head of the table.

Speaker 23 Yep.

Speaker 67 The baby.

Speaker 38 She definitely was the center of attention.

Speaker 34 Mindy was her parents' happy angel, their youngest.

Speaker 54 Rebecca was born our biological daughter.

Speaker 84 Then we decided to adopt Michael, our son. We had them for 10 years and then we decided, well,

Speaker 84 Let's try for two more. My goodness.

Speaker 12 You're either a bear for punishment or you just love a big family, huh?

Speaker 15 Yes.

Speaker 89 First, they adopted April from Columbia.

Speaker 42 She fit right in.

Speaker 45 When they found out April had a biological little sister who needed a home, the Morgansterns welcomed Mindy, too.

Speaker 95 Do you remember Mindy coming home?

Speaker 21 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 18 She was so tiny, and she had the biggest brown eyes that I've ever seen.

Speaker 83 She giggled a lot and bounced off the walls. Very active, a little girl, liked to be outside.

Speaker 44 On the Morgensterns family farm, they milked cows, raised chickens, took in stray cats, farmed chores from dawn to dusk.

Speaker 34 Around town, April and Mindy, adopted from South America, stood out a bit, of course.

Speaker 18 I remember having to stand up to some kids on the bus one time because they were giving her and my sister a hard time, but I just put them straight.

Speaker 38 I just said, hey, she's my sister.

Speaker 55 But it turned out Mindy didn't need much help.

Speaker 60 Cheerleader, star athlete in track and basketball, clarinetist in the pep band.

Speaker 36 She even did some modeling.

Speaker 82 Ashley said Mindy's gift was making people happy.

Speaker 38 Everything was funny and fun when Mindy was around.

Speaker 46 She was like a sister to me.

Speaker 38 We could tell each other things.

Speaker 38 We both

Speaker 97 had a strong faith.

Speaker 67 Oh, yes.

Speaker 98 The other thing, the central thing about the Morgan Sterns, really, and certainly about Mindy.

Speaker 83 She knew God loved her and that he was there for her.

Speaker 84 She knew who she, her maker, was, and she was not going to let anybody tell her different.

Speaker 21 It didn't matter what was going on Sunday morning, she would wake you up and be like, come on, come to church with me.

Speaker 85 Mindy's faith came with her to college, as well as her passion for fitness.

Speaker 60 She majored in physical education.

Speaker 99 How many of you guys here exercise?

Speaker 99 Yes. You actually take time out of your busy day to exercise.

Speaker 90 She wanted to be a coach.

Speaker 68 She wanted to be a mom.

Speaker 45 But now she was gone.

Speaker 60 And it would be up to the police to figure out why.

Speaker 69 With Mindy's heartbroken friends and neighbors gathered outside the apartment building, Sergeant Swenson saw an opportunity.

Speaker 22 I started collecting statements from everybody that saw her throughout the day. The last person saw her at about 12.20 that day walking out, heading home.

Speaker 22 home and when you leave the college it takes about five minutes to get from the college to where she lives because it's a small town.

Speaker 93 So home by 1230 then Mindy missed a phone call at 1247 p.m.

Speaker 71 And then a witness reported smelling the pine salt at 1 p.m.

Speaker 40 Just half an hour.

Speaker 61 That was the window.

Speaker 88 That's when this crime took place.

Speaker 22 Everything lined up. Things were lining up and what didn't line up is why or who could have have done it.

Speaker 13 Maybe a clue was right there at the crime scene.

Speaker 12 There's picture frames with pictures removed.

Speaker 31 It makes you wonder, you know, what's this all about?

Speaker 6 Missing photos of Mindy.

Speaker 13 What did that mean?

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Speaker 36 Mindy Morgenstern's off-campus apartment was now a crime scene.

Speaker 24 This apartment is on the second floor.

Speaker 75 A little one-bedroom where, as a college senior, she lived by herself.

Speaker 44 A fact that was itself a bit remarkable.

Speaker 40 If you knew Mindy, the born extrovert.

Speaker 21 And I recall when Mindy moved off-campus into an apartment by herself, we all kind of joked.

Speaker 38 We said, What?

Speaker 80 You? Alone? Alone?

Speaker 38 Living by yourself?

Speaker 80 Mindy?

Speaker 21 Yeah, yeah, that's what she wanted.

Speaker 73 Not just what she wanted, but what she needed.

Speaker 52 During her freshman year, Mindy received a life-changing diagnosis.

Speaker 84 The doctors came in and told her they were pretty sure she had MS and to deal with it.

Speaker 43 And so she just accepted it.

Speaker 21 She would not let it bring her down.

Speaker 16 She didn't want pity for it.

Speaker 21 She wanted to be part of the clinical trials.

Speaker 92 They don't have a cure for this and I'm going to be part of this clinical trial.

Speaker 21 So someday I can help somebody else.

Speaker 88 The trial meant Mindy had to get infusions of an experimental drug.

Speaker 77 She moved to the apartment for her health.

Speaker 102 Did she feel safe in that apartment of hers?

Speaker 84 Yes, she did. She did because she said there's a couple police officers that live around the building.

Speaker 44 A correctional officer lived in the building too with his wife, Chrissy.

Speaker 73 And on the night of Mindy's murder, they, of course, noticed the police lights outside their window.

Speaker 79 He went out to kind of see what was going on and came back in and said that somebody had been killed. I went into sheer panic.

Speaker 4 Chrissy and her daughter and husband left right away for her parents' house.

Speaker 79 My husband, he kind of just wrapped me up in his arms and we laid there. I didn't sleep a wink.

Speaker 60 It was going to be a long night for the officers at the crime scene, too.

Speaker 9 Sergeant Swenson, who'd responded to the 911 call, knew his department was going to need help.

Speaker 88 His boss phoned the state's investigative unit.

Speaker 22 They called BCI, which is the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, to assist us with this because this is what they do.

Speaker 72 Specifically, what Mark Saylor, now a retired BCI agent, did.

Speaker 52 So, what did you think when you got there?

Speaker 94 I could certainly see why they called me.

Speaker 42 Mindy's death was cold-blooded, overkill.

Speaker 94 What really caught my focus right away, I guess, would be the the

Speaker 69 two knives.

Speaker 94 There was also a belt wrapped around the neck.

Speaker 40 The killer left one final touch.

Speaker 36 That pinesol Sergeant Swenson smelled.

Speaker 44 Mindy was doused in it.

Speaker 94 The pinesol bottle was laying in the crook of the arm of Mindy Morgenstrand.

Speaker 77 Was it to deface?

Speaker 94 the body or was it to

Speaker 94 destroy any evidence that would have been left there?

Speaker 12 And you have to figure out what to do and where to go next.

Speaker 94 Well, first thing I did was realize that I was going to need some more help.

Speaker 75 Sometimes the backup needs backup of their own.

Speaker 73 Agent Saylor called Arnie Rummel and Cal Dupree, two BCI agents who were often paired up on the difficult cases.

Speaker 100 Yeah, Arnie was a crime scene guy and I was a stand-up knock-on doors guy, so it worked out.

Speaker 87 Yeah.

Speaker 35 They couldn't help but notice Mindy was fully dressed, so this crime didn't seem like a sexual attack or a robbery.

Speaker 39 Her purse, wallet, and cell phone were right next to her body.

Speaker 100 Arnie was doing most of the real close analysis. He noticed that there was tissue in Mindy's fingernails and made the statement that this is going to end up being a forensic DNA case.

Speaker 29 Whatever it was, we were going to find out what it was.

Speaker 42 They wrapped Mindy's hands in evidence bags, said a prayer there'd be a shred of usable DNA,

Speaker 90 sent her body off to the ME for a full autopsy.

Speaker 6 And then investigators scanned Mindy's apartment and saw something.

Speaker 93 A bit surprising for a young college student.

Speaker 67 Notes stuck up on the walls.

Speaker 35 A particular kind of notes.

Speaker 94 There were notes around the apartment relating to

Speaker 94 God and how she wanted to be a good person. And Mindy, you are a child of God, just notes to herself, confirming a certain religious belief as well.

Speaker 80 Yes.

Speaker 87 They also noticed picture frames, several of them, with the photos removed.

Speaker 77 When you saw those pictures out there, did you connect?

Speaker 107 Maybe that had something to do with it.

Speaker 29 We did think about that.

Speaker 108 We had talked about it.

Speaker 69 You know, is it somebody that thinks, you know, she's beautiful and I need pictures of her and ended up taking pictures of her.

Speaker 41 Perhaps this aspect of the crime scene pointed to

Speaker 74 obsession?

Speaker 88 It was close to dawn when Agent Saylor left the scene.

Speaker 44 He called in colleagues from across the state to conduct interviews.

Speaker 34 Tony and Danielle, the friends who found Mindy's body, had given statements to police at the scene.

Speaker 37 I was just trying to think and process and trying to write down word for word what I could remember because I was like, well, I can't, I don't want to say something wrong or mess this up.

Speaker 71 You were kind of in a fog.

Speaker 37 Yeah, I was kind of staring off at the apartment building, like, what happened?

Speaker 52 And investigators wanted to speak to another witness.

Speaker 35 That neighbor who'd gone into Mindy's apartment with Danielle.

Speaker 25 How'd you have to do, Robert? Good afternoon.

Speaker 34 His name was Robert Linz.

Speaker 60 He went down to the station to give his statement to Cal Dupree and another investigator.

Speaker 39 They recorded it.

Speaker 85 Matter of routine.

Speaker 25 You know, until we get to the bottom of this, everybody, we're looking soon. I bet you are, and I understand that everybody's looking a little harder at me, probably.

Speaker 33 They certainly would be.

Speaker 25 Your hats are really cut up and stuff is.

Speaker 73 How would he explain what investigators could see with their own eyes?

Speaker 25 Just have a few questions, Robert.

Speaker 85 Investigators were speaking to one of Mindy Morgan Stern's neighbors, Robert Lins, the man who went into Mindy's apartment with her friend, Danielle.

Speaker 59 I personally think he's a good person because he came with me.

Speaker 95 I mean, you have to eliminate everybody.

Speaker 59 Yeah, they did.

Speaker 4 By his own account, Robert looked out of place in Valley City.

Speaker 25 Yeah, Apache looked different than everybody around here now. Not a farmer.

Speaker 71 No, he was a Southern California transplant who'd blown into town a few months before Mindy's murder. In that short time, though, he said Mindy had left an impression.

Speaker 25 I knew her in passing, seen her every day, you know, okay, she was always friendly, and when she walked by, you felt her spirit. You know, you felt like, hey, that's a good person.

Speaker 77 And yet, here at the police station telling his story, neighbor Robert turned from eyewitness to

Speaker 69 person of interest.

Speaker 25 And when I touched her arm, I touched touched her like this.

Speaker 100 He said he touched her with the back of his hand to feel for pulse.

Speaker 80 Why?

Speaker 100 He'd said he had a criminal history in

Speaker 100 California and that he knew that he'd probably be looked at as a possible suspect.

Speaker 25 Yeah, I did time,

Speaker 25 prison time in California now.

Speaker 25 How much did you know? My original sentence was two years and eight months.

Speaker 49 Robert explained what had landed him behind bars.

Speaker 25 Oh, I got pods. Let's see.
With a stolen car,

Speaker 48 A man with a record who was concerned about fingerprints?

Speaker 88 That was interesting.

Speaker 47 Investigators needed to know where he was in that pivotal window of time from 12:30 to 1 p.m.

Speaker 25 I was at work.

Speaker 25 I wasn't anything out of the ordinary on my go-day work. Do you work all day then? Yeah.

Speaker 25 You. Well, I take a lunch break.
What time do you usually get your lunch break? I get my lunch on the

Speaker 25 day

Speaker 25 and I can take up to an hour but I usually

Speaker 25 almost every talk every day I have to take a plane for a time in your lunch.

Speaker 32 Robert kept talking and Agent Dupree kept looking.

Speaker 100 He had some

Speaker 82 cuts,

Speaker 100 scratches on his hands.

Speaker 25 Your hands are really cut up and stuff. Is that normal from work? Yeah, this is an everyday thing.
Same

Speaker 25 having steel and stuff. Yeah, all day long steel.

Speaker 25 i get cut pretty dad like constantly we all do what about your finger there what type of areas do you got i think you got a band-aid on it yeah i cut i cut it today right along here on a piece of steel did robert get those cuts at his job at a steel manufacturing plant or while stabbing mindy would you be willing to submit um

Speaker 25 some cheek swabs for dna preparation sure we're doing that with whatever absolutely absolutely Fingerprints, wild, whatever you want.

Speaker 102 So at the end of the interview, he's walking away from you.

Speaker 74 What were you thinking?

Speaker 100 I'm thinking, I'm going to

Speaker 100 really have to check this guy's alibi out. He was definitely a person of interest, I think.

Speaker 107 First male around. Yeah.

Speaker 100 Stranger to the area.

Speaker 43 But investigators had other avenues to pursue as well.

Speaker 52 One by one, they talked to Mindy's friends.

Speaker 41 An agent drove to New Salem, where her parents and siblings had gathered.

Speaker 67 Mindy's mom, Eunice, was shattered, tormented by a thought.

Speaker 73 Could she have saved her daughter?

Speaker 63 She had planned to visit Mindy the very day it happened, but at the last minute decided not to go.

Speaker 26 You know, I talked to her the night before and she said, it's okay if you don't come, mom. I know you're tired and we had some things going on at home.

Speaker 6 She wrestled with guilt.

Speaker 110 I really felt like I should be there and protect her.

Speaker 110 And I wasn't there when she needed me.

Speaker 26 And I had to really work through that.

Speaker 26 I just wanted to change it. I wanted to go back and make it different.

Speaker 74 You need a rewind tape or something.

Speaker 65 Yeah.

Speaker 26 I wanted to rescue her.

Speaker 107 Still, investigators had to know if they had any ideas who might have done this to Mindy.

Speaker 30 I mean, she didn't have really any enemies, and so it just was hard to comprehend that somebody would want to take her out, you know.

Speaker 35 But there was this one thing the family had heard about.

Speaker 60 Just weeks before the murder, Mindy had a scary encounter, and she called her old friend Ashley in hysterics.

Speaker 86 I was saying, what's wrong? What's going on? Are you okay? And she was so beside herself. She was saying, somebody was trying to take me.
Somebody's trying to take me. And I'm like, what?

Speaker 8 Mindy was outside her apartment when it happened.

Speaker 52 A man in a blue car, she said, rolled down his window, asked her for directions.

Speaker 40 And then.

Speaker 86 The person put the car in park and got out of the car and was running towards her. So she ran back in the building.

Speaker 90 She was freaked out.

Speaker 81 I remember Eunice telling her, just relax. If you need to, call 911.
You know, make sure you get a good description and, you know, call the police.

Speaker 90 Mindy did file a police report.

Speaker 71 But back then, people in her life didn't know exactly what to make of it.

Speaker 53 As outgoing as Mindy was, her college friend said, she also spooked easily.

Speaker 38 We used to joke that Mindy was scared of her own shadow.

Speaker 60 It's an interesting combination, isn't it?

Speaker 95 Very outgoing, very bubbly, and yet timid at the same time.

Speaker 21 Exactly, very timid at the same time.

Speaker 81 I remember thinking, oh, Mindy, you're being silly, you know, you know, just you're going to be okay.

Speaker 102 She had a way of of dramatizing things, yeah,

Speaker 81 that seemed like she, I guess, I thought she was over-dramatizing it.

Speaker 49 But now that she was dead, investigators would look hard for that stranger in the blue car.

Speaker 88 Well, at the same time, they needed to get to know the people closest to Mindy's circle, people who loved her and people she loved.

Speaker 12 Just not at the same time,

Speaker 88 or maybe in the same way.

Speaker 88 It's complicated, love is,

Speaker 4 especially in a murder investigation.

Speaker 6 Time to talk to the boyfriends.

Speaker 25 I'll just play your last name again, Joe. Random RANUM.

Speaker 48 We appreciate you coming over here and helping us out and keep

Speaker 25 on.

Speaker 34 It all but did them in in, the loss of their Mindy.

Speaker 32 Over and over, Larry and Eunice Morgenstern replayed the last time they'd seen their daughter on her recent visit home.

Speaker 43 And then, as she set out to return to college.

Speaker 84 Normally, we say, you know, goodbye and watch her drive down the road. And she drove down the road, and all of a sudden the car stopped, and she backed up again.

Speaker 84 And she came running back and she gave me a hug.

Speaker 77 And she said, Dan, I love you.

Speaker 84 And she had never done that before. And that was the last time we seen her.

Speaker 66 Oh, my gosh.

Speaker 84 Something was

Speaker 84 working behind the scene that something was going to happen. And we didn't know what it was, and she didn't either.

Speaker 33 He hangs on to it even now.

Speaker 34 The moment is real as if it happened this very morning.

Speaker 9 But back then, back on the awful day Eunice and Larry learned of her death, Investigators were just beginning to wrestle with the questions: who did that to her?

Speaker 67 And why?

Speaker 94 Anybody that we thought knew her her much at all,

Speaker 94 we wanted to interview.

Speaker 53 Like Mindy's boyfriends.

Speaker 12 What's the importance of boyfriends in a situation like this?

Speaker 100 A lot of these type of cases, it's usually somebody that knows the victim pretty well and you always look at the boyfriend or a close friend or ex-boyfriend as persons of interest.

Speaker 33 Mindy's boyfriend at the time of her murder was from a local farming family, Jordan Ranham.

Speaker 55 They'd been together for over a year.

Speaker 34 Soft-spoken, clean-cut, Jordan zipped around town in a brand new Corvette and his life, just like Mindy's, revolved around his faith.

Speaker 100 Went to the same church as Mindy. I think that's where they met was at church.
Pretty good kid. No, as far as I know, he had no criminal record or criminal history of any kind.

Speaker 49 Jordan seemed completely devoted to Mindy.

Speaker 40 He chauffeured her everywhere, often took her home to spend time with his family.

Speaker 20 He's a wonderful guy.

Speaker 21 Mindy was very outgoing, always had to be doing something, and Jordan was not that way, but he supported her and loved her so much.

Speaker 41 Maybe more than she loved him.

Speaker 4 What did you find out about the nature of that relationship?

Speaker 100 I think there were a few witnesses that indicated that he thought there was a lot more to the relationship than she did.

Speaker 90 So, a relationship out of balance?

Speaker 1 Wouldn't be the first time such a thing became a motive for murder.

Speaker 90 Mindy's brother-in-law, Jason, had his own opinions. He thought Jordan had a jealous streak.

Speaker 8 It was a bit controlling.

Speaker 56 Did you have ideas early on about who might have done this to her?

Speaker 81 I felt like it was the jealous boyfriend.

Speaker 43 Was Jordan particularly possessive?

Speaker 81 In my opinion, yes. There were times when she'd come out to visit the farm.
He would show up unannounced and want to

Speaker 81 have her leave and go with him and she literally had to tell him to leave us alone.

Speaker 35 Jordan came in for an interview.

Speaker 9 Investigators said he seemed eager to help them.

Speaker 25 We want to talk to you about the night before and then take us right through the day, okay? Okay. We went out to stop and go.
We got something to drink, we rented a movie. Next morning she woke up.

Speaker 25 She called me at exactly 1045.

Speaker 107 Jordan said they only spoke once that day

Speaker 12 and that was unusual for Mindy.

Speaker 25 She called me 10 times a day

Speaker 25 And this day, she just never called back.

Speaker 35 Jordan provided his whereabouts at the time of Mindy's murder.

Speaker 72 He'd been working on the family farm.

Speaker 4 Investigators asked him for a sample of his DNA and if he'd sit for a polygraph.

Speaker 50 He agreed.

Speaker 103 On September 13th, did you physically harm Mindy and cause her death?

Speaker 94 No. He was so emotional during the whole thing that the polygraph result was

Speaker 94 as to whether he was telling the truth or not. You know, you're concentrating too much.
I don't know what I thought about that. And I won't say this was stressful.

Speaker 47 Was it guilt making him squirm? Or an all-encompassing, heart-crushing grief?

Speaker 107 Mindy's college friends, Becky and Liz, would surely have said the latter.

Speaker 74 Did you ever think that he could have had anything to do with her death?

Speaker 20 I never did. I never thought Jordan.

Speaker 21 I said no.

Speaker 59 There's no way.

Speaker 21 There was not any inkling that Jordan

Speaker 21 could have done that.

Speaker 61 Investigators told Jordan he was free to go, and he did.

Speaker 43 They just had to verify his alibi.

Speaker 35 But Jordan wasn't the only significant other.

Speaker 107 Kyle Kuznia was Mindy's ex, her boyfriend before Jordan.

Speaker 20 He was definitely the love of her life.

Speaker 21 They really connected right away.

Speaker 46 He was very popular. He was athletic.

Speaker 21 And he also was religious. He also had a strong faith, and he was your traditional boyfriend.

Speaker 48 Kyle met Mindy when she was a freshman and he was a junior.

Speaker 93 They dated for two and a half years.

Speaker 88 Kyle often went to the Morgan Stern farm with Mindy, and the family liked him, embraced him as one of their own.

Speaker 30 And he knew how to handle her, if she could be handled.

Speaker 18 He just had a really special way with

Speaker 30 dealing with her bubbly, outgoing personality.

Speaker 83 And Mindy loved him a lot. She thought she would get married to him one day.
She had her her song picked out already, can and a D and the kind of dress she wanted.

Speaker 34 Ah, but young love.

Speaker 68 There would be no wedding.

Speaker 39 More than a year before the murder, Mindy and Kyle broke up.

Speaker 69 And as breakups often do, it left raw, hard feelings in its wake.

Speaker 77 Investigators would have to look at the eggs.

Speaker 4 Of course they would.

Speaker 67 And then,

Speaker 85 well,

Speaker 34 what a bizarre direction things were about to take, leading to someone else entirely.

Speaker 112 Hey, everybody, Ted Danson here to tell you about my podcast with my longtime friend and sometimes co-host Woody Harrelson.

Speaker 112 It's called Where Everybody Knows Your Name and We're Back for Another Season.

Speaker 112 I'm so excited to be joined this season by friends like John Mulaney, David Spade, Sarah Silverman, Ed Helms, and many more.

Speaker 27 You don't want to miss it.

Speaker 112 Listen to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with me, Ted Danson, and Woody Harrison sometimes, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 114 Are you ready to get spicy?

Speaker 115 These Doritos golden sriracha aren't that spicy.

Speaker 114 Sriracha sounds pretty spicy to me.

Speaker 115 Um, a little spicy, but also tangy and sweet.

Speaker 114 Maybe it's time to turn up the heat.

Speaker 115 Or turn it down.

Speaker 115 It's time for something that's not too spicy. Try Dorito's Golden Sriracha.

Speaker 114 Spicy.

Speaker 114 But not too spicy.

Speaker 97 A mochi moment from Sadie, who writes, I'm not crying, you're crying.

Speaker 97 This is what I said during my first appointment with my physician at Mochi, because I didn't have to convince him I needed a GLP-1. He understood, and I felt supported, not judged.

Speaker 97 I came for the weight loss and stayed for the empathy.

Speaker 38 Thanks, Sadie.

Speaker 97 I'm Myra Ammeth, founder of Mochi Health. To find your Mochi moment, visit joinmochi.com.

Speaker 116 Mochi members have access to licensed physicians and nutritionists and are compensated for their stories. Results may vary.

Speaker 9 In one terrible day, this once safe, tranquil college town changed.

Speaker 86 It was like my life stopped. I couldn't go anywhere and do anything because I had such bad anxiety.

Speaker 21 If you weren't safe in Valley City, North Dakota, you're not safe anywhere.

Speaker 38 And Mindy, of all people, who would hurt Mindy?

Speaker 20 Like the outgoing, fun, caring, compassionate

Speaker 21 girl that everybody loved.

Speaker 90 Hunkered down in Valley City's little police department, investigators were working hard to quell all that fear.

Speaker 48 We appreciate you coming over here.

Speaker 71 They were talking to Mindy's ex, the man she thought of as the love of her life, Kyle Kuznia.

Speaker 9 They asked for DNA and fingerprints.

Speaker 25 You have good teeth. Well, thank you.

Speaker 9 Kyle told them the story, a story anyway, about his life with Mindy.

Speaker 44 They got to know each other, he said, homecoming weekend of 2002.

Speaker 25 I was, I guess, crowned homecoming king, and after that, we just had pizza and just kind of hung out, I guess, for a couple hours. And it just kind of progressed from there.

Speaker 87 The relationship lasted two and a half years, and Kyle described it as

Speaker 67 up and down.

Speaker 25 It was, I guess, really hard and kind of a rocky relationship. It seemed like we were always arguing.

Speaker 34 It didn't help when Kyle graduated and moved about an hour away.

Speaker 50 It wasn't very far, but...

Speaker 25 She was always worried about me finding another girl or female down in Fargo. And I said, you know, it's not going to happen.
I said, said it's you know obviously we're together.

Speaker 98 Still,

Speaker 52 you said dating long distance was difficult.

Speaker 42 There was work, school, other friends, other guys around Mindy, all competing for her attention.

Speaker 53 The relationship did not survive.

Speaker 25 I said it just, I don't think it's working.

Speaker 85 And Mindy?

Speaker 21 Mindy was brokenhearted and Mindy wanted to do everything she could to make things right in the relationship.

Speaker 3 She wanted to get him back.

Speaker 21 She realized they were young and she always loved Kyle.

Speaker 81 She kept saying, Jay, how can I get Kyle back? You know, he's the love of my life and, you know, what can I do?

Speaker 10 And

Speaker 81 she wanted to talk about that, but also about, you know, being trusting that God had a plan.

Speaker 35 Kyle moved on, met someone else, said he didn't talk to Mindy anymore. Except one night about seven months before she was murdered, he said, she came by his place, wanted to talk.

Speaker 34 He wanted her to leave.

Speaker 25 I said, I don't have anything to say to you. I said, please leave.
And so finally

Speaker 25 she left crying that night.

Speaker 88 Sounded kind of ugly, sort of thing that gets a homicide detective's attention.

Speaker 33 But sitting there in the interview room days after the murder, Kyle seemed to regret how he acted.

Speaker 25 Now looking back,

Speaker 25 I feel a little bad that maybe I could have handled it a little different, I guess, as far as maybe just letting her talk, but, you know, I just didn't know personally what, I mean,

Speaker 25 what else to do other than just

Speaker 25 say leave.

Speaker 94 So. Have you had any other contact with her since then?

Speaker 25 No,

Speaker 25 that was the last time I ever talked to her.

Speaker 41 But now, this was interesting.

Speaker 88 Kyle told them that Mindy had stayed in touch with someone very close to him.

Speaker 6 His father, Rodney.

Speaker 25 Like, him and her would continue to talk and he'd call me and say, you know, well, Mindy's, you know, this is going on or this is going on.

Speaker 94 Kyle Kuznio's father, Rodney, maintained contact with Mindy and would call her on the phone constantly, would come and visit her.

Speaker 35 How often did he call her?

Speaker 94 Mindy's friend said that he would call several times a day.

Speaker 94 And then, you know, sometime later, it maybe scaled back to, you know, several times a week.

Speaker 94 but never really, never really quit.

Speaker 35 Kind of creepy.

Speaker 89 Kind of creepy.

Speaker 55 That's a creeper.

Speaker 94 Yeah.

Speaker 82 Kyle told investigators he thought his dad was too attached to Mindy.

Speaker 25 I even asked my dad. I said, I would appreciate it.
I said, if you guys would stop talking, I said, what is it? I said, I don't know what it's going to take for you guys to stop talking.

Speaker 67 Then Kyle told investigators his mother found out about all those calls and was alarmed.

Speaker 25 She was obviously very upset with it. And she even said that that's wrong because obviously he's married and he's, you know, talking to this other young gal.

Speaker 21 And I i said yeah i i truly agree i think it's wrong too mom the nature of rodney's friendship with mindy was a puzzle was this a father-daughter thing she genuinely liked the family kyle's dad rodney was just like a father figure to her it was odd i can't say what his intention was but i know for mindy that's all it was

Speaker 21 was a way to keep somewhat connected to Kyle.

Speaker 44 So how would this much older man explain what investigators thought looked like an obsession with the young college student?

Speaker 61 Did you bring him in?

Speaker 22 Yes, the investigators did bring him in.

Speaker 90 What he had to say:

Speaker 53 stranger and stranger.

Speaker 25 I'm sorry it didn't happen that way. It happened to you.

Speaker 25 Oh, God.

Speaker 69 In the days after Mindy's murder, investigators talked to neighbors and men she dated.

Speaker 32 They looked into her friendships.

Speaker 88 Now they had their antenna up about Rodney Kuznia, Mindy's ex-boyfriend's father.

Speaker 12 They brought him in for questioning.

Speaker 12 Make yourself feel comfortable?

Speaker 69 Chris Tarters, the obvious question, why was he so attached to his son's 22-year-old ex-girlfriend?

Speaker 25 I don't understand the relationship that you have with her after your son broke up on the United States. Well, you'd have to know Mindy.
She was

Speaker 25 quite the bubbly character. I mean her

Speaker 25 actions that are

Speaker 25 well put as well. She reminded me so much of my wife in her younger days.
In the beginning there wasn't much. There was no big deal.

Speaker 25 Once a week maybe we'd chat a little bit or because it's hard to catch her, it was hard to catch her at home because she had an answer machine.

Speaker 93 Rodney said at first he and Mindy usually talked about Kyle.

Speaker 25 She always, you know, brought up my son's name and was wondering if he was still

Speaker 25 the chances of them getting back together again were still good or not.

Speaker 88 But soon they talked and texted all the time, but all kinds of things.

Speaker 88 They didn't stop even after his wife found out.

Speaker 61 Rodney remembered that differently from Kyle.

Speaker 25 She didn't care? No, it was not good.

Speaker 25 I told her, I said, it's a friend. I said, I need a friend.
I said, here, take a friend away from me, too.

Speaker 25 And I think even my son, Kyle, understood, because he knew how to talk to me. He said, you were still off to me.
I said, yes.

Speaker 25 You felt it was important to talk to her. It was okay.

Speaker 106 Friendship?

Speaker 5 Father figure?

Speaker 67 What?

Speaker 90 Rodney said he tried to pull away from Mindy, but it was complicated.

Speaker 25 She knew it was like a father-daughter relationship deal, but yet she wanted to stop too.

Speaker 25 And I just couldn't let her go. I said, Do you want me to quit calling you? And she goes, no, no, no, no, don't do that.

Speaker 25 So that's, if she would have said, yeah, I would have let her let her go.

Speaker 25 But she never did say anything.

Speaker 25 There's a lot of things I'm telling you guys here that my wife would probably divorce and

Speaker 25 hurt me.

Speaker 25 That she would find out.

Speaker 40 What did that mean?

Speaker 77 Investigators kept him talking.

Speaker 40 Rodney revealed he met Mindy for meals.

Speaker 44 And just before she was murdered, he gave her $100.

Speaker 25 She was supposed to be flying down to her brother's wedding in Washington.

Speaker 40 Short money.

Speaker 107 She didn't want to accept it.

Speaker 25 And I said, well, if you don't accept it, I said, I'll go.

Speaker 25 I said, I'll go spend it on moose. I'll go spend it tomorrow.
And then she took it right away. She thought it was a $20 bill.

Speaker 25 And she opened it up and she said, oh, you, you know, don't do that. And I said, no, it's your money.
I said, I'm trying to help you out, dear.

Speaker 25 Like my little daughter. I said, I'd help my daughter the same way.

Speaker 100 He'd give her money. He'd even tried to make special trips to Valley City to see her.

Speaker 4 Not exactly appropriate to have that sort of relationship with your son's.

Speaker 100 No, it sure didn't seem appropriate to us.

Speaker 100 You know, kind of strange the way he handled all those things.

Speaker 94 Rodney himself said, well, I felt like she was like another daughter to me.

Speaker 94 But, you know, even at that,

Speaker 94 it was very strange, very strange to us.

Speaker 51 Rodney said that when he heard the terrible news, he was distraught.

Speaker 7 And he just wanted to talk to Mindy one last time.

Speaker 7 Mindy, this is Rod.

Speaker 73 Rodney dialed Mindy's number, left her voicemails after she died.

Speaker 25 I know what happened to you.

Speaker 25 Sorry it hasn't happened that way. It happened to you.

Speaker 25 Oh, God, I'm going to miss you.

Speaker 51 For investigators, those emotional voicemails didn't make Rodney any less suspicious.

Speaker 66 Maybe even more.

Speaker 8 And while investigators didn't think Mindy was romantically involved with her ex's dad, it sure seemed possible he had become dangerously obsessed with her.

Speaker 1 Rodney gave investigators his DNA, and they asked him, again and again, about his whereabouts that day.

Speaker 25 You got up, what time? I left after my wife left work. She left, sleeps work like 7.30, about 25 after 7.
He's drove the two two miles goodbye. Right.

Speaker 106 And who's that son now?

Speaker 25 It would have been Kirk, my son. How'd you get to the shop? Walk.

Speaker 25 Anybody go with you over there?

Speaker 25 That's what I'm trying to remember.

Speaker 61 Over two hours, Rodney gave an almost minute-by-minute account of the day.

Speaker 34 Now the agents had to run it all down.

Speaker 42 Was this the answer to their mystery?

Speaker 34 Or was the killer lurking about somewhere else?

Speaker 106 Maybe right there, bold as can be, at the young woman's funeral.

Speaker 112 Hey, everybody, Ted Danson here to tell you about my podcast with my longtime friend and sometimes co-host Woody Harrelson.

Speaker 112 It's called Where Everybody Knows Your Name and we're back for another season.

Speaker 112 I'm so excited to be joined this season by friends like John Mulaney, David Spade, Sarah Silverman, Ed Helms, and many more.

Speaker 27 You don't want to miss it.

Speaker 112 Listen to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with me, Ted Danson, and Woody Harrison sometimes, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 114 Are you ready to get spicy?

Speaker 115 These Doritos Golden Sriracha aren't that spicy.

Speaker 116 Sriracha?

Speaker 114 Sounds pretty spicy to me.

Speaker 115 Um, a little spicy, but also tangy and sweet.

Speaker 114 Maybe it's time to turn up the heat.

Speaker 115 Or turn it down.

Speaker 115 It's time for something that's not too spicy. Try Dorito's Golden Striracha.

Speaker 114 Spicy.

Speaker 31 But not too spicy.

Speaker 97 A Mochi Moment from Mark, who writes, I just want to thank you for making GOP1s affordable. What would have been over $1,000 a month is just $99 a month with Mochi.

Speaker 97 Money shouldn't be a barrier to healthy weight. Three months in and I have smaller jeans and a bigger wallet.
You're the best. Thanks, Mark.
I'm Myra Ammeth, founder of Mochi Health.

Speaker 97 To find your Mochi moment, visit joinmochi.com.

Speaker 116 Mochi members have access to licensed physicians and nutritionists and are compensated for their stories. Results may vary.

Speaker 75 They had to use the new Salem School gym for her funeral.

Speaker 34 So many wanted to just be there for Mindy Morgan's turn.

Speaker 81 There must have been over 1,000 or 1,100 people

Speaker 81 in the gymnasium that day, standing room only, out the doors, which was a tribute.

Speaker 1 So remarkable in a small town with that many people.

Speaker 106 Mindy's brother-in-law, Jason, is a pastor.

Speaker 44 He led the service.

Speaker 7 Reminded people of what Mindy believed in so strongly, that her life and whatever happened after, was in God's hands.

Speaker 99 I can guarantee you today we have no.

Speaker 46 I think the funeral was the hardest part because

Speaker 30 it was

Speaker 30 permanent. I don't know, I guess part of me up to that point thought that it was just a nightmare that we were going to wake up from.

Speaker 9 Here, grief and unanswered questions hung together in the air.

Speaker 49 And attentive investigators watched for what they didn't exactly know.

Speaker 29 We assigned people just to take pictures of people that were there, take video to see if there was anybody that reacted in a strange or unusual way.

Speaker 66 Got nothing out of that, though, I'm assuming.

Speaker 29 Nothing that stuck out as extraordinary, but we were still scrambling, looking for who might have done this.

Speaker 60 Well, some investigators checked out the people closest to Mindy.

Speaker 40 Others focused on a slew of random people who may have encountered or who did encounter Mindy.

Speaker 94 We ended up with

Speaker 94 approximately a dozen Bureau of Criminal Investigation agents conducting interviews and chasing down leads that were coming in.

Speaker 95 Leads like Tony's boyfriend, the one who checked up on Tony the night of Mindy's murder.

Speaker 41 Even though he liked Mindy, she didn't think much of him and thought her friend could do better.

Speaker 37 She wasn't mean or rude or said, I hate him. She didn't like the fact that I was dating him, and she always wanted me to break up because he just wasn't.

Speaker 38 Wasn't good to you? No, he wasn't good to me.

Speaker 100 The friends had told us that Mindy didn't care much for him and didn't like her friend dating him.

Speaker 66 Well, would give him a motive to be mad at her, I guess.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 51 Investigators brought Tony's boyfriend to the station.

Speaker 6 He said he'd never talked much to Mindy, but she always had a smile on her face.

Speaker 95 He didn't seem aware of how Mindy felt about him.

Speaker 87 But could he prove where he was during the hour police believe the murder happened?

Speaker 100 He had a pretty good alibi as to where he was.

Speaker 70 He had community service or something because he'd committed some sort of offense?

Speaker 23 Yeah.

Speaker 107 Well, occasionally even our bad deeds will come back to help us.

Speaker 100 Sometimes.

Speaker 7 But what about all those other potential suspects and their alibis?

Speaker 107 Like Mindy's neighbor, Robert Linz, the guy with scratches on his hands who was so worried about his prints at the scene.

Speaker 100 I checked his alibi, talked to his employer, got a copy of his timesheet, determined that it had been almost impossible for him to make it from where he worked to her apartment.

Speaker 36 So, a good Samaritan after all.

Speaker 36 And Jordan, he told us Mindy's brother-in-law was wrong about him.

Speaker 9 He wasn't jealous or controlling.

Speaker 93 As for that inconclusive polygraph,

Speaker 69 it turned out that Revy was just about a broken heart.

Speaker 76 His alibi proved it.

Speaker 94 Eventually, he was cleared, too.

Speaker 55 Investigators were also able to clear her ex, Kyle.

Speaker 34 He was at work around the time of the murder.

Speaker 44 And as for his dad, Rodney, The older man who'd seemed so suspicious to investigators, he was almost 200 miles away eating sandwiches with his family.

Speaker 66 Couldn't have been him.

Speaker 1 Couldn't have been him.

Speaker 3 That was no surprise to Mindy's parents, and Larry and Eunice have always been pretty good judges of character.

Speaker 84 And I think he really wanted her and Kyle, his son, to get together. And when they couldn't get back together,

Speaker 84 he kind of was really disappointed. And I think he just still stayed in a good friendship with her.

Speaker 83 We weren't suspicious of him at all.

Speaker 9 No, the police were,

Speaker 4 but you weren't. No.

Speaker 33 One dead end after another.

Speaker 35 They figured out pretty quickly that those missing photos of the crime scene had nothing to do with Mindy's murder.

Speaker 60 She had just been preparing for a modeling shoot.

Speaker 8 And remember that man in the blue car who terrified Mindy just weeks before her death?

Speaker 94 We did find a man

Speaker 94 who was living in his motorhome across the street from the restaurant that Mindy and some of her friends worked at.

Speaker 1 That man owned a bluish car.

Speaker 90 Teal was what they called it.

Speaker 52 But investigators couldn't link him to Mindy.

Speaker 60 Who was the man in the blue car?

Speaker 24 We

Speaker 100 worked on different leads on that, and we never did come up with who that person was for sure.

Speaker 12 At this stage, what were you thinking?

Speaker 94 We're really not getting any place with this.

Speaker 1 An unsolved murder in a small town has consequences.

Speaker 73 The chief of police said so himself.

Speaker 105 We don't want to panic the public, but we have to make sure that they're very aware of their surroundings and aware of what's going on.

Speaker 105 And I don't know how to stress that enough.

Speaker 20 No one wanted to go out.

Speaker 38 No one knew if this person was going to kill again.

Speaker 14 I couldn't go anywhere.

Speaker 17 without being afraid. I couldn't take a shower without being afraid because I couldn't see what was on the other side of the shower curtain and I was afraid that whoever it was, I didn't know.

Speaker 17 Were they going to come after me?

Speaker 6 It wasn't just the college students who felt it.

Speaker 79 It scared me. I didn't want to be anywhere near there.

Speaker 44 The anxiety was especially acute for Mindy's neighbors, like Chrissy.

Speaker 45 She was relieved that she and her husband were moving out of the building and into her parents' home.

Speaker 79 I was seven months pregnant and I had a one-year-old and I

Speaker 79 did not feel safe anymore in that building.

Speaker 40 But law enforcement was about to get a break.

Speaker 23 What was it like to find out about that DNA match?

Speaker 22 It was a shock.

Speaker 87 A shock and a horror because the DNA told the story of a whole other crime and another mystery to solve.

Speaker 102 Pretty soon, they were running out of suspects.

Speaker 90 About everyone who knew Mindy Morgenstern had been looked at, some of them pretty hard, and it all went nowhere.

Speaker 61 Anyway, Mindy had no enemies, wasn't a soul who had a bad thing to say about her.

Speaker 88 And just about then, as they were casting about for what to do next, the crime lab called.

Speaker 1 And what do you know?

Speaker 94 The crime lab came back and said, we have DNA from those fingernail scrapings and clippings.

Speaker 51 DNA that wasn't hers.

Speaker 40 Yeah.

Speaker 12 So maybe the investigator's initial hunch was correct.

Speaker 77 Maybe DNA would tell the story.

Speaker 95 They entered the DNA into the federal criminal database and

Speaker 80 voila,

Speaker 19 sort of.

Speaker 108 I got a call from one one of the lab techs. She said, I got good news for you.
And it's like, awesome.

Speaker 29 She said, you have a positive match.

Speaker 55 Perfect. Who is it?

Speaker 57 She said, I don't know.

Speaker 29 So that was kind of a deflating part of the really positive conversation.

Speaker 52 Deflating because the database is filled not only with the names of known criminals, but also with forensic DNA from unsolved cases.

Speaker 108 She went on to tell me that whoever murdered Mindy

Speaker 108 also had done an aggravated rape in the Fargo area.

Speaker 12 Had committed a rape in Fargo, but they didn't know who he was.

Speaker 24 That's correct.

Speaker 32 Still, the Fargo case could nudge the Mindy investigation forward, open up new leads.

Speaker 55 So, a BCI agent traveled to interview the survivor of that sexual assault, and she also spoke with us.

Speaker 107 We agreed not to disclose her identity have you told many people about this no

Speaker 65 because it's a hard thing to talk about right right

Speaker 96 you get questioned as to whether you're telling the truth or not

Speaker 63 she was just 22 studying to become a teacher when she went out one night with three friends they saw a live band at a fair and then went to a bar

Speaker 96 We were just socializing, having fun, doing what college girls do.

Speaker 65 Were you there there a long time?

Speaker 10 Um, no.

Speaker 96 I remember getting

Speaker 96 water and setting it on the table and telling my friends I was going to go use the bathroom. And that's the last thing I remember.

Speaker 41 Was she drugged?

Speaker 34 Maybe, the police said.

Speaker 98 And when she came to, she was pinned to a mattress in an unfamiliar apartment, and a man she had never seen before was raping her.

Speaker 96 I was on my stomach. He was on top of me.
He had his arm in my my mouth, so I couldn't scream.

Speaker 80 I just remember fighting and struggling him.

Speaker 96 He is twice my size.

Speaker 10 I mean, I don't, I can't begin to wonder what, to even imagine what that moment feels like as you look back on it.

Speaker 23 It's terrifying.

Speaker 57 I thought that was the end of it.

Speaker 23 That he was going to kill you. Yeah.

Speaker 96 The next thing I remember,

Speaker 57 we were in the hallway.

Speaker 109 So he let you get up or something.

Speaker 65 Yeah.

Speaker 57 And he said

Speaker 38 that there was a cab waiting outside.

Speaker 57 I knew that there wasn't a cab.

Speaker 73 She was barefoot.

Speaker 50 Her clothes were a mess.

Speaker 71 Her purse was gone.

Speaker 82 She had a flash of clarity.

Speaker 80 And I thought, I either have to get away from him.

Speaker 57 Or he's going to take me somewhere else and kill me.

Speaker 57 Lord.

Speaker 57 So I started running up and down the hallways.

Speaker 79 Eventually I heard people inside of one apartment.

Speaker 57 So I stood at that apartment door and I banged and I screamed.

Speaker 57 And they finally let me in.

Speaker 19 I curled up in a ball under the kitchen table.

Speaker 19 Told them to call 911.

Speaker 109 When you described to the police what this man was like, what did you tell them?

Speaker 96 Well, I said it was an African-American male, over six feet tall,

Speaker 96 over 200 pounds.

Speaker 34 Muscular, too.

Speaker 34 But the man she described was nowhere to be found.

Speaker 12 Because he did a disappearing act as she was running away.

Speaker 94 Yes.

Speaker 9 The young woman was taken to the hospital, where an attending nurse did rape kit tests.

Speaker 96 I had bruising on my neck, bruising on my thighs. She was able to get his DNA.

Speaker 35 Fargo Petey entered that DNA into the federal criminal database and waited.

Speaker 35 While the young woman's life was swamped with emotions and a kind of fear she'd never felt before.

Speaker 96 I had to have somebody sleep with me at night for a long time.

Speaker 96 It took me a long time to go back out in public.

Speaker 65 Why a long time to go back out in public, particularly?

Speaker 37 Just the fear of the unknown.

Speaker 32 Weeks and months passed and police were no nearer to solving her case.

Speaker 96 Once it got close to two years I really started to lose hope that it would ever get solved.

Speaker 65 Was it a bigger problem that nobody was going to have to answer for this or that somebody was there, somebody was out there, somebody knew who you were?

Speaker 96 I think there were equal parts.

Speaker 47 But slowly, slowly, she began to heal.

Speaker 48 She did become a teacher, and two years after the assault, she was in school one day when she got a call.

Speaker 52 The police wanted to speak with her again.

Speaker 98 They were looking for the man who attacked her and killed Mindy Morgenstern.

Speaker 96 They just asked me if they could jog my memory about anything else from that night, anything to add to the description that I had given them.

Speaker 23 Did they tell you anything about DNA in that conversation?

Speaker 96 They did tell me that they had a match

Speaker 38 at that point, but they didn't know who it was.

Speaker 65 What did you feel like when they told you that?

Speaker 37 It made me really hopeful

Speaker 96 that they were finally going to solve the case.

Speaker 63 Solve hers and maybe Mindy's too.

Speaker 78 At least now they had a description.

Speaker 66 That narrowed things down, but how did you progress from there?

Speaker 94 We continued to collect DNA

Speaker 94 from different people.

Speaker 12 Did you kind of concentrate on muscular black men after that?

Speaker 94 We probably did a little more work as far as what black males Mindy would have known.

Speaker 39 And they all volunteered their DNA.

Speaker 12 Everybody in this investigation sounds to have been very cooperative.

Speaker 94 Everyone was very cooperative.

Speaker 88 As the crime lab worked overtime to process the DNA,

Speaker 111 one sample was about to light up like a match.

Speaker 89 There he was, after all,

Speaker 88 hiding in plain sight.

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Speaker 32 Investigators had matched DNA from Mindy's murder to a rape in Fargo.

Speaker 69 and were looking for a man the rape survivor described as tall, black, and muscular.

Speaker 47 While there were not many men of that description who knew Mindy, there was one such man living in her apartment building just downstairs.

Speaker 22 The Barnes County jailer that lived in that basement apartment was a black male subject.

Speaker 35 He was Mo Gibbs, a 34-year-old corrections officer, husband to Chrissy.

Speaker 71 who'd been so freaked out by the murder upstairs.

Speaker 9 She and Mo had been together for nearly two years.

Speaker 79 I met Mo shortly after I found out I was pregnant with my first daughter. He very much loved her like she was his own.

Speaker 79 He worked nights and I worked days, and so he was with her during the day quite a bit, just the two of them.

Speaker 35 Mo had come a long way from his early life as a Crips gang member in Central California. At 18, he chose to serve his country in the Navy and then played college basketball.

Speaker 77 Divorced with kids, he moved to Valley City and worked as a college security guard before getting a job at the county jail.

Speaker 22 He holds a little clout in our law enforcement community because he's helping us put bad people away.

Speaker 95 How well did you know Mo Gibbs?

Speaker 22 I knew him fairly well.

Speaker 71 Seemed like a nice guy? Yeah.

Speaker 22 Just the Sunday before,

Speaker 22 we were playing in a state softball tournament in Fargo, and he was on my Co-ed softball team.

Speaker 52 As one of Mindy's neighbors, Mo had given a witness statement early on, along with a DNA sample.

Speaker 34 The crime lab had his and samples from other men matching the description given by the Fargo rape survivor.

Speaker 87 And a week after Mindy's murder, a BCI agent updated Sergeant Swenson.

Speaker 22 He said, Well, one of them was a match. And I said, Who is it?

Speaker 6 The agent told him the man's name.

Speaker 22 And I was shocked.

Speaker 85 It was Mo Gibbs.

Speaker 22 I said, are you sure? Are they sure?

Speaker 22 And they said, yes. They said the person that's in charge of the crime lab redid the results and verified that it was him.
First thing I said is, okay, let's make a plan.

Speaker 22 Let's get him to come down to the police department.

Speaker 52 How'd you do that?

Speaker 22 They actually called him up and said, we need to just do some follow-up questions for you, if you wouldn't mind coming in.

Speaker 117 Gibbs is accidenting the apartment where the homicide took place.

Speaker 102 Mo Gibbs had no idea that investigators had put together a surveillance team.

Speaker 88 With Swenson and the other officers tracking him.

Speaker 22 I stayed back quite a ways where he couldn't see me, just in case Mo would get spooked and decide to run.

Speaker 117 Gibbs is just pulling up to the law enforcement center.

Speaker 22 But he drove straight to the police department.

Speaker 69 Hey, we appreciate you coming in.

Speaker 22 Not a problem.

Speaker 61 Mo Gibbs didn't come alone.

Speaker 25 Called the shape 15 months.

Speaker 22 He had a stepdaughter.

Speaker 109 That's a moment, isn't it?

Speaker 22 It is.

Speaker 49 After his stepdaughter was taken aside, the investigators asked Mo where he was during the presumed half-hour window of Mindy's murder, about 12.30 to 1 p.m.

Speaker 12 Mo said he left his apartment at 11.30 and had lunch with his wife, Chrissy, till about 12.35,

Speaker 72 when he dropped her at work and went back to their apartment with his stepdaughter.

Speaker 25 So what time did he get? Did you think he got back to the apartment?

Speaker 25 I said between 12.45 and 1 o'clock.

Speaker 9 He said he didn't notice anything unusual there other than the smell of pine salt.

Speaker 25 And I thought it was the manager cleaning the apartment upstairs.

Speaker 77 He told the investigators he stayed just 10 minutes in his apartment.

Speaker 88 And because his family was in the midst of moving to his in-law's home, he drove straight there with his stepdaughter and a truck full of stuff.

Speaker 25 And Helen Rayla for about an hour.

Speaker 44 The last time he'd seen Mindy, he told them, was maybe a week before she was murdered, when he had come to her aid.

Speaker 25 She was coming home and she was holding her pants, holding a laundry basket and a book bag. I helped her out to her apartment.
Now there.

Speaker 25 But other than that, so that's the only time you've ever been up at her.

Speaker 108 He admitted to being in her apartment one time.

Speaker 58 But this was more than odd.

Speaker 93 The scene Gibbs claimed he saw a week before the murder, complete with laundry basket, book bag,

Speaker 12 was also a description of the actual crime scene.

Speaker 29 What he described when he was there was pretty similar to what we found when she was dead.

Speaker 33 So then investigators confronted Mo with their new evidence.

Speaker 25 How would you feel if I told you that your DNA matches DNA that we found on Benkee's body?

Speaker 25 I'd be like, that wasn't true.

Speaker 94 I was there watching from another room on camera.

Speaker 12 Could you sort of see him squirming? Did it look like he knew the jig was out?

Speaker 94 He didn't squirm at all.

Speaker 77 He was very calm.

Speaker 35 And they confronted him again.

Speaker 102 Did he have anything to do with that violent rape in Fargo?

Speaker 25 Two years ago in Fargo? Yep, in 2004.

Speaker 25 Well,

Speaker 25 I know I didn't do it.

Speaker 9 Sure, he'd lived in Fargo, he said, and had plenty of sexual encounters there.

Speaker 25 It happened a few times that I picked somebody up at the bar and went somewhere.

Speaker 25 But

Speaker 25 I know for a fact that I've never assaulted anybody.

Speaker 88 The investigators weren't buying it.

Speaker 1 Not on the rape, not on the murder.

Speaker 25 The only thing that's really going to help you out here is to cut your losses. Well, I had nothing to do with her death.
I know that.

Speaker 25 Nothing at all. Nothing.

Speaker 4 But the investigators weren't moved.

Speaker 35 They placed him under arrest and charged him with murder.

Speaker 25 We have an arrest warrant for

Speaker 25 the murder of Mindy Horton's turn.

Speaker 52 Sergeant Swenson made one last appeal to Mo to confess.

Speaker 22 Your family's going to want to know. I said, you're a father just like I am.
You have children just like me.

Speaker 22 I said, what am I supposed to tell them when they get older? And Mo put his head down. And...

Speaker 49 Didn't say anything.

Speaker 22 He denied it. He's like, Dave, I didn't do it.

Speaker 66 Mindy's family heard the news of the arrest that same day.

Speaker 25 I was shocked.

Speaker 30 Just that some random person could do what he did.

Speaker 61 He was the neighbor just downstairs who'd made Mindy feel safe.

Speaker 6 Remember, she liked having law enforcement types in the building.

Speaker 83 It was just a total big mystery of who this person was and why him and

Speaker 83 a lot of questions.

Speaker 4 For Ashley, the news was chilling.

Speaker 34 She recalled that Mindy had been honored at a football game four days after the murder.

Speaker 25 Today we'll be taking a moment of silence in honor of Mindy Morgan's turn.

Speaker 86 I remember sitting in the bleachers, and

Speaker 86 Mo was sitting four or five rows down from where our group was sitting.

Speaker 74 When the penny dropped, and you remembered seeing him in the game, tell me about that.

Speaker 46 That he was that close to where I was sitting

Speaker 86 scared me.

Speaker 3 Mo's wife, Chrissy, was shaken too.

Speaker 79 When the police told me they had his DNA and that he had done it and he was arrested, I couldn't believe it at all. I

Speaker 79 really didn't think he was capable of anything like that.

Speaker 71 A jury would soon hear the case against Mo Gibbs.

Speaker 34 The DNA evidence appeared to put him in a corner.

Speaker 78 And the DNA evidence couldn't be wrong.

Speaker 67 Could it?

Speaker 27 Are you kidding me?

Speaker 99 What do you mean?

Speaker 30 I saw all the evidence.

Speaker 18 I heard the evidence.

Speaker 30 It just kind of blew my mind.

Speaker 34 In the fall of 2006, Mo Gibbs was in jail awaiting trial for the murder of Mindy Morgenstern.

Speaker 34 But a trial, who knows when, was little comfort to Mindy's mom, Eunice.

Speaker 32 A few weeks after Mo Gibbs's arrest, she wrote him a letter.

Speaker 83 At the time it seemed the right thing to do because it was tearing me apart inside. I mean I have a strong faith, but I'm normal too and I had a lot of

Speaker 83 feelings, emotions and questions. I wanted him to tell me that he was sorry that he did it, that he would admit it.
Never expected to hear back from him.

Speaker 73 But you did.

Speaker 83 Yes, I did. He denied everything.
He said, you know, he'd worked his whole life to try to prove his innocence.

Speaker 98 But as his trial date approached, Mo Gibbs looked less and less like an innocent man.

Speaker 22 After the word came out that we arrested him, there were five females that came forward that claimed that Mo had sexually assaulted them in the correctional center. while he was working.

Speaker 22 He was charged with those along with the sexual assault that took place in Fargo.

Speaker 7 Former North Dakota Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Byers would help prosecute the murder case.

Speaker 33 He learned that even though Mo Gibbs had been an officer of the law, he had a criminal past.

Speaker 103 They discovered a background that they were totally unaware of when he was hired as a jailer at the Barnes County Jail.

Speaker 111 Nobody had any idea that Mo Gibbs wasn't even Mo Gibbs.

Speaker 25 Right.

Speaker 35 He changed his name.

Speaker 34 Before he was Mo Gibbs, he was Glendale Morgan Jr.

Speaker 32 While he was in the Navy, he was involved in a drive-by shooting, spent more than five years in prison.

Speaker 32 And now he was facing life behind bars as his trial for murder got underway in June 2007.

Speaker 80 How are you feeling?

Speaker 84 Well, we just thought that, you know, okay, they've got the guy. You know, this should be over in a big hurry.

Speaker 4 The prosecutor told the jury Mo Gibbs' own story, story, the one when he brought his stepdaughter to the interview.

Speaker 34 That story put him at the apartment building during the critical window of the murder.

Speaker 87 And there was also this.

Speaker 103 Mo Gibbs was an extensive text her and emailer, doing searches on his cell phone, even at work.

Speaker 103 But around 12:30, which is when shortly after that, we believe that she was murdered, he was off the grid.

Speaker 54 And he stayed off the grid for more than an hour before resuming his phone activity.

Speaker 39 So there was that

Speaker 7 and also a former cellmate of Moe's came forward, said he'd heard Mo actually admit to the murder.

Speaker 103 He seemed pretty believable to us so we decided to put him on the stand and we thought he did pretty good.

Speaker 111 Tony testified too about finding Mindy's body.

Speaker 37 I was nervous. I was scared.
I think I even started to choke up and cry at one point. You're reliving that horrible night again and again.

Speaker 6 But the backbone of the prosecution's case was DNA.

Speaker 94 It was under her knee, her fingernails.

Speaker 28 That's as good as it gets. That's as good as it gets.

Speaker 77 21 men had given DNA samples to investigators, said the prosecutor, and the only match was Mo.

Speaker 9 Did you present a motive for murder?

Speaker 103 Our general consensus was that it was sexually motivated.

Speaker 52 The prosecution's theory was that Mo Gibbs went into Mindy's apartment likely wanting sex.

Speaker 6 And when she fought back, he flew into a rage, strangled her with her belt, and stabbed her with the knives from her own kitchen, dousing her with pine saw.

Speaker 103 But we were not allowed to present our belief in that motive.

Speaker 82 Nor did the judge allow the jury to hear anything about the sexual assault allegations by women at the jail.

Speaker 35 And they would hear nothing about that violent rape in Fargo.

Speaker 90 Too prejudicial, he ruled.

Speaker 34 That, of course, was helpful to Moe's defense, as was this quite remarkable fact.

Speaker 35 Neither Moe's fingerprints nor his DNA was found on either one of the two knives used to kill Mindy.

Speaker 95 In fact, wasn't some other male person's DNA found on those knives and in that apartment?

Speaker 103 There were two other males' DNA found on those knives. Another thing was a hair in the palm of Mindy's hand as as she lay there.

Speaker 51 Which wasn't Mo Gibbs' hair.

Speaker 103 Which wasn't Mo Gibbs' hair at all.

Speaker 35 The forensic seemed to cut both ways.

Speaker 12 The defense argued Mo Gibbs's DNA could easily have been transferred to Mindy from something they had both touched.

Speaker 103 The hallway doors or the outside door in the apartment building and that Mindy touched the same door and got his DNA under her fingernails was what they presented to the jury as their theory.

Speaker 6 And as for that jailhouse snitch who testified Mo had confessed to killing Mindy, the defense countered he had a long rap sheet and a history of giving false information.

Speaker 35 The jury listened attentively and then went away to think about it.

Speaker 33 And Mindy's family waited and waited.

Speaker 66 It went on and on.

Speaker 103 It went on and on.

Speaker 73 After four days of back and forth in the jury room, six jurors were sure he was guilty and six were not.

Speaker 67 Deadlock.

Speaker 83 I didn't really understand what a hung jury was and I thought, does this mean he's getting off?

Speaker 86 It just didn't make any sense to me but

Speaker 86 you had to just accept it.

Speaker 73 While Mindy's family and friends were dumbfounded, Mo's wife, Chrissy, who'd divorced her husband, was terrified.

Speaker 79 I was very scared that he was going to get out. My family was worried about the same thing.
I remember that

Speaker 79 we were were ready if he were to ever show up there.

Speaker 6 But Mo remained behind bars and stayed there until he could be tried again.

Speaker 83 And I thought, oh, now we got to go through all this again.

Speaker 5 More painful testimony and more waiting.

Speaker 48 What were you thinking?

Speaker 103 I was thinking, are we going to have to actually do this a third time?

Speaker 9 To Mindy's family and her friends, the deadlock in Mo Gibbs' murder trial was bewildering and shattering.

Speaker 30 For it to come to that and not get any type of closure, it just kind of blew my mind.

Speaker 52 As Mindy's family worried about getting justice, so too did the young woman who'd been assaulted in Fargo.

Speaker 34 She was reluctantly preparing for her own trial.

Speaker 82 And you'd have to testify

Speaker 24 in a trial.

Speaker 82 What was the prospect of that like for you?

Speaker 17 It was hard.

Speaker 96 It was hard to go back and

Speaker 96 look at the crime scene photos of myself.

Speaker 96 I bet.

Speaker 47 In October 2007, nearly four months after his first murder trial, Mo Gibbs' second trial got underway.

Speaker 32 Eunice, who hadn't been allowed to attend the first trial because she was on the witness list, sat right there in the courtroom, her daughter's accused killer in front of her.

Speaker 90 What was your take on him then?

Speaker 83 He carried himself like, you know, big, strong person,

Speaker 83 and he's pretty cocky.

Speaker 77 The trial played out much as it had before, those pending charges of sexual assault still inadmissible.

Speaker 9 But when it came to the DNA evidence, the prosecutor came prepared.

Speaker 53 How did you change your approach in this second trial?

Speaker 3 We

Speaker 103 made sure that we were better equipped with DNA experts to explain the amount of DNA and what that meant.

Speaker 60 It's a DNA expert after DNA expert took the stand to refute Bog Gibbs' claim that his DNA must have been transferred to Mindy after she touched a door handle he might have used.

Speaker 39 or else from his brief visit to her apartment.

Speaker 94 The prosecution brought in an expert, expert and that expert testified that this amount of DNA could only have gotten under her fingernails by vigorous physical contact.

Speaker 25 Vigorously attempting to grab their arm strongly and run your fingernails down their arm at that point.

Speaker 12 How did the defense attack your DNA evidence this time?

Speaker 103 They brought in a director of a DNA lab who was actually Quincy's lab

Speaker 103 assistant on that old Quincy television show.

Speaker 80 Really?

Speaker 103 He was their guest star witness.

Speaker 6 That's right.

Speaker 61 The defense's DNA expert had also appeared as an actor in a TV show about a crime-solving medical examiner.

Speaker 33 And then he'd gone on to run his own crime lab.

Speaker 23 He said Gibbs's DNA could have ended up on Mindy's body by accident.

Speaker 61 And the defense reminded the jury that their client's DNA and fingerprints were not found on the murder weapons.

Speaker 52 Then the case went to the jury, and it was deja vu all over again.

Speaker 103 We had some deliberation on Tuesday, Wednesday came and went, Thursday came and went, Friday is here and we still don't have a verdict.

Speaker 24 Had to be worried.

Speaker 40 I mean

Speaker 77 those hours tick by pretty slowly when you're waiting for a jury to come back.

Speaker 84 It was very intense.

Speaker 83 Your heart just pounds, you know.

Speaker 32 And then the jury came back.

Speaker 30 As soon as we heard that they were going to make the announcement, we headed over to the courthouse and were there for mom and dad.

Speaker 99 We, the jury, do find the defendant, Mo M.

Speaker 21 Gibbs, guilty of the crime of murder.

Speaker 83 You feel relief when you hear the results that he's guilty, but yet you feel bad too at the same time.

Speaker 10 Bad?

Speaker 83 It's such a waste. It's not going to bring Mindy back, and that's the saddest part of the whole thing.
It's such a waste.

Speaker 41 At his sentencing, Eunice addressed Mo Gibbs and said something extraordinary.

Speaker 83 Mr. Gibbs, I forgive you publicly here.

Speaker 83 And I also want you to know that I won't forget what you did to Mindy. If you don't forgive someone, they have power over you,

Speaker 83 and they can make your life miserable and bitter and full of hate.

Speaker 68 But in court, Mo Gibbs kept up his same old story.

Speaker 25 I did not commit this crime. If and when the person who actually did this crime came to justice, I would forgive him just as she would have forgave me.

Speaker 36 And he never did confess, right?

Speaker 107 He always denied it.

Speaker 83 I'm still waiting. God is the only one who knows.

Speaker 32 The judge gave Mo Gibbs life without parole.

Speaker 55 I wonder what would have happened had you not bagged those hands and had Mindy's fingernails not kind of given you the answer to the secret.

Speaker 94 We would have never solved this case.

Speaker 35 So her fighting back was what helped it get solved?

Speaker 94 Her fighting back,

Speaker 51 she told us who her assailant was by fighting back.

Speaker 73 As for the other charges against him.

Speaker 22 He actually pled guilty to the five sexual accounts at the jail in Barnes County, and he pled guilty to the case in Fargo.

Speaker 54 That was a relief for his victim.

Speaker 78 She did muster the courage to face him head-on at his sentencing for rape.

Speaker 74 What'd you say?

Speaker 57 A lot of things.

Speaker 96 I wasn't very nice to him.

Speaker 57 He has daughters of his own.

Speaker 96 So I just said

Speaker 96 to imagine his daughters screaming like I screamed that night.

Speaker 9 She still lives with the trauma of what happened, of course.

Speaker 32 Told us survivor's guilt, though perhaps irrational, is a real thing.

Speaker 82 But she is married now, has children of her own, to whom she'll tell this story, hers and Mindy's, when they are older.

Speaker 96 I just want people to know that there is life,

Speaker 96 happiness

Speaker 115 after this.

Speaker 74 It's hard, but you get there.

Speaker 64 You too.

Speaker 28 In a very, you know, direct way, Mindy solved the cases, not only her own case, but the rape and Fargo.

Speaker 65 Has that ever occurred to you? Yeah.

Speaker 30 Just knowing her,

Speaker 30 she so much just wanted

Speaker 18 right to prevail. She wouldn't have had it any other way.

Speaker 81 Knowing that all that justice was taken care of for all those other victims, she would have gladly given her life for that.

Speaker 81 She was that kind of a person.

Speaker 67 It hasn't been easy to lose that kind of person.

Speaker 85 The girl who led the laughter from the head of the table is gone.

Speaker 30 Our family was robbed.

Speaker 79 We were never gonna have those family dinners again.

Speaker 81 Innocence was taken.

Speaker 59 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 30 A light was kind of taken from both my parents, you know.

Speaker 30 That was the hardest part for me.

Speaker 23 But in some ways, Larry and Eunice have been able to find peace.

Speaker 9 They take comfort in their faith and family and their memories of Mindy.

Speaker 42 In Valley City, there's a heart-shaped garden not far from where she lived, a place where all those people she connected can remember the spirit of her beautiful, short life.

Speaker 64 I have three kids and they never met Mindy, but we talk often about Mindy.

Speaker 38 We were so lucky just to be touched by her just the few years that we got to know her.

Speaker 86 And she lived her life with so much joy. And for us here, we're still here to live like that, carry joy, make a difference in people's lives, and love them well, because that's what she did.

Speaker 5 That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 12 Thanks for joining us.

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