The Vault

He was once central Minnesota’s most notorious criminal. Now DNA technology could add to his criminal history

Trisha Taurinskas — Sat, 05 Jul 2025 14:50:00 GMT

STEARNS COUNTY, Minn. — Herbert Notch had been on the run for two years when officers with the Federal Fugitive Task Force closed in on him at a Phoenix convenience store on Aug. 24, 1993.

At the time he was apprehended in Arizona, Notch was among central Minnesota’s notorious criminals, with a wrap sheet that included the violent kidnapping and stabbing of a 14-year-old girl and holding a 24-year-old mother at knife point.

Yet on that particular summer day, authorities were on the hunt for Notch for another reason.

Before fleeing the state, Notch was charged with one count of second-degree criminal sexual conduct and one count of attempted criminal sexual conduct, stemming from the violent sexual assault of a 27-year-old woman.

After officers honed in on and arrested Notch, he was extradited back to Minnesota, where he underwent a jury trial before being acquitted of the charges. The defense relied heavily on the argument that the woman gave Notch consent, and it worked.

The prosecutor attempted to submit into evidence photographs from Notch’s 1977 conviction, which included photographs of the 14-year-old girl’s wrists, with tape Notch used to confine her while allegedly sexually assaulting her.

The 27-year-old Benton County woman had the same marks.

Following his acquittal, Notch was set free. His known criminal history ended there, and he lived out his days in Montevideo, Minnesota, until his death in 2015.

Yet before he died, he was confronted with one more crime.

Notch spent the last days of his life hospitalized in St. Cloud for liver failure. Before he breathed his last breath, he had one last visitor: Rita Reker, the mother of Mary and Susan Reker.

The Reker girls were kidnapped in St. Cloud while walking from a store on Sept. 2, 1974. Their bodies were found 26 days later on the outskirts of town, near a quarry.

Rita Reker didn’t receive a confession that day, but she did leave with satisfaction, according to a 2024 interview with St. Cloud Live.

Now, 10 years after his death, the Stearns County Sheriff’s Office is actively pursuing whether Notch killed the Reker girls.

Advanced DNA technology and forensic genealogy are in the process of attempting to determine if DNA retained from the crime scene leads them to Notch.

“If and when we obtain a DNA profile from an item of evidence related to the Reker homicides that we are not able to account for, that profile will be tested against the known profile of Mr. Notch,” Stearns County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Zachary Sorenson told Forum News Service.

A St. Cloud kidnapping

The 14-year-old girl pretended to be unconscious in the summer of 1977 after Notch stabbed her twice, sexually assaulted her and buried her under a pile of brush at a remote gravel pit in Luxembourg, just miles outside of St. Cloud.

Notch was 18 years old at the time.

He intended to leave the girl to die, according to court testimony given by his accomplice, James Wagner.

After Wagner and Notch drove away, the girl pushed off the piles of brush and made her way to the nearest home. The owners called law enforcement, and she told them everything.

She had been working at the Twenty-Fifth Avenue Dairy Bar in St. Cloud when the two men came in, armed with a gun and demanding money. That wasn’t all Notch was after, though. He kidnapped the young girl at gunpoint and forcibly led her to the car he and Wagner were driving.

Wagner testified that he saw Notch stab the girl once before they both covered her with brush.

Notch later confessed to stabbing the 14-year-old girl with his 6-inch-blade buck knife before taking her to the gravel pit, where they tied her up with tape. The initial criminal complaint stated the girl was raped.

During the trial, a psychiatrist testified that Notch had a “fearlessly savage quality about him,” according to coverage of the trial by the St. Cloud Times.

In exchange for his confession, four of the six charges were dismissed. Those charges included attempted first-degree murder, second-degree criminal sexual conduct and one count of kidnapping.

Instead, Notch pleaded guilty to one count of kidnapping and aggravated robbery.

He was sentenced to up to 40 years in prison at what was then known as the St. Cloud Reformatory for Men.

Notch was released after serving just 11 years and went on to commit a similar crime six months later.

Repeat behavior

On Feb. 25, 1988, Stearns County sheriff’s deputies arrived at Notch’s home at around 10 p.m. and arrested him in the sexual assault of a 24-year-old woman.

Notch was formally charged with multiple counts of assault and criminal sexual conduct, all stemming from the same victim.

Earlier that day, the woman had a meeting with St. Cloud police, during which she detailed three separate incidents that occurred the month prior.

Notch moved in with the victim after he was released from prison in June of 1987. They were introduced by a mutual friend while he was still in prison.

The relationship didn’t work outside of prison, though. The woman kicked Notch out of the house after their relationship ended six months after his release.

Yet Notch continued to enter the house without permission, according to court documents.

The woman alleged that on Jan. 3, 1988, Notch entered her home without permission and used a knife to threaten her while he sexually assaulted her, according to a 1988 newspaper article.

It didn’t end there.

The woman told police officers that Notch again gained entry into her home five days later by tricking her and displaying a knife in a threatening manner, causing her to fear for her life, according to court documents.

After another week passed, the woman claimed Notch confronted her with a knife outside of her workplace, where he threatened her and ordered her to get into her vehicle and drive.

At trial, Notch was convicted on one count of burglary and one count of false imprisonment, yet jurors weren’t able to agree on a criminal sexual conduct conviction.

Jurors cited the relationship between Notch and the victim as their main reason for not delivering a guilty verdict.

For each conviction, Notch was sentenced to 36 months in prison.

By 1991, Notch was a free man.

In the summer of 1993, Notch offered a 27-year-old woman a ride home from Tom’s Bar in St. Cloud. The criminal complaint states Notch drove to a rural area in nearby Benton County, where he forced the woman into the back of his pickup truck before tying her wrists and punching her before sexually assaulting her.

After the woman came forward and charges were filed, Notch fled the state. After a two-year nationwide manhunt led to his arrest and return to Minnesota, Notch was found not guilty. His past relationship with the victim was cited as a main factor in the acquittal.

A background check conducted by Forum News Service shows Notch settled into a home in rural Montevideo. His known criminal record remained clean until the day of his death at age 58.

Now there’s a possibility that his rap sheet could grow.

Sorenson told Forum News Service in February that DNA obtained from the Reker crime scene was undergoing advanced DNA testing with an out-of-state agency.

“We still have physical evidence that was collected early in the investigation still in our possession,” Sorenson said. “Currently some of which is being tested with advancements in DNA technology.”

If a DNA sample is extracted that does not belong to the girls, Notch will once again be brought into the fold — and the question of Notch’s involvement could be answered.

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Minnesota won a Confederate battle flag from Virginia at Gettysburg. Here's why it won't give it back.

Tracy Briggs — Fri, 04 Jul 2025 18:00:00 GMT

There might not be a lot of mystery surrounding

how

the Civil War turned out when it ended in April 1865. In the simplest of oversimplified nutshells:

The Union defeated the Confederacy. The nation was restored. And slavery was abolished.

Cue documentarian Ken Burns for the rest of the details.

But one Civil War mystery still brews long after Robert E. Lee’s Confederate army surrendered at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. It involves a question over who is the true owner of a Confederate battle flag seized at the Battle of Gettysburg — the original regiment who marched with it or the enemy who took it away?

In other words, Virginia or Minnesota?

Hear Tracy Briggs narrate this story:

Let’s start at square one with the help of documentation provided by the Minnesota State Historical Society and the 28th Virginia Infantry Regiment.

Minnesota’s entry into The Civil War

Let’s start at the very beginning. Minnesota had been a state for just three years when it became among the first states (and some claim the very first state) to commit soldiers to fight for the Union in the Civil War.

Just one day after the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861, Minnesota Gov. Alexander Ramsey offered up 1,000 men for national service.

Within two weeks, the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment was filled with 1,009 men from St. Paul and nearby towns. The Regiment was part of the Army of the Potomac and engaged in fighting at the First Battle of Bull Run in Virginia and the Battle of Antietam in Maryland.

But the regiment might be most remembered for its efforts at the Battle of Gettysburg from July 1-3, 1863.

The Battle of Gettysburg

According to Patrick Hill’s story, “Colors of Valor — the 28th Virginia Regiment’s Flag in Minnesota,” published for the Minnesota Historical Society, that summer of 1863, the Confederates were within striking distance of Philadelphia, with some historians theorizing that Gen. Lee was hoping to strike coal fields near Harrisburg to cripple the industrial power of the North.

The rebels were on the move, consolidating their forces at Gettysburg.

“At that moment, the Army of Northern Virginia was the most successful fighting force ever assembled in the Western Hemisphere, and it was intent on delivering a decisive blow,” wrote Hill.

The First Minnesota and the rest of the Union Army of the Potomac was sent to Gettysburg, where by all accounts they faced an uphill battle. They had been defeated three out of the last four major engagements in the South, and this could be the turning point of the war.

A Minnesota house painter saves the day

The fighting at Gettysburg had been raging for two days, when the First Minnesota (at the center of the Union line) was ordered to make a diversionary charge into the Confederate line. It was costly, according to the Minnesota Historical Society, with 82% of the unit being injured or killed.

But a private from St. Paul was not one of them. Marshall Sherman was a house painter by trade who had moved to the Minnesota territory from his native Vermont in 1849.

“He was a gentleman by most accounts, a small, quiet, soft-spoken man,” Hill wrote. “But it may have crossed his mind as he ran over the ridge at Gettysburg on the hot afternoon of July 3, that being a gentleman was not going to help him.”

What faced him and the others was described by Hill as “complete pandemonium” and “an image from hell.”

It was believed that whomever won this charge would prevail in the battle. When it was done, Northern forces had won, and the soft-spoken house painter from St. Paul had seized the Confederate battle flag of the 28th Virginia Infantry Regiment to prove it.

So where did the flag go after the battle?

According to records, the flag of the 28th Virginia was one of 25 flags captured that day. It was taken to the War Department and was officially recorded as property of the U.S. government on July 10, 1863.

When the war ended, Southern states intent on rebuilding weren’t that concerned with getting their old flags back. But by 1887, with the war 22 years in the rear view mirror, talks began about returning flags to the original owners.

Eighteen years later, in 1905, Congress passed a resolution stating that any flag "now in the custody of the War Department" be returned to their original regiments. "Now" becomes the most important word going forward.

Did Minnesota’s seized prize from Gettysburg have to go back to Virginia? It depended, largely upon exactly

where

the flag was at the moment the resolution was passed. And by all accounts, it was clearly in the Land of 10,000 Lakes in 1905, among the lefse, loons and hot dishes.

But how did Minnesota get the flag out of the War Department in the first place? This is probably the biggest mystery and at the heart of who has a legal claim to the flag.

If the flag was property of the War Department in 1905, presumably it should be returned to Virginia. However, with it being in Minnesota in 1905, was it still considered a possession of the War Department?

Was it just

on loan

to Minnesota or was it

a gift

to the state, thus not needing to be returned to anyone?

Did Minnesota get the flag as a party favor?

According to the Minnesota State Historical Society, the First Minnesota always claimed to be the first three-year state regiment offered for Union service.

So on February 6, 1864, with little time left in their service, the Minnesota Congressional Delegation hosted a celebration of the unit at Washington’s National Hotel. It was quite the shindig with special guest Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, the banquet speaker.

However, Stanton wasn’t just at the party to have a glass of whiskey and pat Minnesotans on the back. According to historians, he had an ulterior motive.

By the winter of 1864, long after the Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, Northern forces were starting to falter a bit. Even as he was sending the regiment back to Minnesota to their farms and loved ones, Stanton knew it was in the Union’s best interest to re-enlist these veterans and recruit more.

Would he be willing to resort to a little gift-giving for incentive?

According to Hill’s account, “it was common for Stanton to approve loans or grants of trophies of war, including captured Confederate flags, to increase patriotic fervor and display military accomplishment.”

He believes Stanton brought the flag to the banquet, where it eventually went home with the Minnesotans and was seen in a parade in St. Paul just a week later. It is believed then, that the man who originally grabbed the flag, Marshall Sherman, borrowed it to get his photo taken with it. It appears he never gave it back. But was he even required to?

Either way, the patriotic bribe seemed to have worked with successful recruitment in Minnesota, including Sherman himself. After reenlisting, he was later injured in a battle in Petersburg, Virginia, where he lost his leg. He eventually had this unusual photo taken of him with his prosthetic leg removed and sitting beside him.

The flag on display

It appears after taking the photo with the flag, Sherman loaned it to the St. Paul Cyclorama from 1886 to 1888. Cycloramas were popular forms of entertainment in the 1800s. For a small fee, people would walk into the huge, circular display covered in a panoramic image, thus immersing themselves in whatever event the image portrayed. In this case, it was the Battle of Gettysburg.

Following Sherman’s death, the flag was most likely given to the Grand Army of the Republic, a Civil War veterans group, and later given to the Minnesota Historical Society, where it would occasionally come out for special events.

Virginia wants it back

For most of the 20th century, Minnesota’s possession of the flag was a non-issue. But as the 100th anniversary of The Civil War was getting closer, interest picked up.

In 1960, the Virginia Historical Society asked the Minnesota Historical Society for the flag and was denied.

Then, in 1965, for the centennial celebration of the end of The Civil War, one Minnesota Historical Society assistant director wanted to play "Minnesota nice" and offered to give the flag back to Virginia as a gesture of reconciliation. But he hadn’t gotten official approval before making the plan, so he was stopped dead in his tracks. It was determined that the flag was part of Minnesota history now, and it would stay there.

In 1998, the call came from a group of 28th Virginia Infantry reenactors, many descendants of men who were in the original battle, who wanted the flag back as per the 1905 Congressional resolution.

According to the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the Minnesota Historical Society sought the advice of assistant attorney general Peter J. Berrie, who ruled the state need not give the flag back because “the six-year statue of limitations for reclaiming lost goods in Minnesota had expired. The claim was 128 years too late.”

Two years later, Virginians fought again to get their flag back with the state legislature passing a resolution requesting the return of the flag, despite the controversy over the symbol.

"It's a matter of state pride," Sen. John S. Edwards (D-Roanoke) told The Washington Post. "Minnesota has refused to return the flag, and they ought to. I don't know why they need it."

But Minnesota apparently wanted it for the same reason Virginia did — state pride — not in honor of the men who fought for the flag, but for those who sacrificed life and limb to defeat it.

Nina M. Archabal, then director of the Minnesota Historical Society, told the Star Tribune, “the flag’s story clearly transcends state boundaries. Legally and ethically, the bond between this flag and the people of Minnesota should not be taken lightly.”

Hill pointed out that the flag had most likely only been carried by the 28th Virginia Infantry Regiment for 18 days. On the other hand, as of 2021, it has been in the state of Minnesota for 157 years, where it is occasionally put out for the public to see. However, Director of Research for the Minnesota Historical Society Bill Convery says it is currently in long-term storage and not on display.

At this moment, there are no active requests out of Virginia to get the flag back. But that’s not to say the matter has been settled for good.

Editor's note: This archival story was first published on April 29, 2021.
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What are the best true crime reads for the long weekend? Pick one of these

Steve Wagner — Fri, 04 Jul 2025 02:55:00 GMT

If you're looking for a long read to immerse yourself in over the long July Fourth weekend, look no further.

The staff at The Vault, which aims to dive into the archives to tell the best stories of true crime in the Midwest, have been working on several reporting projects.

In case you're new to The Vault's work, looking to catch up or simply want a summer diversion, here is some of our recent work.

The Minnesota Vice series was a year-long reporting and fact-finding mission for Jeremy Fugleberg, editor of The Vault, which gives readers an unparalleled look into the brash and bizarre lifestyle of Casey Ramirez.

Reporter C.S. Hagen revisited the "Babysitter Killers" case by diving into newspaper archives, visiting the U.S. courthouse in Fargo to sift through court documents and interviewing the victim's family and the man convicted in her death.

Meanwhile, reporter Trisha Taurinskas has left no stone unturned in a series of cold cases, including one that recently concluded with the conviction of a killer 50 years after the crime.

Taurinskas takes her storytelling beyond the page, however. If listening is more your style, she also hosts The Vault podcast.

While the podcast covers some of the stories published online, some of Taurinskas's best work is exclusive to audio. Find The Vault podcast on any major podcast provider, or click below to begin listening.

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80 years after his death in World War II, remains of Minnesotan's father finally identified

Robin Huebner — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 13:25:00 GMT

FARGO — Relatives of a serviceman who died as a prisoner of war in World War II finally have the answer they’ve waited so long to receive.

Skeletal remains of U.S. Army Air Forces Staff Sgt. Irvin C. Ellingson have been identified through new DNA technology at a forensic lab in Hawaii, 80 years after his death.

Lon Enerson, one of Ellingson’s nephews, has led the family effort to bring his uncle’s remains home.

“We are overjoyed and relieved … It's a long-overdue answered prayer,” Enerson told The Forum, from his home in St. Cloud, Minnesota.

Ellingson, who grew up in Dahlen, North Dakota, enlisted at age 22 and was 25 when he died, Enerson said.

He was serving as a radar observer on a bombing mission to Tokyo on April 14, 1945, when the plane was shot down.

Ellingson parachuted to safety but was captured by the Japanese army and held captive at a Japanese prison along with 61 other American service members.

The prison caught fire a little over a month later, on May 26, 1945, after high winds fueled fires that were started by an American B-29 bombing raid over Tokyo.

None of the American prisoners survived the fire, as they were blocked in by Japanese guards, Enerson said.

The remains of more than two dozen American service members were identified in the aftermath but those of 37 others were buried as “unknowns” at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines, where they sat untouched until 2022.

The remains are commingled, and the Department of Defense has a threshold for disinterment, for at least 60% of those veterans’ families to provide DNA samples in order to make matches.

Families pushed the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency to disinter those unidentified remains and bring them to a forensic lab in Honolulu, where the newest DNA technology is being used to identify them.

Enerson said his uncle is the third serviceman from the Tokyo prison fire to be identified in this manner. The first identification came in September 2024 and the second in January of this year.

Ellingson’s parents and all of his siblings are deceased, so the next of kin is the oldest nephew or niece, who is Cheryl Severtson, of San Diego.

Enerson is fourth on that list.

Six groups of Ellingson’s relatives have visited the forensic lab in Hawaii since 2022, awaiting his identification, Enerson said.

Now that they have answers, some family members may return to the lab to sit privately with Ellingson’s remains, which will be placed on an army blanket, he said.

The family intends to bury Ellingson’s remains in the Middle Forest River Cemetery in rural Dahlen, alongside his parents and other siblings.

Enerson said when that day comes, he’s been told Ellingson will be buried with full military honors, at government expense.

“We just wish his immediate family could have known 80 years ago, but this is the next best time,” Enerson said.

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Judge hears bid to again overturn 1986 Nancy Daugherty murder conviction

Tom Olsen — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 18:00:00 GMT

VIRGINIA, Minn. — Defense attorneys on Monday, June 30, asked a judge to once again overturn a Chisholm, Minnesota, man’s conviction for raping and murdering a woman nearly 40 years ago.

Michael Allan Carbo Jr., 57, was found guilty in January of the 1986 killing of Nancy Daugherty — the second time a jury has convicted him in the homicide case that had gone cold until a DNA breakthrough in 2020.

Carbo previously had a guilty verdict overturned by the Minnesota Supreme Court, which said he was denied a full defense because he was not allowed to argue that another man was responsible for the crime.

This time, his motion involves another potential suspect in the case, as well as the decades-long interval between the crime and the trial.

“Mr. Carbo’s ability to fairly defend himself in this case was irrevocably compromised by the 34-year delay between the offense and the prosecution,” attorneys J.D. Schmid and Bruce Williams argued. “That the prosecution acted diligently in their investigation and in bringing charges against Mr. Carbo does not negate the prejudice caused by the deaths of several potential witnesses and the faded memories of other witnesses, including Mr. Carbo.”

Carbo, who was 18 at the time of Daugherty’s death and lived about a mile away, was never a suspect until a genetic genealogy investigation led to his identification as the man who left semen at the crime scene.

The defense, however, noted the deaths of numerous investigators and witnesses, which they say impaired his ability to investigate the facts and identify alternative perpetrators. The passage of time also forced witnesses to rely heavily on previous statements rather than actual memories, they said.

But St. Louis County prosecutors Chris Florey and Jon Holets noted the state, too, was challenged by the passage of time and the loss of witnesses who could have provided favorable testimony. Noting Carbo was never a suspect until 2020, they said there was no deliberate delay in bringing him to trial, and he had no reason to face anxiety until his arrest.

“(Carbo) provided nothing more than speculation as to how their deaths impacted his ability to present his defense,” the prosecutors wrote in a brief. “To the contrary, defendant did not challenge the presence of his DNA at the scene of the crime; in fact, he conceded it.”

The other central issue relates to Daugherty’s then-estranged husband, Jim Daugherty. It has long been reported that he was in Germany with the Minnesota Air National Guard when she was killed.

But the defense attorneys say documents provided during the trial do not conclusively show that he was overseas during the crime, and both the state and federal governments were subsequently unable to provide records establishing that he was.

The attorneys say numerous people told investigators that Jim Daugherty was abusive toward his wife and that his truck may have been spotted near her home the day before she was killed.

They also noted at least two other people who could have been investigated, including a man who allegedly confessed to another person over drinks and a woman who played recreational sports with Daugherty and was reported to have an “obsession” with her.

The prosecutors called Jim Daugherty’s service records “admittedly confusing” but said they do not disprove that he was in Germany at the time. They added that there was no clear evidence that he was in Chisholm and noted how the defense also failed to seek out the records in a timely manner.

“For some reason,” Florey and Holets told the court, “defendant now appears to pivot to a strategy of methodically pointing his finger at any person that was alive in July 1986 that is mentioned in the voluminous police reports, who, based on rampant rumor and wild speculation could have committed (Daugherty’s) rape and murder, except for himself.”

Judge Robert Friday noted at Monday’s hearing that there is no statute of limitations on murder, but he suggested there may be a need for courts to review whether a defendant’s due process rights are violated by a lengthy delay in being brought to trial.

Carbo’s case is almost certainly not the last cold case that will be revived in Minnesota, the judge said. And as forensic technology advances, so does research on the impacts of memory over time.

“Not setting up a bright-line rule,” the judge said of the hypothetical case law, “but it would need to be very fact-dependent, according to the circumstances.”

As for the suggestion of another suspect, Friday said he was not particularly concerned about when the information was discovered. Instead, the judge said, he needs to consider whether he would have allowed the evidence to be admitted if it had been known before the trial.

“What would the court have done with it?” he asked.

Carbo’s first conviction was overturned because Friday did not allow the defense to contend that Daugherty’s friend and former lover, Brian Evenson, was the true perpetrator. The defense heavily questioned Evenson at the second trial, and additional evidence was admitted, but a unanimous 12-member jury still convicted Carbo.

He faces a mandatory life sentence with the possibility of parole after 17 years, under the law that was in effect for first-degree murder at the time.

Friday has three options: acquit Carbo and end the case, order a new trial, or deny his motion and proceed to sentencing. He has 90 days to issue a ruling, but suggested he intends to act sooner.

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Minnesota's oldest listed missing persons case: What happened to the three Klein brothers?

Jeremy Fugleberg — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 14:55:00 GMT

MINNEAPOLIS — They were just boys when they vanished.

It was Saturday, Nov. 10, 1951, about 1:30 p.m. Three of the four Klein brothers — Kenneth Jr., age 8; David, age 6; and Daniel, age 4 — told their mother they were on their way from their North Minneapolis home to play in Fairview Park, just a few blocks away.

Hours passed. Their older brother, nine-year-old Gordon, went to retrieve them from the park at dinner time, and couldn't find them. He alerted his parents — Kenneth and Betty Klein — and the hunt was on.

For all they knew at the time, the youngsters had just left to play somewhere else, maybe down along the nearby Mississippi River, whose banks were coated with thin ice.

But the family would never again see the three boys. The mystery of the disappearance of the three Klein brothers would spark a relentless search, cause decades of false hopes and despair, and gain renewed attention that would place them on a Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension database as the state's oldest listed missing persons case.

The search and false leads

It quickly became obvious the boys weren't just playing somewhere else.

The Klein family was soon joined by Boy Scouts, policemen, search dogs, civil defense patrolmen and others, as they combed the surrounding area, including empty lots, garages and vacant buildings, and went door to door asking about the children.

"Squads plodded through warehouses of the river industrial district. Hollow echoes answered their shouts," reported the Austin Daily Herald on Nov. 13, 1951. "Oily machinery instead of little boys' eyes reflected the flashlight beams."

Two sound trucks drove through the North Minneapolis neighborhoods, broadcasting descriptions of the boys. All three had been wearing blue jeans. Kenneth Jr. had on a red jacket and stocking cap. David had a brown coat and red and gray cap. Daniel had been wearing a red snowsuit and a brown plaid cap.

Police insisted they had no reason to suspect foul play. But it wasn't ruled out, either.

A Minneapolis Star newspaper photographer snapped an indelible photo of Kenneth and Betty Klein and their boy Gordon, standing next to Daniel's empty high chair as Kenneth Sr. takes a phone call about the search.

When two of the boys' caps were fished from the nearby icy Mississippi River, it was was dragged by authorities who feared the boys had fallen in and drowned, but they came up empty-handed. Police followed up on reports of sightings, but those also didn't pan out, and the search widened even as hope dimmed.

By the middle of the following week, the hunt had been all but called off.

"It just doesn't seem reasonable those youngsters could disappear in the midst of thousands of people," said Minneapolis Police Chief Tom Jones in the Daily Herald article. "It isn't in the books, either, that all three of them would tumble into the river together. But that's what it looks like now."

While police closed the case as a suspected drowning, the Klein family didn't give up. They posted a $500 reward in the newspaper for any information leading to the recovery of the boys as well as regular "information wanted" classified listings.

With nowhere else to turn for answers, they sought help anywhere they could find it, and chased down every tip. They even appealed to a supposedly psychic "talking" horse in Virginia named Lady Wonder.

"We'll try anything if it will help us find them," said Betty Klein in the Dec. 12, 1952 edition of the Duluth News Tribune.

Renewed attention

Decades later, Minneapolis author Jack El-Hai saw one of the Klein's regular pleas in the newspaper classifieds sections in November 1997 and contacted them.

His resulting research and interviews led to a 1998 Minnesota Monthly article titled "the Lost Brothers" and eventually his 2019 book about the case, "The Lost Brothers: A Family's Decades-Long Search." and well as a companion TPT podcast, "Long Lost." that is also available on YouTube.

El-Hai chronicled both the family's efforts to keep hope alive, and resurgent interest from law enforcement, including from Wright County Sheriff's Deputy Jessica Miller and Minneapolis Park Police Sgt. Jim Schultz. Both El-Hai and the investigators believe the boys were likely kidnapped.

Several theories rise to the top, according to El-Hai:

Playground worker: A Fairview Park playground worker, now deceased, was investigated for the murder of three boys in Chicago. 'Creepy' man: A woman who rented rooms near the Klein family's home recalled a "creepy" man in his 50s playing basketball with several boys about the time the Klein boys disappeared. Truck driver: Not long after the boys vanished, a truck driver (now deceased) who lived near the Kleins reportedly replaced his pickup truck bed and his basement floor.

If they're still alive, the vanished Klein brothers would be in their 70s and 80s.

If you have any information regarding the case of the missing Klein brothers, contact the Minneapolis Police Department at 612-692-8477.

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New Hulu docuseries to re-examine Jodi Huisentruit case

Jeremy Fugleberg — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 14:59:12 GMT

A new docuseries to stream on Hulu starting July 15 will re-examine the 1995 missing persons case of TV anchor Jodi Huisentruit. Friday marked 30 years since she vanished, and the case remains unsolved.

The impending three-part docuseries is called "Her Last Broadcast: The Abduction of Jodi Huisentruit." The series will "follow a major break that reenergized the case," said ABC News in a June 27 press release, and will feature new information and never-before-seen material.

"Her Last Broadcast" was produced by Committee Films and ABC News Studios for Hulu.

Huisentruit, a Long Prairie, Minnesota, native was well known from her broadcast work in Minnesota but was working at KIMT-TV in Mason City, Iowa, when she didn't show up to work on June 27, 1995.

Evidence surrounding her car in the parking lot of her apartment building indicated signs of a struggle and a likely abduction.

Family, friends, colleagues and community members marked her disappearance on Friday, commemorated in news coverage.

“We’ll close this at some point, and justice will be served at that point,” Mason City Police Chief Jeff Brinkley told WOI TV in Des Moines. “That's our goal as the police department.”

Huisentruit was declared legally dead in 2001.

The upcoming Hulu docuseries will feature over 20 new interviews with family, friends and colleagues, "rare" access to KIMT-TV where Huisentruit's desk remains untouched, and "exclusive, real-time access to the investigation and breaks in the case," ABC News said.

The "major break" referenced by ABC News in its press release reportedly took place after the airing of the ABC 20/20 special about Huisentruit in 2022 entitled "Gone at Dawn."

"The Investigation into her disapperance heated up after a 20/20 episode when a new tip led local police to share a long-hidden clue," said a sneak-peek of the new Hulu docuseries that aired on ABC's "GMA" show on June 27.

"'Her Last Broadcast: The Abduction of Jodi Huisentruit' breathes news life into one of the country's most haunting unsolved mysteries," ABC News said.

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Their grandmother vanished in the woods in 1975. They refuse to give up their search for answers

Tracy Briggs — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 20:00:00 GMT

BAD MEDICINE LAKE, Minn. — Like so many counties in Minnesota, Becker County is home to the familiar trappings of lake life — modern cabins, gleaming pontoons and jet skis that slice across the water.

But turn off County Road 37 and Black Bear Beach Road, and you’re in a different world.

The old logging trail seems a million miles from civilization.

The word "remote" doesn’t quite do it justice.

Here, near Bad Medicine Lake, it’s not unusual to spot a wolf or a bear, and the mosquitoes and ticks outnumber people by the thousands.

Still, on this dreary, overcast day, three Minnesota sisters have left the comfort of their homes to trek deep into the dense forest. They walk with the sheriff hoping to get closer to solving the case of their missing grandmother, a mystery that has haunted their family for 50 years.

June 17, 1975

In the early afternoon of June 17, 1975, former church secretary Milda McQuillan, 71, left her Round Lake home to visit friends at their cabin on Bad Medicine Lake, less than a half-hour away. It was raining, and the country roads were muddy.

A few miles into her journey, McQuillan's car stalled. A postman stopped to help her. Not long after, she took a wrong turn and was helped again — this time by a truck driver who pointed her in the right direction. He would be the last person known to see her.

That evening, when McQuillan didn’t return home, her sister Ida, with whom she lived, called Milda’s daughter, Carol Hinze. Carol then contacted her brother Dennis McQuillan, and the two drove from the Twin Cities to join law enforcement in searching for their mother.

Two days later, after an extensive ground and air search — including efforts from National Guard troops — Milda's pea-green 1968 Dodge sedan was found stuck in the mud on an old logging trail about three-quarters of a mile from her friends' cabin. A coat belt and plastic rain cap were found slung over some bushes nearby. There was no trace of Milda.

Then the trail went cold. For decades.

From dusty file to renewed search

In 1975, 9-year-old Todd Glander was growing up in Detroit Lakes, often hunting in the same woods where Milda McQuillan vanished. He never forgot her story.

By 2014, he was in a position to act — he'd just been elected sheriff of Becker County.

“I took those dusty case files, went to my investigative unit and I said, 'I want to do whatever we can do to find some answers',” he said.

That’s when he met the three women walking beside him in the woods today — Milda McQuillan's granddaughters: Lori Voigt of Arlington, Jo Cornell of Hackensack and Michelle Donahue of Mayer.

They were 17, 15, and 11 when their grandmother vanished.

They still remember the good times with their Grandma Milda — reading Raggedy Ann books, playing cards and helping her in the kitchen. Summers with her meant something.

Today, the sisters even wear matching T-shirts from the Ice Cracking Lodge, a local place they'd go for laughter-filled nights together.

“She’d get a Grain Belt and give us money to play the bowling machines. She was a lot of fun!” Voigt said with a smile.

A walk back to the woods

The sisters first joined Glander in 2017 at this site where their grandmother’s car had been found back in 1975. Now, they’re returning to the same logging trail, asking more questions, hoping something new will surface.

The forest has grown so thick that cars can’t pass. They ride with Deputy Adam Douglas in a side-by-side off-road vehicle to reach the swampy area where the Dodge was spotted a half-century ago.

In a twist of irony, the woods are stunning, lush and alive with color. Woodland ferns unfurl beside wild columbine and violets along the path, while cedar and birch trees either tower overhead or lie scattered across the forest floor. It’s both beautiful and heartbreaking.

“I’m going to cry. I’m so appreciative that the sheriff is willing to help us find some answers. He always calls back, always,” Donahue said, tearing up. “I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing to recognize the sheriff’s voice on the phone," she added with a laugh.

The sisters have compiled a detailed scrapbook of clippings and theories. Glander’s team has used cadaver dogs and sonar to search nearby lakes. Still, no definitive answers.

Puzzling clues and lingering theories

The most baffling detail, the family says, is how Milda’s car ended up so deep in the woods.

“There’s no way my grandmother would have driven her car out this far,” Cornell said.

The family suspects someone moved the car there, especially since aerial searches done the day before showed nothing in that location.

The coat belt and rain bonnet also appeared after earlier ground searches in that same area had turned up nothing.

“That cheap plastic rain hat could have blown from anywhere, but the belt had a heavy buckle on it, so I don't think we would have missed it the day before. We felt like that was planted out there to keep us in that area,” Hinze said.

Another theory involves two young men who were stealing boat motors in the area at the time.

“They recovered all but one of the stolen motors,” Voigt said in 2017. "So the theory is they used that last motor to sink her in the lake.”

The men were questioned and passed lie detector tests and were released.

Dennis McQuillan also shares a conversation he had with an Elbow Lake store clerk about his mother's disappearance. The clerk said she saw an older white woman matching Milda’s description come into the store with a 20-something Native American couple.

“The lady at Elbow Lake store told the older white woman that a lady of her description was reported missing and the lady said ‘I know — that’s me!’” said Dennis.

Hinze said the clerk even described her mother's blouse as having blue vertical stripes — details that had not been released to the public.

“Nobody ever discussed this with her (the store clerk) because they said she was known to make up stories. It made me mad,” said Hinze.

A family that won’t give up

The pain of not knowing has lingered for five decades. Dennis still remembers the heartbreak of leaving the area two weeks after the search.

“Leaving Round Lake/Bad Medicine after two-and-a-half weeks without finding Mom and feeling like I was washing my hands of my mom, who raised me. My mom never gave up on me, and now I was giving up on her,” Dennis said.

But the family never gave up.

Dennis and his wife recently visited from Florida just a week before the granddaughters came here from their homes in other parts of Minnesota. Hinze no longer returns to the site.

“I’m glad my kids still go up there, and I just can't do it anymore. I just can't. It was too depressing, wondering what happened. I just hope she didn’t suffer too much,” Hinze said.

They know, of course, that Milda is dead. She would be 121 years old today. Many of the people involved in the original case are also gone.

Still, Sheriff Glander and the family believe there may be someone out there — maybe even a child or teen at the time — who might remember the smallest detail from that overcast June day.

“We always feel that somebody knows something. We just hold out for a little bit of evidence that we can follow up,” Glander said. “We just want people to know that we’ll never quit searching. None of us will give up hope that we can find something, some kind of an answer to what happened.”

Did you see anything?

What: Disappearance of Milda McQuillan

When: June 17, 1975

Where: Near Bad Medicine Lake, Becker County, Minnesota

If you have any information, call the Becker County Sheriff’s Office at 218-847-2661.

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Data and archives show deadly tornadoes not unusual in the Dakotas, Minnesota

C.S. Hagen — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 14:10:00 GMT

MOORHEAD, Minn. — From the east side of the Red River in 1957, Chuck Stenso watched as a killer tornado plowed a path toward Fargo, North Dakota.

He was a junior studying business at Concordia College, and was with a friend while living in a basement on June 20, 1957. Sixty-eight years have passed, but he still remembers the day that one of North Dakota’s deadliest tornadoes killed 10 people in Cass County.

“I heard someplace about this tornado, and we put a ladder up to the roof and went up and looked. It was northwest of Fargo, and we started watching it,” Stenso told Forum News Service in a recent interview.

What began as a funnel cloud around suppertime near Mapleton, North Dakota, spun across the county, injuring more than 100 people and punching Fargo hard, especially around North Dakota State University. It is believed the tornado would be rated as F-5 on the current Enhanced Fujita Scale.

“It was tough. It was a big, very wide, black storm. And there was a big roar, kind of like a train. We weren't up there very long, we got back down that ladder and went back down to our basement,” Stenso said.

Stenso, now 88 years old, wasn’t scared. In 1957, there were no cell phones; he couldn’t take a video. He didn’t have a television so news trickled slowly to him.

“When you are that age nothing bothers you, you know,” Stenso said.

From 1950 until 2025, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has documented 505 tornadoes in North Dakota, not including the deadly tornado that hit near Enderlin last weekend on June 20, killing three people: Michael and Katherine Dehn, both 73 years old, and 89-year-old Marcario Lucio.

In total, 29 people — including three from Friday, June 20 — have been killed in 12 tornadoes, and another 362 injured during all tornadoes in the state since 1950, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In the same time span, Minnesota has had 48 deadly tornadoes accounting for 100 fatalities, and 1,982 injured in all tornadoes. South Dakota has registered 84 deaths — from 66 tornadoes — and 845 injuries in the past 75 years.

After the June 20 breakout in North Dakota, the National Weather Service confirmed reports of tornadoes near Spiritwood, Valley City, Fort Ransom and Enderlin, a town of about 900 people southwest of Fargo.

The tornado near Enderlin was categorized as a F-3 on the Enhanced Fujita scale, with wind gusts up to 165 mph. The 1957 tornado was worse, damaging more than 1,300 homes, according to Forum archives.

The NOAA's database only includes information back to 1950, with the Enderlin tornado considered to be the state’s third deadliest tornado in the last 75 years. However, newspaper archives show reporting on other North Dakota super cell storms back as far as 1890, with tornadoes just as powerful and at least four even more deadly.

In 1890, a tornado near Fargo knocked 12 train cars on the Northern Pacific railroad off the tracks, injuring several people, according to The Fargo Forum. The same storm killed at least seven people in Minnesota and North Dakota.

Tornadoes were a large enough problem in 1899 that scientists began experimenting with setting off high explosives to divert a tornado's path.

“In this age the nature, causes and measured force of a tornado are problems no longer. The men in the weather department cannot yet check or prevent such storms, but they can and do foretell them with reasonable accuracy,” the Washburn Leader reported.

Several families near Ryder, North Dakota, narrowly escaped a tornado that touched down in June 1908. The storm flattened houses, barns, and “Postmaster Bye’s farm house was turned upside down but the tenants escaped injury,” according to the Bismarck Tribune and the Grand Forks Herald.

A “cyclonic storm” swept through northern and central North Dakota in May 1909, and the high winds and lightning killed nine people and left cities in ruins, according to the Fargo Forum.

In 1910, a “terrific tornado” swept north of Minot in June 1910, destroying farms, killing horses and injuring at least two people, according to the Ward County Independent.

Angry weather throughout the Midwest in 1930 killed 23 people in Missouri, Nebraska and Wisconsin, never touching down in North Dakota, but sent electrical storms and high winds across the state causing massive damage, according to The Fargo Forum.

A tornado landed along the northern section of the Badlands in McKenzie and Mountrail counties in July 1935, killing four people and injuring at least seven others, the Mandan Pioneer and the Grand Forks Herald reported.

In 1946, a “cool-headed village policeman” saved lives when a tornado howled down the main street in Wells, Minnesota in August 1946.

In 1947, a tornado killed at least seven people, first striking in Canada and then moving into North Dakota and Minnesota, according to the Fargo Forum and Grand Forks Herald.

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A crashed car and no sign of Ted Dengerud for 43 years

Dale Morin — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 16:59:53 GMT

BENSON, Minn. — It’s been more than 43 years since a man from rural New London, Minnesota, disappeared, leaving behind only the wreckage of his car.

Most surviving family members of Ted Dengerud believe he is dead. Neither the family nor the officer who has been re-investigating the case believe the 30-year-old husband and father walked away on his own.

Around 10:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 3, 1982, Ted Dengerud was apparently on his way from a supper club just outside Sunburg, Minnesota, to pick up his wife from her sister's house southwest of Sunburg.

His vehicle was eventually found, unoccupied, with a dented front end and smashed windshield on the driver side after it had apparently crashed into a small tree at the intersection of Swift County Roads 28 and 87 — roughly 10 miles northwest of the city of Sunburg and six to seven miles from the home of his sister-in-law.

According to Chief Deputy Mike Hoffman, who is re-examining the case for the Swift County Sheriff's Office, the crash location “doesn’t make any sense." Dengerud's sister-in-law lived south of Minnesota Highway 9, and his car was found at an intersection north of the highway.

Ted's wife, Denise, when interviewed by the West Central Tribune shortly after he disappeared, said he could have become lost on the way to her sister's home. She recalled instructing her husband over the phone that if he lost his way, he should go back to the supper club and call her, according to West Central Tribune archives.

Denise said her husband had not sounded angry or depressed on the phone when they talked that night. If anything, she said, he would have been in a good mood because he had gotten the job he had sought earlier that day in the Twin Cities, according to the West Central Tribune news article published April 8, 1982.

The known facts are familiar to anyone who has read the news accounts over the years. Ted Dengerud and his friend Robert Nelson left Ted's home on Norway Lake for the Twin Cities to inquire about potential construction work.

Ted's wife was home with the couple’s 15-month-old daughter, Tenille, and later drove to her sister’s home.

When Ted and Robert returned, they stopped at the supper club located at the intersection of Highway 9 and Highway 104. Ted called his wife and said he would come to pick her up. He eventually left the bar alone.

The last confirmed sighting of Ted Dengerud was when he stopped at a nearby farm along Highway 9, about 2.5 miles west of the supper club, to ask for directions.

Chief Deputy Hoffman, when interviewed June 12, said he has his own theories as to what happened, including the possibility that someone in another vehicle might have picked up Ted after the crash, but said, for investigative purposes, he obviously could not share much more publicly.

“What I will say is that I don’t think he’s out there,” he said. “I don’t think his remains are around or anywhere near Camp Lake. … The place was searched very thoroughly … and a lot of people farm the area, hunt the area, walk the area, canoe the area, and just the fact nothing has been found since then, it’s hard to believe. If he’s not out there, he’s obviously somewhere.”

A thick investigative file filled with old reports, hand-written radio logs and photos sat on Hoffman's desk when he spoke with the West Central Tribune earlier this month. He first began reviewing the case file in 2024.

He had seen a Facebook post made several years ago by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension on the anniversary of Dengerud’s disappearance, and he decided to do the same on the Sheriff's Office page on the 2024 anniversary.

He said all he did was essentially repost the short BCA summary of the case, knowing that most people within Swift County had at least some familiarity as Dengerud’s disappearance is “kind of an urban legend.”

The post ended up garnering more attention than he expected. Hoffman said he initially just read the comments, but as he began cross-referencing some of the more detailed accounts with the original reports, he began to notice that some of those names were not anywhere in the original case files.

He began contacting people directly and asking for as many details as they could recall. Hoffman estimates he has talked to close to 50 people, including Ted's family and friends, the officers who were involved in the original investigation, even the patrons and staff members who were at the bar that night.

Becky Dean, Ted’s sister, was 17 at the time. She told the West Central Tribune in a phone interview on June 13 that one of her most vivid memories is when her family was notified.

“They were supposed to come over on Sunday for dinner. They did that a lot at our house,” she said. “I can remember my dad sitting in this chair by the window that looks out to the driveway. He was just watching and sitting there all day waiting for him to pull into the driveway.”

Dean said it’s been a painful and emotional journey ever since Chief Deputy Hoffman notified the family he was re-examining the case, second only to those handful of days 43 years ago.

Hoffman feels fortunate to also have interviewed all three of Ted's brothers: Larry, Glenn and Les. Les died earlier this year, on April 12 at age 83, according to his obituary.

“When I first sat down with Becky and (Ted's) brothers, I told them that I’m not going to promise that I will solve this case," Hoffman said. " … But I can start the investigation from square one and fill as many blanks as I possibly can so that we have the most information possible that I can get from everyone still living.”

Dean and Hoffman remain in regular contact.

“The fact he picked (the case) up and decided to put time into it is huge,” Dean said. “It's sad for, you know, 40-some years with not a lot of action, so I’m very grateful to him for wanting to spend time on it.”

Hoffman has been constrained not only by the passage of time but also the challenge of “Norwegian silence,” a term he used to describe the Midwest mindset of minding one’s own business.

He pointed to the fact that Ted’s car is believed to have crashed around midnight, and the car remained planted against that tree, south of Camp Lake, for almost 18 hours. It was not until around 5 p.m. the next day on Sunday, April 4, 1982, that the vehicle was reported to law enforcement.

He was able to confirm that a lot of people passed by the crash scene throughout the day.

The likely assumption was "someone got drunk, (crashed) their car and then ran away because they didn’t want to get caught,” he said.

The chief deputy said he has come across new information and talked to others who didn’t initially make any reports to police, but he’s still looking to form a clearer picture and timeline of events.

Nothing promising or concrete ever came of the few tips from the public in the weeks immediately after Dengerud disappeared, according to Hoffman. But he believes he could be just one missing piece away from getting back onto the trail.

Whether it’s someone pointing him to another area he should look, a short exchange someone might have had with Ted or some other odd occurrence that could be relevant.

“The problem now is it’s been 40 years. And my own thought is I think that someone is sitting there who knows something and they’re probably thinking, ‘If I come out and say something now, I’m going to look (stupid or suspicious),’” Hoffman said.

“I want to think that person exists and I want them to come talk to me. If it’s to the point where you think you could have charges on you, grab a lawyer and come talk to us. We’ll figure it out,” he said.

Hoffman, early in his investigation, ruled out the theory that Dengerud, after the crash, may have taken the opportunity to run away. The family does not believe that either.

Dean said Ted might have come off as a “wild man” to those who didn’t know him well but that simply isn’t the case. He was described as soft-spoken but a goofy guy who was great to be around.

“He just loved to have fun. Everybody loved him,” she said.

Hoffman said he dug to "to get the dirt. ... A cold case of 40-plus years, I want to know everything. Even the not-so-good stuff." Did he rub people the wrong way, was there any turmoil in his life or in his marriage — but nothing of the sort has ever come up.

By all accounts, Ted was extremely family-oriented. He adored his daughter, and he and his dad were practically buddies, according to Hoffman and Dean.

“The theory of him skipping town, bailing on his wife and young daughter, and his dad … it doesn’t hold water,” Hoffman said.

Denise remarried a couple of years later and moved to Florida with her daughter. She now lives in Colorado, according to Dean.

Dean said she and Tenille, living in Florida with kids of her own, have been able to form a relationship.

“I talk to her on the phone often, and she comes home every year,” Dean said.

That’s one of the many reasons both Chief Deputy Hoffman and Ted’s family are wishing something will turn up this time around. They all want closure.

“That’s what keeps me going. … That’s the reason I want to get people talking,” Hoffman said.

The fact Tenille never knew her dad. Her kids never knew their grandfather. Hoffman said he hopes one day he'll at least have answers, good or bad, for Ted's family.

Dean told the West Central Tribune that most of the family at this point believes that Ted is no longer alive. She personally speculated that the crash was staged, and that he ran into trouble somewhere between the supper club and his sister-in-law's.

“He wouldn’t leave his family or friends. He had too many and they were too important,” she said. “That’s the hard part. If someone did kill him, I don’t know who that could be because I don’t know who would ever be angry at him."

Like Hoffman, Dean is confident that at least one or possibly more than one person knows what happened to her brother that night.

“If anybody knows anything, I would just plead with them to talk to Mike Hoffman,” she said, adding that after so much time, the family is no longer interested in “seeking justice” or putting someone behind bars.

“We just want to know where he is and what happened.”

Image and PDF Viewer

Click the image above to see a larger view of the April 8, 1982, clipping from the West Central Tribune.

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Click the image above to see a larger view of the April 20, 1982, clipping from the West Central Tribune.

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Click the image above to see a larger view of the June 14, 1983, clipping from the West Central Tribune.

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How a Halloween grave robbery led investigators to a dancer, two college students and a missing head

C.S. Hagen — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 14:55:00 GMT

WHITE ROCK, SD — As a senior in high school in 1969, Steve Johnson was a little bit of everything. He was a student and played wide receiver on the nearby Rosholt High �� football team. He helped embalm corpses at the local funeral home and drove ambulances. He worked the family furniture store business and he listened when a hysterical woman came in the day after Halloween.

“I was in the furniture store and we were unloading La-Z-Boys and this woman came in and she was really wound up. She said somebody dug up a grave at the cemetery. My dad said she was nuts, and I told him we better go out there anyway,” Johnson told Forum News Service in a recent interview.

The sight at Lake View Cemetery was true, and gruesome.

“We went out there and sure enough the grave was dug up, it was Halloween night they did this, and we called the sheriff and coroner. We buried this man. His name was Warner Wilson. He was a farmer and an old bachelor,” Johnson said.

“Usually, we buried people in cement vaults, but that was a wooden vault we used to bury him,” said Johnson. As he stood over the grave, he realized the culprits had to be close to home.

“Somebody had to have been at that funeral to know. They smashed that crate and took the head off,” Johnson said.

Johnson knew Wilson, a humble, elderly farmer and lifelong bachelor.

“We had buried him a couple years earlier, and this bothered me. The sheriff came out and the coroner, we took the body back to the funeral home in a body bag to try and find the head,” Johnson said.

White Rock

Wilson was born to Swedish immigrants, Swan and Hannah Wilson, who bought third class tickets on the S.S. St. Louis to Ellis Island, New York, in 1901, according to the U.S. Immigration records. Their ship was the same ocean liner that 38 years later brought more than 900 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi terror to American shores, but was turned away. Many of those on board were later sent to concentration camps, according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia.

A farmer, like his father before him, Wilson was 57 when signed up for the draft during World War II. By the 1950s, his younger brother, Ben, lived with him on the family farm passed down from his parents, and subsequent immigration records noted that they reported their birthplaces as Minnesota.

The township of White Rock, once a bustling frontier village along the Bois de Sioux River, which defines part of the border between Minnesota and both South Dakota and North Dakota. The town was named after a pale granite boulder lying near the Fargo line of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway.

Founded by Swedish settlers in 1884, it once had about 600 people who built churches, saloons, banks, stores and schools. When the railway moved, the businesses left.

By 1969, the year Wilson’s grave was unearthed, White Rock was nearly a ghost town. One watering hole, named Helen's Bar, was still open, and on the weekends it was a magnet for teenagers who hit the 18-year-old milestone from Minnesota and North Dakota, where the drinking age was 21.

“On certain nights of the week, two or three towns would meet in White Rock, and there were no police around. There could be 1,000 kids on the weekend there, they would come across the border to drink,” Johnson said.

The investigation

The Roberts County Sheriff’s Office told Forum News Service that they no longer had the case file on the grave robbing incident. The investigating officers, who have since died, spent two weeks investigating the incident, according to news reports in 1970.

Johnson remembered that one of the suspects was struck by a guilty conscience and confessed. Two students from the North Dakota �� of Science at Wahpeton, North Dakota, were given LSD or mind-altering drugs by a female nightclub entertainer who worked in Fargo, North Dakota, Johnson said.

“One of the boys, it was probably his conscience that got to him, came down off the acid, and he must have told somebody where the head was. It was out on a farm in an old shed,” Johnson said.

News reports at the time made no mention of why the head was taken, but Johnson said the crime was committed for a satanic ritual.

“She was a witch, she was into devil worship. She wanted that head for rituals. Those poor kids ... were stupid," Johnson said. "I’m sure she was cute. She found a couple kids, and I think their testosterone was going pretty well."

The two-week investigation started in a Wahpeton nightclub “first as a heckling of the girl’s act and then as a dare that magnified into a bizarre action,” The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead reported. Police arrested Eddeana Belle Wood, 22, Colorado Springs, Colorado, the Fargo night club entertainer better known as “Dusty” Wood; along with two college students.

All three were charged with “wanton and malicious removal of part or all of a dead body,” according to the Grand Forks Herald.

The trio were sentenced in South Dakota to serve two years probation and ordered to repay $1,090 in costs for their grave robbery.

“The three admitted entering a rural White Rock, SD, cemetery in the early morning hours last Oct. 30 and opening the grave of a man buried there. The head of the corpse was recovered several days later at a vacant farm near Breckenridge, Minn.,” The Forum reported on June 12, 1970.

The head of the corpse was about 80 years old, according to The Forum. A mound of fresh dirt attracted the attention of a passing farmer. “No attempt had been made to cover the coffin,” The Forum reported.

After their arrests, they all had to pay $2.50 per day for room and board while at the Roberts County Jail in South Dakota.

“It was sad. That poor man was very humble," Johnson said. "I knew him. And to have that happen is just sad."

Johnson continued: “Everybody knew what happened, and I don’t think they knew what to do with these guys. It sounds far-fetched, but that’s what drugs will do to people.”

Three years later

Wood was caught in a “large round up” of known drug offenders in Fargo in October 1972, according to The Forum.

Wood, whose last name had become Iverson, was caught selling amphetamine tablets, and was sentenced to one year in jail.

She spent part of her sentence aboard a state-owned airplane after Judge Ralph Maxwell sentenced her to the all-male North Dakota State Farm in Bismarck, North Dakota, a place where those found guilty of misdemeanors would sometimes go and work. The farm was renamed the Missouri River Correctional Center in 1991, according to the State Historical Society of North Dakota.

Before she could get settled in on the 45-man dormitory — which had no separate services for women — Robert Landon, the warden at the North Dakota State Penitentiary, sent her and another woman by car to a women’s prison in Yankton, South Dakota.

Not long after, Landon had to answer for his decision to Maxwell in court, and said if he had the chance to change his decision, he still would have sent them away, according to multiple newspaper reports in March 1973.

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In the early 1950s, every golfer had a chance to beat Ben Hogan

Rob Beer — Thu, 19 Jun 2025 14:55:00 GMT

Seventy-five years ago, amateur golfers would have wished for a chance to play golf with Ben Hogan. That doesn’t mean in 1952 they couldn’t beat him.

Hogan, one of the best players in history, helped sponsor “Ben Hogan Day” along with Life Magazine as part of National Golf Day on May 31 that year.

For a dollar, they could match scorecards against Hogan, the two-time defending U.S. Open champion. Hogan would be playing the Northwood Club in Dallas, the site of the upcoming 1952 U.S. Open, while golfers from around the country would be playing their private or municipal courses.

But there’s a catch.

Amateur players would be able to use their golf handicap to adjust their final score. Those with established handicaps would subtract that number from their 18-hole total. For those who didn’t have handicaps, the Callaway system was used.

Using Callaway, a golfer shooting 75 or less would get no deduction. A score of 76-80 would allow for the worst hole to be subtracted, while those shooting 81-85 would be able to take off their worst hole plus half of the next worst hole score rounded up.

Golfers who shot lower or netted a better score than Hogan would receive medals saying, “I beat Ben Hogan.”

Proceeds from the $1 entry were split between the United Defense Fund and the National Golf Fund. U.S. military stationed around the world were eligible to enter, too.

The May 29, 1952 edition of the Fargo Forum previews "Beat Ben Hogan Day." Newspapers.com. Click on image for link to original story.

“The one golfer I have the greatest respect for is the weekend golfer,” Hogan said. “He is a man who shoots in the 80s, 90s and 100s, but is always in there trying, whenever he can spare the time.”

It proved to be a popular event in the Upper Midwest. Women were encouraged to play too — albeit the following day — and use their full handicap plus an additional five strokes.

The flat-cap wearing Hogan expected to beat about one-third of the field.

For the event, Hogan toured the 6,811-yard Northwood Club in 71, the course par. With temperatures in the high 80s, the champion golfer played in three hours with 1,500 fans following him around the course.

How many would win medals?

Nearly 44,000 players out of approximately 300,000 entrants across the country netted a better score.

Ten golfers in Fargo-Moorhead beat Hogan, the Fargo Forum reported. In the Twin Cities, 86 players beat Hogan, according to the Minneapolis Tribune. In Duluth, nine players had winning scores and three won in Albert Lea, the Albert Lea Tribune said.

Five-handicapper Jim Werre shot a 70 for a 65 net at Fargo Country Club. The lone female winner in Fargo-Moorhead was Nonie Haefer, whose 68 net at Edgewood was plenty to defeat Hogan.

Other F-M winners were Leo Kossick Sr. 77 (66), John Wooledge 72 (67), S.M. Houkom 90 (67), Marvin Doherty 81 (67), Onward Berget 87 (68), Bill Swanston Jr. 77 (69) and Manny Marget 105 (69).

In Duluth, John Berglund of Ridgeview Country Club had a 97 with his 30 handicap for a 67. Also at Ridgeview, West Neustle had a 69, Bill Schuster 70, Bob Magie Jr. 69, Bert Payne 69, Earl Mitchell 68, Charlie Bell 68 and Jack Irvin 68.

At Northland Country Club, Davis Bradley had a 70, the only golfer of 32 at the course to beat Hogan’s score.

The Minneapolis Tribune said 16 metro-area courses reported scores for 1,059 total entrants. Peggy Dulleck was the only woman to beat Hogan, scoring a 66 net after subtracting her handicap from her 108 total.

Even Joe Coria, who would win the Minnesota State Open for a seventh time later in 1952, earned a medal with a 67 gross. Bill Waryan, the 1950 (and later 1957) state open winner, had a 69 gross.

In 1953, Julius Boros, the winner of the 1952 U.S. Open, challenged all golfers to beat him in a similar event. When Hogan won the open again in 1953, the third and final event took place. He shot a 64, making it a difficult score to beat.

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As newspapers preserve their history, how are you preserving yours?

Rob Beer — Thu, 29 May 2025 15:05:00 GMT

After several months of writing the “Sports Time Machine,” it’s been incredible to turn through the archives of our company newspapers with the ease of a mouse click.

Forum Communications has dedicated itself to preserving its newspapers, some going all the way back to the late 1800s with our first microfilm rolls. And yes, you can have access too through Newspapers.com.

There’s a magnet on my family’s refrigerator that I bought at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., years ago. It reads: “Journalism is the first rough draft of history,” a quote by Philip Graham, the former publisher of The Washington Post. Graham was born in Terry, South Dakota, and was the husband of Katharine Graham, who eventually took over the paper and was influential during its Watergate reporting.

Newspapers and other media are the world’s thread to its past. The internet just needed to catch up.

We no longer have to load and listen to the whirling spindles of microfilm in the office or a library; the ability to search our archives is an amazing accomplishment.

Anyone searching our newspapers — more and more titles are being added monthly — will notice a trend. More photographs. Early newspapers were most likely to use some kind of sketch for illustration. Cartoons were popular too.

As newspaper photography increased, so did the size of the photos. Larger photographs became the norm in the 1980s. Color photographs began to appear more frequently in the 1990s, along with a plethora of photo illustrations and graphics.

Those of us in our 50s or older have lived through quite an array of methods of music delivery. Radio, 8-track, cassette, CDs, MP3s and streaming. Photography is much the same, from film to digital cameras to cell phone images that serve most needs.

Our company has used a variety of image storage methods, from cross-referenced negatives in the film era to storing our archives on our website platforms.

As for your family, it may vary. Do you still favor printing your digital photos and displaying them in albums? Do you share your photos electronically? Do you spend some time and create online albums for easy reference? Do you hope your Facebook account with your thousands of photos will be active long after you live?

A few years ago, I was listening to a radio show where the hosts discussed the storage needs of today’s technology. When families passed down grandma’s photo album, it was a sight to see. There could be a wrinkled and slightly faded photograph of her in 1935 next to her family’s new car.

Tomorrow, you might be sharing a 2 terabyte file with your grown-up children containing the 385,871 photos along with random screenshots of bills, grocery lists and documents.

Then, look ahead 50 more years, will your children add to your collection? Will they be paying $25 per month or more for online storage? Will they hand down 4 terabytes to their children to find that photo of your 2012 fishing excursion?

I take photos for my job, and it's become second nature to take hundreds of photos of my kids’ activities. Rare is the event I’m not shooting or videotaping one of my sons' events.

I’ve been told by another family member to live in the moment and enjoy their youth without the extra lens.

Someday.

In fact, when my oldest son played in the Red River Amateur golf tournament last year, I offered to be his caddie. He turned me down. He wanted the photographs (surely to post on the 'Gram instead) and a video or two for that TikTok platform.

I obliged, but please keep your tee shot to the right on hole No. 2, kid.

We hear a lot about retirement planning, but are there digital planning classes available?

Sign me up.

Believe me, we do our share of printing our cell phone masterpieces and sliding them behind a sheet of plastic. Those are still the best.

But as we talk about preserving our history, the question is, how are you preserving yours?

Share your comments below. I’d love to hear your digital plans.

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Hot laps to history, Donny Schatz recalls first race as a 15-year-old at Red River Valley Speedway

Rob Beer — Thu, 22 May 2025 14:55:00 GMT

WEST FARGO — On a chilly 50-degree night on the last day of April in 1993, Red River Valley Speedway public address announcer, the great Rod Miller, enthusiastically told an interning reporter that 15-year-old Donny Schatz would be running sprint cars for the first time at the track.

Thirty-two years later, this same reporter wanted to clarify something. So now I had to ask, was that Schatz’s first race?

“Actually, we went to two race tracks in Missouri,” Schatz told the Sports Time Machine. “My first laps competitively. The first track was in Sedelia, Missouri, it’s a big half mile, and just because we could go race in early April. Jefferson City and Sedalia were my first competitive laps.”

Today, Schatz ranks among the greatest in the history of sprint car racing. His 316 World of Outlaws wins are third behind retired drivers Steve Kinser (690) and Sammy Swindell (394). From his roots in Minot, North Dakota, and now in Fargo, the 47-year-old driver remains on the circuit with no thoughts of backing off the throttle.

The World of Outlaws returns to the Red River Valley with dates at River Cities Speedway in Grand Forks on May 30 and West Fargo on May 31.

Breakout Info

Dropping out of college “Was it the right decision? I don’t know if you can look back and say there was right or wrong about it. It doesn’t work out for everyone but it worked out for me. It was tricky and it was hard to navigate, but as I get older I wish I had more education for some of the business side of stuff, but it is what it is.” - Donny Schatz

A champion go-kart racer who received his regular driver's permit at 14 and license at 15, it all started when Schatz took some hot laps in Todd Mack’s sprint car at River Cities Speedway in the fall of 1992. That winter, Donny, along with his sprint car racing father, Danny, began to build a car.

Schatz said those two races in Missouri had limited fields and everyone raced the feature, but it was the experience he needed before the 1993 opener at the then half-mile RRVS track.

“To me, at that young age when I showed up at Red River Valley Speedway, it was very intimidating,” Schatz recalled. “Red River Valley Speedway had a massive crowd for a Friday night. They had 5,000 people on a Friday night so it was really a great stage and you look back on it and say, “Man, those were obviously the prime days in sprint car racing.’

“I didn’t know any of the guys I raced against. To me, they were all superheroes. I was just trying to make my way and fit in.”

Schatz did, winning his first heat ahead of veteran driver Mike Sitzmann and finishing sixth in the feature.

“Age has nothing to do with that guy,” Sitzmann said after claiming the feature. “He runs a really straight line.”

It was that trust he needed from his peers while handling a 900-horsepower sprint car that can exceed 100 mph, sometimes with cars within inches on all four sides and countersteering in the corners that makes it a spectacle.

An image from the May 1, 1993 edition of The Forum with the story of Donny Schatz's first race at Red River Valley Speedway. Newspapers.com. Click on image for link to original story.

As veteran sprint car driver Chuck Swenson of Watertown, South Dakota, said after that 1993 race, “If I was 15 years old, I’d be scared.”

Schatz wasn’t. Even in front of 5,600 fans on that opening night.

“The people don’t bother me, it’s the speeds and the quicker reactions you have to have,” Schatz said following his RRVS debut. “It makes you nervous every once in a while, but once I get into the car and get strapped down, I settle down.”

A few weeks later, The Forum printed T-shirts with Schatz’s first race on the front. Racing was enjoying its prime, and Schatz was loving every minute of it.

The physical aspect would come, saying after his first race he would need to improve his strength and endurance behind the wheel. The athleticism was there. He was named the most improved player at the University of North Dakota hockey school in 1987 and continued — though as he says with limited success — to play high school hockey in Minot until he graduated in 1995.

“I was not a very big guy,” recalled Schatz. “I was young and wasn’t fully developed. Sprint cars are man-handling machines, and I really wasn’t fit enough for it, but the fitness side of it is really mental toughness, but there’s a huge physical side to it too.”

Two weeks before the World of Outlaws would make its 1993 stop in West Fargo, Schatz wrecked his car. “We saved the motor and me,” he said at the time.

Schatz went on to win the Wissota Sprint Car rookie of the year award in 1993. By 1994, as Schatz put it, his father continued his encouragement even while opening up the Petro Stopping Center in Fargo. Money was tight, Schatz recalls, but Danny, who died in 2022 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer, helped his son’s team secure funding to set up a World of Outlaws run.

In 1994, he won the national Wissota championships.

Schatz had seven World of Outlaws starts in 1995 and 24 in 1996. He admits trying to finish high school and dreaming of his first victory on the big circuit were both vying for his attention.

“But my father and my mother (Diane) were pretty adamant that schooling is very important and you need to do it because you’re not going to get anywhere in life and I firmly believe that,” Schatz said.

He attended college for a year or so but dropped out, persuading his parents to believe he could make a living driving sprint cars on the Outlaws circuit.

An image from the Oct. 18, 2007 edition of The Forum with the news of Donny Schatz joining Tony Stewart's racing team. Newspapers.com. Click on image for link to original story.

“Was it the right decision?” Schatz asked himself. “I don’t know if you can look back and say there was right or wrong about it. It doesn’t work out for everyone, but it worked out for me. It was tricky and it was hard to navigate, but as I get older, I wish I had more education for some of the business side of stuff, but it is what it is.”

With additional help from Dick Bellerud and his family, along with Trace Walker at Blue Beacon, the Schatz No. 15 team was setting course for WoO in 1997. That season, he earned three top-five and 22 top-10 finishes in 82 starts.

He won his first WoO feature race in 1998. He peaked in 2015 when he won 31 times.

He’s had opportunities to move up. In the early 2000s, a minor league ARCA program had his attention — momentarily at least — for a possible NASCAR career. His reasoning was sound. He didn’t want to move to North Carolina, he didn’t want to invest more money for fewer races, and he had, in his mind, a lot of dominating years ahead of him in a sprint car.

Eighteen years ago, he joined Tony Stewart’s racing team. In 2021, he drove in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series event at Knoxville, Iowa. That was a one-time deal.

Today, Schatz is a 10-time season champion, second only to Kinser. In his own words, his career has been nothing short of remarkable.

While his wins since 2018 have dropped into the single digits, he feels fortunate to never miss a race due to injury. Yes, he’s had concussions, but the cars have become safer, too. He’s still driving the same frame since 2000.

When Schatz began racing, especially on that cold night in West Fargo in 1993, Kinser was “The King.” For years now, Schatz has been the face of the Outlaws.

“I’ve never really looked at it that way,” he said. “It was something I never signed up for, but I think that longevity run — and throw a little bit of winning in there — you find yourself naturally there. I’ve been the constant. I take great pride in that, and obviously, you’re not going to make everybody happy, nor is that the goal in life. There is no such thing, but I’m very appreciative of that.”

He's sprinted thousands of miles from that chilly night in West Fargo.

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