BLOOMING PRAIRIE

6 years later, Lois Riess, the 'Killer Grandma,' still baffles everyone

Matthew Stolle — Tue, 14 May 2024 11:31:00 GMT

BLOOMING PRAIRIE, Minn. — Up until she became the subject of a nationwide manhunt, Lois Riess was known around the town of Blooming Prairie, Minnesota, for everything she seemed to be — sweet and nice, bubbly and grandmotherly.

No one saw the qualities that would later earn her the nickname the “Killer Grandma.” In March 2018, Riess, grandmother of five, murdered her husband, David Riess, in their Blooming Prairie home. Weeks later, she killed Pamela Hutchinson in a Fort Myers Beach, Florida, hotel room, in an attempt to assume her identity.

Riess was on the run for weeks. And it was confusion over who Riess was and had become that allowed her to hide in plain sight for as long as she did, even as she left a videotaped trail of evidence of her whereabouts. She was videotaped and pictured at casinos, hotels and banks.

If the first murder was born of impulse, the second was one of cold-hearted calculation.

“One of the most bizarre cases I’ve ever dealt with,” said Fort Myers Chief State Attorney Rich Montecalvo in an interview last year with WINK News, a southwest Florida news program.

Six years after her murderous crime spree, a raft of documentaries and TV crime look-backs still grapple with how this cute, regular gal from Blooming Prairie did what she did.

According to authorities, Riess was a no-holds-bar gambling addict. No one outside her immediate family was aware of the hold it had on her. After gunning down her husband, Riess made casino stops even as she made her way south near the Mexican border.

She had stolen $100,000 from her sister to support her habit while serving as her guardian. After killing husband, Riess withdrew $11,000 from her dead husband’s bank account.

One theory is that Riess simply snapped. In a June 15, 2018, story for the Fort Myers News-Press, Dave Thomas, a forensic psychologist, theorized that Riess had become so addicted to gambling that it became an all-consuming preoccupation. Broke and with no way to sate her addiction, she was “fiending,” a term commonly used for drug addicts. She was desperate for a fix.

“When you get into serious financial trouble like that and there is no way out, at some point, your significant other’s got to go, ‘You know what? There’s nothing I can do for you,’ so you’re left on your own,” Thomas told the Fort Myers paper.

Tess Koster, a Blooming Prairie resident and a friend of the Riesses, described Lois Riess as having a “split personality” that switched from decency to darkness.

“She went from being a really nice person to being a monster,” she told Oxygen True Crime.

Riess later told a Minnesota court that she had killed her husband David, a worm farmer, during a fight on March 11, 2018.

He handed her a loaded firearm and told her to go kill herself and to “get it right this time,” according to Paul Blume of Fox9 news in the Twin Cities. Lois had tried to take her own life in the past, she told the court. Instead, she turned the gun on her husband and fired at his heart.

Later, she laid down beside him, closed his eyes and covered him in a blanket.

She had killed her husband with .22-caliber pistol. She left his body in a bathroom where towels were positioned to contain the smell of decomposition.

David didn’t show up for work for two weeks. His business partner asked for assistance from authorities. He became more suspicious when Lois sent him a bizarre text message, claiming that her husband became sick while on a fishing trip and was not to be disturbed.

Authorities found his body during a welfare check. Lois and his car were gone.

In killing Hutchinson, a look-alike stranger whose identity Riess hoped to take, Riess used similar tactics: The same gun, a pillow to silence the sound, towels positioned around the bathroom to hide the smell.

If the murder of her husband was incomprehensible, the killing of Hutchinson may have been preventable with less red tape and more communication between statewide jurisdictions, legal theorists suggest.

The reason: Authorities were made aware of where Riess was after she killed her husband but before she took Hutchinson's life. Koster spotted Riess outside one of their Fort Myers Beach, Florida, rental properties. Riess knew about the rental units because the Kosters had once invited the couple to stay with them.

Koster noticed a woman with a notebook in her hand, scanning house addresses. When Koster stepped forward to ask if she could help, Koster realized that the woman with the platinum white-blond hair was Riess.

Koster's heart skipped a beat. Keeping her head down and shaking it, Riess muttered “wrong house, wrong house.” Riess leaped in her Cadillac Escalade and drove off. Koster suspects that Riess was looking for a hideaway.

The Kosters called 911, but Lee County Sheriff authorities didn’t consider the matter urgent. Deputies told the couple that Riess was probably no longer on the island. And since Riess was facing theft and forgery charges, she was a person of interest, not a murder suspect.

A week later, the body of her second victim, Hutchinson, was found in a rented condo near where Koster had encountered Riess. Staff had gone door-to-door because of a water issue in the building. A stench coming from inside the unit led them to Hutchinson's body.

Riess attempted to assume her identity. Riess stole Hutchinson’s car and withdrew $5,000 from the dead woman’s bank account.

Surveillance video captured Riess with Hutchinson. The two were seen during a happy hour at a Fort Myers brewery.

It was then that authorities sprang into action. A murder warrant was issued. The U.S. Marshals Service joined the hunt. A $6,000 reward was offered for help in tracking Riess down. Wanted posters with Riess’s picture on them were tacked up, including at casinos.

She was captured and arrested at a restaurant in the resort town of South Padre Island, Texas. Authorities speculate that Riess was scoping the area for another victim. She had met a new acquaintance in South Padre. Days before her arrest, she had dinner with Bernadette Mathis, a 65-year-old woman she met in Texas.

Pleading guilty to the killing of Hutchinson, Riess was sentenced to life in prison. Extradited to Minnesota, Riess also pleaded guilty to first-degree murder of her husband. Riess is serving both life sentences at a women’s prison in Shakopee. There is no possibility of parole for her.

“I cycle between anger, regret and sadness,” said daughter Breanna Riess in a victim impact statement. “March 11, 2018 was the last time I hugged my dad and told him I loved him. I miss my dad more than words can describe.”

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Lorraine Brown blazed a trail for nurses, including the woman who became her hospice nurse

Matthew Stolle — Sat, 10 Oct 2020 14:00:00 GMT

BLOOMING PRAIRIE, Minn. — The day before Lorraine Brown died, her daughter, Jeanne White, took a picture of her mom with the hospice nurse who was caring for her.

In the photo, nurse Mindy Ohm is lovingly holding Brown's hand, bringing comfort and care to a patient in her last hours of life.

For White, the picture told a deeper, intergenerational story: How gifts and skills are passed on from generation to generation. How life often comes full circle.

Brown had been Ohm's inspiration for becoming a nurse in the first place. It was Brown who taught Ohm how to be a nurse.

Brown and Ohm first met more than two decades ago. Ohm was a young certified nursing assistant, and Brown was a veteran managing nurse at Saint Mary's Nursing Home in Austin, Minn. Later, after Ohm earned her nursing degree, Brown trained and mentored her.

"She was one of the nurses that made me believe that I wanted to be a nurse," said Ohm, now a registered nurse case manager for St. Croix Hospice. "She was the nurse I always strive to be."

Brown's path to becoming a nurse was groundbreaking for a married woman of her era. In the 1960s, focused on raising four children, Brown played the role of a traditional stay-at-home mom. But she yearned for something more.

Once her children reached school age, Brown jumped into the job market. She received her LPN license in 1971 when she was in her mid-30s. She earned her RN degree in 1978, the same year her daughter graduated from Blooming Prairie High ��.

Brown would blaze a trail for other women in the Brown clan. Like her mom, Jeanne was in her 30s when she went back to school to become a nurse. A sister-in-law and niece also followed suit. Brown believed that an education was "priceless," White said.

"She loved the nursing profession. Just loved people in general," White said of her mother.

Through the years, until her retirement in 2011, Brown worked at a number of medical facilities. They included Owatonna Hospital, St. Olaf Hospital, St. Mark's Nursing Home and Prairie Manor in Blooming Prairie, Minn., where she worked until she was 76 and later lived as a resident and then a hospice patient.

"She was one of the nurses that made me believe that I wanted to be a nurse. She was the nurse I always strive to be." " — Mindy Ohm

Last October, Brown took a fall and her health declined. She was taken to the Austin hospital. While waiting for word on her mom's condition, White began chatting with the nurses there. She mentioned that her mom once worked as a labor delivery nurse at Austin and Owatonna hospitals. If you were born between 1979 and 1996, in all likelihood, it was Brown who helped bring you into the world, White told the nurses.

The next day, Brown suffered a heart attack. White rushed to the hospital. Brown wanted to talk to her family before she was flown to Rochester.

"She wanted to talk to us before she left. When we got there, we're like, 'Yes, Mom, you need to go,'" White recalled. "As they were taking her down the hallway, the previous nurse that I talked to the day before said, 'We just all love Lorraine up here, and we decided that she was the one that delivered us when we were born.'"

Brown ended up living another year after that episode.

"She had that strong-will attitude that pulled her through that," White said.

In hospice care, Brown didn't instantly recognize her old protégé, since Ohm was in protective gear, including a face mask and goggles. But once Ohm mentioned St. Mark's and their work together, Brown remembered her.

"She had a very sharp memory," Ohm said. "She wasn't with us long (after entering hospice). But I think every visit from then on, we did reminisce for at least half an hour each visit. Just talking about people we knew."

Ohm had run into Brown only infrequently over the years. But Brown, even in her decline, was still the strong-willed, determined woman she remembered. She wasn't wearing the makeup she used to wear. Her hair was worn differently. She wasn't wearing scrubs. But she still had that "fire in her eyes, that thirst for life."

Early on in her hospice care, Brown told Ohm that she was struggling with the idea of her own mortality. But by her fourth or fifth visit, Brown told her that she was "ready, and I think my family is ready."

Ohm said she made a point of visiting Brown two or three times a week, but as the end neared, she visited more frequently. On the day Brown died, Ohm visited twice to make sure Brown was comfortable, that her pain was under control, and that staff was there to support her.

Brown, 85, died Sept. 10.

Ohm said she mourns Brown's passing but celebrates her life. Brown was a "remarkable lady" who lived the life she wanted.

"She was very strong and intelligent. My life is just one of the many lives she affected. I know many coworkers would say the same thing," Ohm said. "She helped them become the nurses and the people they are now."

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