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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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