CHRISTINE, N.D. — On Memorial Day 2025, Kathleen Forness and Lisa Camp walked the rows of headstones at Richland Lutheran Church Cemetery. They knew exactly where they were going.
They stopped at a small, granite headpiece. The grave was well taken care of, decorated with flowers and guarded by three ceramic angels.
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“Here she is. Oh. Someone has been here recently,” said Forness, before kissing her fingertips and placing them on a photograph of her daughter, Annemarie Camp, permanently embossed on her headstone as a young 22-year-old woman.
“She would have been 50 years old this year. Anniversaries like this are hard,” Forness said.
“Hair of gold, eyes of blue, you will always be our punky poo.” The phrase, created by her father, Doug Camp, who died in 2024, was chiseled on her headstone.
Annemarie was murdered on May 1, 1997, after neighbors — called the “babysitter killers” — decided she knew too much about a robbery they committed at a Super 8 Motel in Fargo, North Dakota, of January that same year.
She was more than a friend to one of her killers: Jamie Dennis-Gianakos. Annemarie also was the babysitter and the maid of honor at the Valentine’s Day wedding between Jamie and Michael Gianakos, partners in crime.
After the police questioned Annemarie about the robbery, Michael and Jamie plotted to bring her to a secluded rural spot near Sabin, Minnesota, drugged her on the way, then killed her with a shotgun, according to trial transcripts reviewed at the U.S. Courthouse in Fargo.
“She trusted them. I hate this is the way we have to visit her now,” said Lisa. She even misses the fights the siblings used to have.
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As sisters, Lisa and Annemarie would take walks together and listen to music. Anything from Guns N’ Roses was a favorite, but Annemarie’s number one song was “Sweet Child of Mine,” which she sang once — awkwardly — at karaoke, said Forness, chuckling at the memory.
A graduate of Fargo South High , Annmarie had been diagnosed as bipolar in ninth grade. She lived off of Social Security disability checks, and she was on medications, including sleeping pills, because she had trouble sleeping.
At 20 years old, Annmarie had a daughter, Kimberly, who was born in 1995. The father, Andy Betrosian, lived with her for a while, but they had a messy breakup, according to court testimony. He was one of the first suspects police investigated.
Forness and Lisa visit Annemarie’s grave often.
“May 1 is the grieving and Aug. 13 is her birthday, and we’ll bring her a little piece of cheesecake,” said Forness.
Jan. 27, 1997
Annemarie didn’t have many friends, so when Jamie and Michael befriended her, she trusted them.
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On the night of the Super 8 Motel robbery, Michael called Jamie and asked for help. She went across the hall to the Camp's apartment, where Annemarie was with her parents, and asked her to watch the kids. Then Jamie walked to Super 8, found him, and together they staged the robbery to make him look like the victim. "I helped tape his hands and a pillowcase over his head,” Jamie testified in court.
Michael took the stand in his second trial and testified that all he wanted was a stable family.
“We had some financial problems, I made a bad decision … I basically kind of panicked and I called Jamie,” said Michael, adding that they decided to make him appear the victim.
A few hours later, when Michael and Jamie returned, they “came home with all this money and they bought her [Annemarie] a pizza,” Forness said.
Moorhead Police Sgt. Bradley Penas was soon on the case, and Michael misdirected him toward other suspects. He interviewed Annemarie and recounted in court how Jamie watched as he knocked on her apartment door.
After police interviewed Annemarie, she came “and told me about it,” said Jamie. She said she didn’t know anything, but Jamie didn’t believe her; she was on probation and didn’t want to face an additional charge of probation violation.
Michael’s story soon crumbled, and he broke during a second interview.
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“Gianakos admitted to staging the robbery at the Super 8 Motel and taking the money himself,” said Penas, adding that he implicated Jamie at the same time.
With a trial date looming, Annemarie became a real concern, Jamie said in court. They needed to scare Annemarie away from becoming a government witness.
The missing diary
The jury’s decision during Michael’s federal trial came down to who told a more believable truth. He was tried a second time because — citing state matrimony law — his wife’s testimony against him in the first trial, in Minnesota, was overturned on appeal.
Jamie testified that Michael pulled the trigger, but they planned the murder together.
Michael’s alibi: he was at his parents’ apartment and had nothing to do with the murder.
For nearly two years, investigators scrambled for clues, offering a reward for information, but in September 1998, .
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Thinking his wife was cheating on him, he peeked into one of her diaries. Inside was a tale of murder.
“I came across the story of … a crime that was heinous and gruesome, and it gave gory details in there. When I finished reading it, a lot of things just clicked, and I thought, well, I thought that I was living with a murderer,” Michael testified.
“There were certain things in the story that just made sense at the time now, after a year and a half, two years … the girl was shot, the girl had been drugged. There was a shotgun involved. There was an inference that the husband would get set up in this crime,” said Michael.
“There was a knife involved, that had been buried, with the husband’s prints on it. That coincided with another fact in our house that there was a knife set purchased and … one of the knives missing,” said Michael.
“I felt my whole world ended. I was very distraught, and I didn’t know where to turn, and I turned to the only place I thought of, and that was my parents.”
Distraught, he told his parents about the diary entry. His mother, Alice Gianakos, turned the telephone over to his father, George Gianakos.
“I think she’s going to try to blame me for this murder,” George testified his son told him. He then turned to his wife: “We’ve got to go to the police with this.”
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The next day, George met Penas at the Hampton Inn and told him Michael’s story. From that day forward, police refocused their attention away from other suspects, including Betrosian, according to trial transcripts.
Clay County Sheriff’s Office Detective Bryan Lynn Green needed more proof.
“We knew that if the two parties were together, they were going to stick to their story … if we can separate them or if they get separated, then we have a chance,” Green testified.
They wiretapped Michael's telephone, recording 1,328 phone calls to him during a 60-day period in 1999. They began applying more pressure when Jamie went to prison, but still had no smoking gun.
The diary was never found. The shotgun was never found. The against her husband, and the fact that Michael was caught in multiple lies.
‘Anne is haunting me’
Jamie did keep diaries and wrote about how she was haunted by guilt.
On July 27, 1997, she wrote: “I’ve been thinking about Anne a lot lately. She never really leaves my mind. I feel so bad, so horrible, so shocked. I wanted to write down what it is that I’ve been thinking and feeling but I’m afraid to do so. I sometimes feel like Anne is haunting me. It frightens me, makes me think that I’m going crazy.”
The next day she wrote: “In the book I am reading it tells of a woman’s head being blackened by the sun. I wonder if Anne’s was, or did no sun reach the spot where she was found. I almost wish I could see a picture of her the way she looked when they found her — almost — but I am not positive. I don’t know if I could handle it. But would seeing it erase the other images from my mind?”
‘One could not have done it without the other’
The shotgun killing of their babysitter did not save the couple from prison. Michael pleaded guilty to the motel theft and was sentenced to 60 days in jail and a fine of $1,000. A jury convicted Jamie of aiding motel theft in January 1998.
During the Super 8 Motel trial, prosecutor Gregg Jenson told the court that Jamie was an evil, manipulating woman.
“Her record shows an increasing propensity to resort to criminal behavior to get what she wants … and if that’s at the expense of somebody else, that’s what she’s going to do if she thinks she can get away with it,” Jenson said
Before Michael’s first trial for Annemarie’s murder, Jamie pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment. She was released on June 21, 2016.
Michael was found guilty twice for Annemarie’s murder, and for a time during the federal trial, he faced the possibility of a death sentence. In 2003, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole after a jury found him guilty of kidnapping resulting in death.
Michael’s defense attorney, Rick Henderson, relied heavily on testimony from the family that he was at home on May 1, 1997, but the jury decided to believe his wife’s story.
said the family were liars because we were family. What do you call Jamie Dennis-Gianakos? She was his wife. Even though she was family to Michael her word was gospel whereas ours were lies,” said Catherine Birchem, Michael’s grand aunt, in a letter to The Forum in 2000.
In September 2024, through Minnesota’s Felony Reform Act, but a judge denied her request.
To this day, Michael maintains his innocence, saying his wife left to practice shooting the shotgun he bought that day, but she never returned home with the weapon.
“If my mom or my dad or my sister, brother, if anybody thought I’d done this, I wouldn't even have contact with them, they wouldn’t even talk to me,” Michael said in a jail interview with WDAY in 2000.
In a recent email to Forum News Service, Michael wrote that his daughters were his priority.
"I thought one time I did love her (Jamie), but then the longer the relationship went on, I guess, I don't know. She used me as a babysitter and provider," Michael wrote.
Forness believes that justice was served.
“They told us right away that whoever came forward first would get the best deal. I think Jamie told the truth as best she could. Michael definitely was lying. But one would not have done it without the other,” Forness said.
“We were lucky; we found Anne,” Forness said. “I just hope their lives are better. If I keep holding onto hate and grudges that doesn’t do me any good.”
Note: This is the second of three parts. In part three, learn about how Michael Gianakos’ family has fought for two decades to prove he is innocent and regain his freedom.
Read Part 1
Read Part 3
The Trust Project
