00:00:00
Tonight on Dateline. You could see her window and her light was on. And her curtains were blowing.
00:00:09
I knew she was laying up there, but there was nothing I can do. I just immediately, like, collapsed.
00:00:16
Who would hurt Mindy? The outgoing, fun, caring, compassionate girl that everybody loved.
00:00:22
We had some suspects that we were looking at. Clearly you want to talk to those neighbors.
00:00:27
Absolutely. I knew her in passing. I helped her out to her apartment. You have to look at Jordan, the current boyfriend.
00:00:33
We interviewed her ex-boyfriend, Kyle. His father was still talking to Mindy, interacting with her.
00:00:38
I don't understand the relationship that you have with her. But an ex-boyfriend's father, that's odd.
00:00:45
Very odd. Just a totally big mystery of who this person was. Who are they after next?
00:00:51
He thought he got away with the perfect crime. Mindy's the one that helped us catch this guy.
00:00:55
she was not going to go down without a fight a young college student murdered in her apartment
00:01:03
and the clue that cracked the case is one she left for investigators i'm lester holt and this is
00:01:11
dateline here's keith morrison with who killed mindy morgenstern Mindy Morgenstern was the type of friend everyone needs.
00:01:32
A good listener, generous with advice, and always willing to stand by her girlfriends.
00:01:39
She was just always there, and you could tell her anything. She was never judging.
00:01:44
The kind to help you out of a bind. And Mindy's friend, Tony Bauman, was in a fix
00:01:50
as she sat at a bar outside of Valley City, North Dakota. It was a September night in 2006.
00:01:58
Mindy was at home while Tony was out with another friend, Danielle. We ended up going out.
00:02:05
Had a couple drinks there. Had some drinks. The problem was Tony's boyfriend. He didn't like Tony out at bars with certain girlfriends like Danielle.
00:02:16
He liked Danielle, but we actually got into trouble. Then Tony's boyfriend called, and she came up with a little cover story.
00:02:25
I said, oh, I'm with, we're with Mindy. We're just, you know, hanging out. Mindy was the good girl, the safe friend, the college senior who lived off campus but still followed the rules.
00:02:38
She was a good person, knew, you know, she didn't drink a lot, she didn't do drugs.
00:02:43
The boyfriend thought something was up, asked to speak to Mindy. So Tony and Danielle headed to Mindy's apartment.
00:02:51
I said, Danielle, we need to let's hustle up and get to Mindy's faster so we can drag her out so she can be in the background.
00:02:58
She's your alibi. She was my alibi. You're phoning her along the way? Uh-huh. And she didn't pick up?
00:03:04
Mm-mm. Hey, it's Mindy, and I'm not here right now. Hey, Mindy. Hey, Mindy, it's Tony.
00:03:10
Hey, Jamie, trying to get a hold of you. Um, I heard my call. Me right away. When they arrived, Danielle stayed in the car.
00:03:19
Tony went in, up the stairs to Mindy's door. For some reason, I knocked, and then I just grabbed the door handle, and it just pushed open.
00:03:29
And I took about two, three steps in, and that's when I noticed something on the floor.
00:03:35
And then I looked down, and I noticed it was Mindy. And I saw her eyes, and that's when I knew that something bad had happened.
00:03:42
Tony came running back out, and then she was screaming. Neighbors heard the commotion, and pretty soon a guy from another floor came to see what was going on.
00:03:52
I just said, could you come with me and check on my friend? And I took like two, three steps in maybe, just enough that I could see all of her.
00:04:02
I backpedaled as fast as I could. I remember I backpedaled until I hit the hallway wall.
00:04:06
I think he checked for a pulse, and he just said, you know, I'm sorry, friend. I'm sorry, but your friend is gone.
00:04:13
and I just noticed that, like, I don't know, her throat had been cut and it was obvious.
00:04:21
You kind of so imprinted on your minds, both of you. Yeah. Even if I lose my mind, I think I'll probably never lose that day.
00:04:31
That day, when their whole idea of life and how it was supposed to go collapsed,
00:04:39
they managed to call 911. and then the phone rang at the home of Police Sergeant Dave Swenson.
00:04:48
Dispatch called and said they're not sure exactly what they've got. The caller that called it in was really hysterical and upset.
00:04:56
They told me the address and asked if I would just run over there because where I lived, I was only a block from the apartment building.
00:05:05
One of those rare occasions where you can actually walk to a potential crime scene.
00:05:09
Yeah. He arrived to find Tony and Danielle outside the building. The girls were pretty frantic and said,
00:05:16
she's down here, and they showed us where the apartment was at. But before he'd even opened Mindy's door,
00:05:21
he sniffed a pretty obvious clue in the air. I could smell and odor of pine salt.
00:05:27
As soon as I went into the apartment, it was very strong. And then... And I saw her laying on her back.
00:05:33
There was a knife that was still in her neck. The handle was broke off. There was another knife right next to her that was broke.
00:05:40
What's it like to encounter that? It was pretty, pretty horrific. A young woman, a college girl, dead that way.
00:05:49
Yes. Valley City is a small community, and for me, I worked a lot of college dances,
00:05:54
so I knew who she was Didn know her personally But you had seen her before Oh yeah Oh yes Alive and well Oh yes After all Valley City is a small college town
00:06:08
A relative dot in this great flatland. Where summers are brief and winters long and unforgiving.
00:06:16
And people tend to look out for each other. So right away my mind changed to, let's find out who did this to try to get justice for her.
00:06:25
Sure. Yeah, and her and her family. Mindy's family. Almost 200 miles due west in Little New Salem, North Dakota,
00:06:34
Mindy's sister Rebecca and her husband Jason received a visitor. Around 11 p.m., a deputy the family had known for decades,
00:06:43
Rebecca could see his torment. He had a not-so-good look on his face. He was a very worried look.
00:06:50
And he said, I'm sorry to inform you, Rebecca, but Mindy's dead. And I remember I just immediately, like, collapsed.
00:07:04
The deputy didn't know much except that Mindy's death was no accident. Suspicious circumstances.
00:07:11
Suspicious circumstances, right. And that's all that they knew from the Valley City Police Department.
00:07:17
But now they needed to deliver the news to Mindy's parents. Rebecca and Jason followed the deputy
00:07:23
to the family farm. There was just no easy way to face Mindy's father, Larry, and her mother, Eunice.
00:07:32
I said, was there a car accident? And finally Rebecca said, Mom, that Mindy is dead.
00:07:41
And it was just like somebody took a spear and just put it right through me. Nobody should have to go through that.
00:07:49
No, they sure shouldn't. You were trying to figure out what happened. It was kind of, I don't know, an easy feeling not knowing exactly what happened.
00:07:59
Why would somebody want to hurt Mindy? This little apartment building was turning into a major crime scene.
00:08:06
And maybe the answer to that question of why, and more importantly who, was right there among the gathering crowds.
00:08:22
It was late at night when Ashley Wallace got the dreadful news. And I just remember just saying no, no, no.
00:08:41
Like, all I could say was no. Mindy Morgenstern was her childhood best friend. They'd grown up together, enrolled in the same college.
00:08:50
The news that Mindy was dead just couldn't be true. She headed to Mindy's apartment.
00:08:56
I saw her curtains. We parked by her. You could see her window. And her light was on.
00:09:05
And her curtains were blowing because the windows had been opened. And I just wanted to go in there so bad.
00:09:12
I was like, is somebody trying to help her? That's what I kept thinking. Is somebody trying to help her?
00:09:16
God. It's like I know she's up there and there's nothing I can do. Ashley wasn't alone outside, far from it.
00:09:24
Within hours of Mindy's murder, college friends, work friends, and neighbors gathered outside her apartment building wanting to know what happened.
00:09:33
The word spread so fast, within 30 minutes, there was a lot of people in the front yard of this apartment complex.
00:09:40
An outpouring that was no surprise to anyone who knew her, Mindy had always been a magnetic force.
00:09:46
She was the loud, energetic, welcoming gal. Becky Coos and Liz Klaimke met Mindy freshman year at Valley City State University.
00:09:59
She connected with everybody. She had, like we were Mindy's friends, but Mindy also had a hundred other friends on campus.
00:10:05
I think Mindy knew everybody on campus within the first week. My gosh, that's a special talent.
00:10:11
Yeah. She was a ray of sunshine. She'd been like that ever since she was a kid, growing up on the family farm with her three older siblings.
00:10:21
Jason married her sister Rebecca when Mindy was 12. Family dinner table was a huge deal,
00:10:29
and Mindy sat at the head of the table and would orchestrate the conversation and the laughter.
00:10:36
She sat at the head of the table? Yep. The baby. She definitely was the center of attention.
00:10:43
Mindy was her parents' happy angel, their youngest. Rebecca was born our biological daughter.
00:10:51
Then we decided to adopt Michael, our son. We had them for 10 years, and then we decided, well, let's try for two more.
00:10:59
My goodness. You're either a bear for punishment or you just love a big family, huh?
00:11:04
Yes. First, they adopted April from Columbia. She fit right in. When they found out April had a biological little sister who needed a home,
00:11:13
the Morgensterns welcomed Mindy too. Do you remember Mindy coming home? Oh yeah. She was so tiny and she had the biggest brown eyes that I've ever seen.
00:11:24
She giggled a lot and bounced off the walls. Very active little girl, liked to be outside.
00:11:32
On the Morgensterns' family farm, they milked cows, raised chickens took in stray cats
00:11:39
farm chores from dawn to dusk around town April and Mindy adopted from South America
00:11:46
stood out a bit of course I remember having to stand up to some kids on the bus one time
00:11:52
because they were giving her and my sister a hard time but I just put them straight I just said hey she my sister But it turned out Mindy didn need much help Cheerleader star athlete in track and basketball
00:12:08
clarinetist in the pep band. She even did some modeling. Ashley said Mindy's gift was making people happy.
00:12:17
Everything was funny and fun when Mindy was around. She was like a sister to me.
00:12:22
We could tell each other things. We both had a strong faith. Oh, yes. The other thing, the central thing about the Morgensterns, really, and certainly about Mindy.
00:12:36
She knew God loved her and that he was there for her. She knew who her maker was, and she was not going to let anybody tell her different.
00:12:45
It didn't matter what was going on. Sunday morning, she would wake you up and be like, come on, come to church with me.
00:12:50
Mindy's faith came with her to college. As well as her passion for fitness, she majored in physical education.
00:12:58
How many of you guys do exercise? You actually take time out of your busy day to exercise.
00:13:05
She wanted to be a coach. She wanted to be a mom. But now she was gone. And it would be up to the police to figure out why.
00:13:16
With Mindy's heartbroken friends and neighbors gathered outside the apartment building,
00:13:20
Sergeant Swenson saw an opportunity. I started collecting statements from everybody that saw her throughout the day.
00:13:27
The last person saw her at about 12.20 that day, walking out, heading home. And when you leave the college, it takes about five minutes to get from the college to where she lives,
00:13:39
because it's a small town. So, home by 12.30, then Mindy missed a phone call at 12.47 p.m.
00:13:46
And then a witness reported smelling the pine salt at 1 p.m. Just half an hour. That was the window.
00:13:54
That's when this crime took place. Everything lined up. Things were lining up, and what didn't line up is why or who could have done it.
00:14:04
Maybe a clue was right there at the crime scene. There's picture frames with pictures removed.
00:14:11
It makes you wonder, you know, what's this all about? Missing photos of Mindy. What did that mean?
00:14:33
Mindy Morgenstern's off-campus apartment was now a crime scene. This apartment is on the second floor.
00:14:41
The little one-bedroom where as a college senior she lived by herself. A fact that was itself a bit remarkable.
00:14:48
If you knew Mindy, the born extrovert. And I recall when Mindy moved off campus into an apartment by herself, we all kind of joked.
00:14:57
We said, you alone? Alone? Living by yourself? Mindy? Yeah, that's what she wanted.
00:15:04
Not just what she wanted, but what she needed. During her freshman year, Mindy received a life-changing diagnosis.
00:15:12
The doctors came in and told her they were pretty sure she had MS to deal with it,
00:15:20
and so she just accepted it. She would not let it bring her down. She didn't want pity for it.
00:15:25
She wanted to be part of the clinical trials. They don't have a cure for this, and I'm going to be part of this clinical trial.
00:15:32
so someday I can help somebody else. The trial meant Mindy had to get infusions of an experimental drug.
00:15:40
She moved to the apartment for her health. Did she feel safe in that apartment of hers?
00:15:45
Yes, she did. She did because she said there's a couple police officers that live around the building.
00:15:52
A correctional officer lived in the building too with his wife Chrissy. And on the night of Mindy's murder,
00:15:57
they of course noticed the police lights outside their window. He went out to kind of see what was going on and came back in and said that somebody had been killed.
00:16:07
I went into sheer panic. Chrissy and her daughter and husband left right away for her parents' house.
00:16:14
My husband, he kind of just wrapped me up in his arms and we laid there. I didn't sleep a wink.
00:16:20
It was going to be a long night for the officers at the crime scene, too. Sergeant Swenson, who'd responded to the 911 call,
00:16:28
knew his department was going to need help. His boss phoned the state's investigative unit.
00:16:33
They called BCI, which is the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, to assist us with this, because this is what they do.
00:16:39
Specifically what Mark Saylor, now a retired BCI agent, did. What did you think when you got there?
00:16:46
I could certainly see why they called me. Mindy's death was cold-blooded. Overkill.
00:16:52
What really caught my focus right away, I guess, would be the two knives. There was also a belt wrapped around the neck.
00:17:06
The killer left one final touch. That pine saw Sergeant Swenson smelled. Mindy was doused in it.
00:17:14
The pine saw bottle was laying in the crook of the arm of Mindy Morgenstern. Was it to deface the body or was it to destroy any evidence that would have been left there?
00:17:28
And you have to figure out what to do and where to go next. Well, first thing I did was realize that I was going to need some more help.
00:17:36
Sometimes the backup needs backup of their own. Agent Saylor called Arnie Rummel and Cal Dupree, two BCI agents who were often paired up on the difficult cases.
00:17:47
Yeah, Arnie was a crime scene guy and I was a stand-up, knock-on-doors guy, so it worked out.
00:17:53
They couldn help but notice Mindy was fully dressed so this crime didn seem like a sexual attack Or a robbery Her purse wallet and cell phone were right next to her body
00:18:05
Arnie was doing most of the real close analysis. He noticed that there was tissue in Mindy's fingernails
00:18:13
and made the statement that this is going to end up being a forensic DNA case. Whatever it was, we were going to find out what it was.
00:18:21
They wrapped Mindy's hands in evidence bags Said a prayer there'd be a shred of usable DNA
00:18:29
Sent her body off to the ME for a full autopsy And then investigators scanned Mindy's apartment and saw something
00:18:38
A bit surprising for a young college student Notes stuck up on the walls A particular kind of notes
00:18:47
There were notes around the apartment relating to God and how she wanted to be a good person.
00:18:55
And Mindy, who are a child of God, just notes to herself. Confirming a certain religious belief as well.
00:19:01
Yes. They also noticed picture frames, several of them, with the photos removed.
00:19:09
When you saw those pictures out there, did you connect? Maybe that had something to do with it.
00:19:15
We did think about that. we had talked about it. You know, is it somebody that thinks, you know, she's beautiful and I need
00:19:21
pictures of her and ended up taking pictures of her. Perhaps this aspect of the crime scene pointed
00:19:27
to obsession. It was close to dawn when Agent Saylor left the scene. He called in colleagues
00:19:36
from across the state to conduct interviews. Tony and Danielle, the friends who found Mindy's body,
00:19:41
had given statements to police at the scene. I was just trying to think and process
00:19:46
and trying to write down word for word what I could remember because I was like, well, I can't,
00:19:51
I don't want to say something wrong or mess this up. You were kind of in a fog. Yeah, I was kind of staring off at the apartment building,
00:19:58
like what happened. And investigators wanted to speak to another witness, that neighbor who'd gone into Mindy's apartment with Danielle.
00:20:08
Good afternoon, Robert. Good afternoon. His name was Robert Linz. He went down to the station to give his statement to Cal Dupree and another investigator.
00:20:18
They recorded it. Matter of routine. Until we get to the bottom of this, everybody, we're looking serious.
00:20:24
I bet you are, and I understand that everybody's looking a little harder at me, probably.
00:20:29
They certainly would be. Your hands are really cut up and stuff is cut down. How would he explain what investigators could see with their own eyes?
00:20:39
Just have a few questions, Robert. Investigators were speaking to one of Mindy Morgenstern's neighbors,
00:21:03
Robert Linz, the man who went into Mindy's apartment with her friend, Danielle. I personally think he's a good person because he came with me.
00:21:12
I mean, you have to eliminate everybody. Yeah, they did. By his own account, Robert looked out of place in Valley City.
00:21:20
Yeah, I got tattoos. I look a little different than everybody around here. I'm a farmer.
00:21:26
No, he was a Southern California transplant who'd blown into town a few months before Mindy's murder.
00:21:32
In that short time, though, he said Mindy had left an impression. I knew her in passing, seeing her every day, you know.
00:21:39
She was always friendly, and when she walked by, you felt her spirit, you know. You felt like, hey, that's a good person.
00:21:46
And yet, here at the police station, telling his story, neighbor Robert turned from eyewitness to person of interest.
00:21:55
And when I touched her arm, I touched her like this. He said he touched her with the back of his hand to feel for pulse.
00:22:03
Why? He said he had a criminal history in California and that he knew that he'd probably be looked at as a possible suspect.
00:22:20
Robert explained what had landed him behind bars. A man with a record who was concerned about fingerprints?
00:22:38
That was interesting. Investigators needed to know where he was in that pivotal window of time from 12.30 to 1 p.m.
00:22:45
How much work? No, it wasn't anything out of the ordinary. It was regular day work.
00:22:53
You work all day then? Yeah. You? Well, I take lunch break. What time do you get your lunch break?
00:22:58
I get my lunch at noon. Okay. And I can take up to an hour, but I usually, almost every time, every day, have to take a point for a time in your life.
00:23:09
Robert kept talking, and Agent Dupree kept looking. He had some cuts, scratches on his hands.
00:23:18
Your hands are really cut up and stuff. Is that normal from work? Yeah, this is an everyday thing.
00:23:24
Handling steel is difficult. Yeah, all day long, steel. I get cut pretty bad. constantly. We all do.
00:23:32
What's your finger there? What's happening there? You see you got a band-aid on it.
00:23:35
Yeah. I cut it today, right along here, on a piece of steel. Did Robert get those cuts at his job at a steel manufacturing
00:23:44
plant, or while stabbing Mindy? Would you be willing to submit some cheap Schwabs for...
00:23:52
Do you need any preparations? Sure. We're doing that with whatever we want. Absolutely. Absolutely.
00:23:58
Fingerprints, Schwabs, whatever you want. So at the end of the interview, he's walking away from you. What were you thinking?
00:24:05
I'm thinking, I'm going to really have to check this guy's alibi out. He was definitely a person of interest.
00:24:12
I think. First male around? Yeah. Stranger to the area. But investigators had other avenues to pursue as well.
00:24:21
One by one, they talked to Mindy's friends. An agent drove to New Salem, where her parents and siblings had gathered.
00:24:27
Mindy's mom Eunice was shattered, tormented by a thought. Could she have saved her daughter?
00:24:35
She had planned to visit Mindy the very day it happened, but at the last minute decided not to go.
00:24:42
You know, I talked to her the night before and she said, it's okay if you don't come, Mom.
00:24:46
I know you're tired and we had some things going on at home. She wrestled with guilt.
00:24:52
I really felt like I should be there and protect her. and I wasn't there when she needed me
00:24:59
and I had to really work through that. I just wanted to change it. I wanted to go back and make it different.
00:25:07
You need a rewind tape or something. Yeah. I wanted to rescue her. Still investigators had to know
00:25:19
if they had any ideas who might have done this to Mindy. I mean, she didn't have really any enemies, and so it just was hard to comprehend that somebody would want to take her out, you know.
00:25:34
But there was this one thing the family had heard about. Just weeks before the murder, Mindy had a scary encounter, and she called her old friend Ashley in hysterics.
00:25:45
I was saying, what's wrong? What's going on? Are you okay? And she was so beside herself.
00:25:52
She was saying, somebody was trying to take me. Somebody's trying to take me. And I'm like, what?
00:25:58
Mindy was outside her apartment when it happened. A man in a blue car, she said, rolled down his window, asked her for directions.
00:26:06
And then... The person put the car in park and got out of the car and was running towards her.
00:26:12
So she ran back in the building. She was freaked out. I remember Eunice telling her, just relax if you need to, call 911, you know, make sure you get a good description and call the police.
00:26:25
Mindy did file a police report. But back then, people in her life didn't know exactly what to make of it.
00:26:31
As outgoing as Mindy was, her college friends said, she also spooked easily. We used to joke that Mindy was scared of her own shadow.
00:26:43
It's an interesting combination, isn't it? Very outgoing, very bubbly, and yet timid at the same time.
00:26:49
Exactly, very timid at the same time. I remember thinking, oh, Mindy, you're being silly, you know, you're going to be okay.
00:26:57
She had a way of dramatizing things. Yeah, that seemed like she, I guess I thought she was over-dramatizing it.
00:27:04
But now that she was dead, investigators would look hard for that stranger in the blue car.
00:27:11
Well, at the same time, they needed to get to know the people closest to Mindy's circle.
00:27:16
People who loved her. And people she loved. Just not at the same time. Or maybe in the same way.
00:27:26
It's complicated, love is. Especially in a murder investigation. Time to talk to the boyfriends.
00:27:35
How did you play your last name again, Derek? Random, R-E-N-U-N. We appreciate you coming over here and helping us out.
00:27:41
You bet, John. It all but did them in, the loss of their Mindy. Over and over, Larry and Eunice Morgenstern replayed the last time they'd seen their daughter
00:28:06
on a recent visit home. And then, as she set out to return to college... Normally, we'd say, you know, goodbye and watch her drive down the road.
00:28:17
And she drove down the road and all of a sudden the car stopped and she backed up again.
00:28:20
And she came running back and she gave me a hug. And she said, Dan, I love you. And she had never done that before.
00:28:26
And that was the last time we'd seen her. Oh my gosh. Something was working behind the scene that something was going to happen,
00:28:35
and we didn't know what it was, and she didn't either. He hangs on to it even now, the moment as real as if it happened this very morning.
00:28:44
But back then, back on the awful day Eunice and Larry learned of her death, investigators were just beginning to wrestle with the questions,
00:28:52
who did that to her, and why? Anybody that we thought knew her much at all, we wanted to interview.
00:29:01
Like Mindy's boyfriends. What's the importance of boyfriends in a situation like this?
00:29:06
A lot of these type of cases, it's usually somebody that knows the victim pretty well,
00:29:10
and you always look at the boyfriend or a close friend or ex-boyfriend as persons of interest.
00:29:19
Mindy's boyfriend at the time of her murder was from a local farming family, Jordan Ranum.
00:29:25
They'd been together for over a year. Soft-spoken, clean-cut. Jordan zipped around town in a brand-new Corvette,
00:29:34
and his life, just like Mindy's, revolved around his faith. Went to the same church as Mindy.
00:29:40
I think that's where they met was at church. Pretty good kid. As far as I know, he had no criminal record or criminal history of any kind.
00:29:48
Jordan seemed completely devoted to Mindy. He chauffeured her everywhere. often took her home to spend time with his family He a wonderful guy Mindy was very outgoing always had to be doing something and Jordan was not that way
00:30:05
but he supported her and loved her so much. Maybe more than she loved him. What did you find out about the nature of that relationship?
00:30:15
I think there were a few witnesses that indicated that he thought there was a lot more to the relationship than she did.
00:30:22
So, a relationship out of balance? Wouldn't be the first time such a thing became a motive for murder.
00:30:29
Mindy's brother-in-law, Jason, had his own opinions. He thought Jordan had a jealous streak.
00:30:35
It was a bit controlling. Did you have ideas early on about who might have done this to her?
00:30:40
I felt like it was the jealous boyfriend. Was Jordan particularly possessive? In my opinion, yes.
00:30:47
There were times when she'd come out to visit the farm. He would show up unannounced and want to have her leave and go with him.
00:30:54
and she literally had to tell him to leave us alone. Jordan came in for an interview.
00:30:59
Investigators said he seemed eager to help them. We want to talk to you about the night before
00:31:05
and then take us right through the day, okay? Okay. We went out to stop and go. We got something to drink.
00:31:11
We rented a movie. Next morning she woke up. She called me at exactly 10.45. Jordan said they only spoke once that day
00:31:20
and that was unusual for Mindy. Jordan provided his whereabouts at the time of Mindy's murder.
00:31:36
He'd been working on the family farm. Investigators asked him for a sample of his DNA and if he'd sit for a polygraph.
00:31:44
He agreed. On September 13th, did you physically harm Mindy and cause her death?
00:31:50
No. He was so emotional during the whole thing that the polygraph result was inconclusive as to whether he was telling the truth or not.
00:32:02
You know, you're concentrating too much on your brain. I know, I know, I'm proud about that. I won't say this is stressful.
00:32:09
Was it guilt making him squirm? Or an all-encompassing, heart-crushing grief? Mindy's college friends, Becky and Liz, would surely have said the latter.
00:32:20
Did you ever think that he could have had anything to do with her death? I never did. I never thought Jordan.
00:32:26
I said no. There's no way. There was not any inkling that Jordan, never Red Flake, could have done that.
00:32:36
Investigators told Jordan he was free to go, and he did. They just had to verify his alibi.
00:32:43
But Jordan wasn't the only significant other. Kyle Kuznia was Mindy's ex, her boyfriend before Jordan.
00:32:51
He was definitely the love of her life. They really connected right away. He was very popular. He was athletic.
00:32:58
And he also was religious. He also had a strong faith, and he was your traditional boyfriend.
00:33:07
Kyle met Mindy when she was a freshman and he was a junior. They dated for two and a half years.
00:33:13
Kyle often went to the Morgenstern farm with Mindy, and the family liked him, embraced him as one of their own.
00:33:19
And he knew how to handle her, if she could be handled. He just had a really special way with dealing with her bubbly, outgoing personality.
00:33:32
And Mindy loved him a lot. She thought she would get married to him one day. She had her song picked out already,
00:33:38
a can and a D and the kind of dress she wanted. Oh, but young love. There would be no wedding.
00:33:47
More than a year before the murder, Mindy and Kyle broke up. And as breakups often do, it left raw
00:33:55
hard feelings in its wake. Investigators would have to look at the ex. Of course they would.
00:34:01
And then, well, what a bizarre direction things were about to take. leading to someone else entirely.
00:34:23
In one terrible day, this once safe, tranquil college town changed. It was like my life stopped.
00:34:32
I couldn't go anywhere and do anything because I had such bad anxiety. If you weren't safe in Valley City, North Dakota, you're not safe anywhere.
00:34:40
And Mindy, of all people, who would hurt Mindy? Like the outgoing, fun, caring, compassionate girl that everybody loved.
00:34:50
Hunkered down in Valley City's little police department, investigators were working hard to quell all that fear.
00:34:56
We appreciate you coming over here. They were talking to Mindy's ex, the man she thought of as the love of her life, Kyle Kuznia.
00:35:04
They asked for DNA and fingerprints. You have good teeth. Well, thank you. Kyle told them the story, a story anyway, about his life with Mindy.
00:35:16
They got to know each other, he said, homecoming weekend of 2002. I was crowned homecoming king, and after that we just had pizza
00:35:25
and just kind of hung out, I guess, for a couple hours. And it just kind of progressed from there.
00:35:30
The relationship lasted two and a half years, and Kyle described it as up and down.
00:35:37
It was, I guess, really hard and kind of a rocky relationship. It seemed like we were always arguing.
00:35:43
It didn't help when Kyle graduated and moved about an hour away. It wasn't very far, but...
00:35:49
She was always worried about me finding another girl or female down in Fargo, and I said you know it not going to happen I said you know obviously we together Still he said dating long distance was difficult There was work school other friends other guys around Mindy
00:36:06
all competing for her attention. The relationship did not survive. I said, I don't think it's working.
00:36:14
And Mindy? Mindy was brokenhearted, and Mindy wanted to do everything she could to make things right in the relationship.
00:36:22
She wanted to get them back. She realized they were young, and she always loved Kyle.
00:36:27
She kept saying, Jay, how can I get Kyle back? You know, he's the love of my life, and, you know, what can I do?
00:36:33
And she wanted to talk about that, but also about, you know, trusting that God had a plan.
00:36:41
Kyle moved on, met someone else, said he didn't talk to Mindy anymore. Except one night about seven months before she was murdered, he said,
00:36:50
she came by his place, wanted to talk. He wanted her to leave. I said, I don't have anything to say to you.
00:36:58
I said, please leave. And so finally she left crying that night. It sounded kind of ugly,
00:37:06
the sort of thing that gets a homicide detective's attention. But sitting there in the interview room days after the murder,
00:37:12
Kyle seemed to regret how he acted. Now looking back, I feel a little bad that maybe I could have handled it a little different,
00:37:19
I guess as far as maybe just letting her talk. But, you know, I just didn't know personally what, I mean, what else to do other than just say leave.
00:37:30
Have you had any other contact with her since then? No, that was the last time I'd ever talked to her.
00:37:38
But now, this was interesting. Kyle told them that Mindy had stayed in touch with someone very close to him.
00:37:46
His father, Rodney. Like him and her would continue to talk, and he'd call me and say, you know, well, Mindy's, you know, this is going on or this is going on.
00:37:56
Kyle Kuznia's father, Rodney, maintained contact with Mindy and would call her on the phone constantly, would come and visit her.
00:38:07
How often did he call her? Mindy's friend said that he would call several times a day.
00:38:12
and then you know sometime later it may be scaled back to you know several times a week
00:38:20
but never really never really quit it's kind of creepy kind of creepy that's a creeper yeah
00:38:27
Kyle told investigators he thought his dad was too attached to Mindy I even asked my dad to go
00:38:33
I said I would appreciate it I said you guys would stop talking I said what is it I said I don't
00:38:38
know what it's going to take for you guys to stop talking. Then Kyle told investigators his mother found out about all those calls and was alarmed.
00:38:47
She was obviously very upset with it. And she even said that that's wrong because obviously
00:38:51
he's married and he's, you know, talking to this other young gal. And I said, yeah, I truly,
00:38:57
I think it's wrong too, mom. The nature of Rodney's friendship with Mindy was a puzzle.
00:39:02
Was this a father-daughter thing? She genuinely liked the family. Kyle's dad, Rodney, was just like a father figure to her.
00:39:10
It was odd. I can't say what his intention was, but I know for Mindy, that's all it was.
00:39:17
It was a way to keep somewhat connected to Kyle. So how would this much older man explain what investigators thought looked like an obsession with the young college student?
00:39:30
Did you bring him in? Yes, the investigators did bring him in. What he had to say.
00:39:35
Stranger and stranger. I'm sorry that's happened that way. That was you. Oh, God, I'm going to miss you.
00:39:58
In the days after Mindy's murder, investigators talked to neighbors and men she dated. They looked into her friendships.
00:40:05
Now they had their antenna up about Rodney Kuznia, Mindy's ex-boyfriend's father.
00:40:12
They brought him in for questioning. Make yourself comfortable. For starters, the obvious question,
00:40:19
why was he so attached to his son's 22-year-old ex-girlfriend? I don't understand the relationship that you have with her
00:40:27
after your son broke up. Well, you'd have to know, Mindy. She was quite the bubbly character.
00:40:34
I mean, her actions and her... Well, but it's what she reminded me so much of my wife in her younger days.
00:40:42
In the beginning, there wasn't much. There was no big deal. Once a week, maybe, we would chat a little bit.
00:40:50
It's hard to catch her at home because she had an answer machine. Rodney said at first he and Mindy usually talked about Kyle.
00:40:58
She always, you know, brought up my son's name and was wondering if he was still...
00:41:04
Oh, the chances of them getting back together again were still good or not. But soon they talked and texted all the time, but all kinds of things.
00:41:13
They didn't stop even after his wife found out. Rodney remembered that differently from Kyle.
00:41:20
She didn't care? No. I told her, I said, it's a friend. She didn't need a friend.
00:41:25
I said, here, take your friend away from you. And I think even my son Kyle understood because he knew what he talked about.
00:41:32
He said, you were still talking. I said, yes. He said, you felt it was worth talking.
00:41:36
It was okay. Friendship? Father figure? What? Rodney said he tried to pull away from Mindy, but it was complicated.
00:41:45
She knew it was like a father-daughter relationship deal, but yet she wanted to stop, too.
00:41:51
And I just couldn't let her go. I said, do you want me to quit calling him? And she goes no no no no don do that So that if she would have said yeah I would have let her I would have let her go But she never did say anything
00:42:05
She did a lot of things to tell you guys. You heard it, and my wife would probably divorce me.
00:42:10
I guess she would find out. What did that mean? Investigators kept him talking. Rodney revealed he met Mindy for meals.
00:42:22
And just before she was murdered, he gave her $100. She was supposed to be buying down to her brother's wedding in Washington.
00:42:31
Short of money. She didn't want to accept it. And I said, well, if you don't accept that, I said, I'll go.
00:42:34
I'm going to threaten her. I said, I'll go spend it on booze. I'll go spend it tomorrow.
00:42:38
And then she took it right away. She thought it was $20. Yeah. And she opened it up.
00:42:42
And she said, oh, you, you know, don't do that. And I said, it's your money. I said, I'm trying to help you out, dear.
00:42:47
I said, like my little daughter. I said, I thought my daughter was the same way.
00:42:50
He'd give her money. He'd even tried to make special trips to Valley City to see her.
00:42:55
Not exactly appropriate to have that sort of relationship with your son's ex-girlfriend.
00:43:00
No, it sure didn't seem appropriate to us. You know, kind of a strange way he handled all those things.
00:43:06
Rodney himself said, well, I felt like she was like another daughter to me. But, you know, even at that, it was very strange. Very strange to us.
00:43:19
Rodney said that when he heard the terrible news, he was distraught. And he just wanted to talk to Mindy one last time.
00:43:27
Mindy, this is Rod. Rodney dialed Mindy's number, left her voicemails after she died.
00:43:34
I know what happened to you. It's not fair to hear your voice. Can't take it. I love you, kid.
00:43:44
I'm sorry that's happened that way it happened to you. or not to miss you. For investigators, those emotional voicemails
00:43:55
didn't make Rodney any less suspicious. Maybe even more. And while investigators didn't think Mindy
00:44:02
was romantically involved with her ex's dad, it sure seemed possible he had become
00:44:07
dangerously obsessed with her. Rodney gave investigators his DNA and they asked him again and again
00:44:17
about his whereabouts that day. You got up what time? I left after my wife left work.
00:44:22
She left sleep for like 7.30, about 25 after 7. You drove the two miles to the park.
00:44:26
Right. And who is that son now? It would have been Kirk, my son. How did you get to the shop?
00:44:33
Walk. Anybody go with you over there? That's what I'm trying to remember. Over two hours, Rodney gave an almost minute-by-minute account of the day.
00:44:45
Now the agents had to run it all down. Was this the answer to their mystery? Or was the killer lurking about somewhere else?
00:44:55
Maybe right there, bold as can be, at the young woman's funeral. They had to use the New Salem School gym for her funeral.
00:45:21
So many wanted to just be there for Mindy Morgenstern. There must have been over 1,000 or 1,100 people in the gymnasium that day,
00:45:32
standing room only, out the doors, which was a tribute. So remarkable in a small town with that many people.
00:45:40
Mindy's brother-in-law, Jason, is a pastor. He led the service, reminded people of what Mindy believed in so strongly,
00:45:48
that her life and whatever happened after was in God's hands. I can guarantee you today, you know.
00:45:58
I think that the funeral was the hardest part because it was permanent. I don't know, I guess part of me up to that point thought that it was just a nightmare that we were going to wake up from.
00:46:09
Here, grief and unanswered questions hung together in the air. And attentive investigators watched for what they didn't exactly know.
00:46:25
We assigned people just to take pictures of people that were there, take video, to see if there was anybody that reacted in a strange or unusual way.
00:46:36
Got nothing out of that, though, I'm assuming. Nothing that stuck out as extraordinary,
00:46:42
but we were still scrambling, looking for who might have done this. While some investigators checked out the people closest to Mindy,
00:46:52
others focused on a slew of random people who may have encountered or who did encounter Mindy.
00:46:58
We ended up with approximately a dozen Bureau of Criminal Investigation agents conducting interviews and chasing down leads that were coming in.
00:47:11
Leads like Tony's boyfriend, the one who checked up on Tony the night of Mindy's murder.
00:47:17
Even though he liked Mindy, she didn't think much of him and thought her friend could do better.
00:47:23
She wasn't mean or rude or said, I hate him. She didn't like the fact that I was dating him
00:47:28
and she always wanted me to break up because he just wasn't... Wasn't good to you?
00:47:33
No, he wasn't good to me. The friends had told us that Mindy didn't care much for him and didn't like her friend dating him.
00:47:40
Well, would give him a motive to be mad at her, I guess. Yes. Investigators brought Tony's boyfriend to the station.
00:47:48
He said he'd never talk much to Mindy, but she always had a smile on her face. He didn't seem aware of how Mindy felt about him.
00:47:57
But could he prove where he was? During the hour, police believe the murder happened.
00:48:04
He had a pretty good alibi as to where he was. He had community service or something because he'd committed some sort of offense?
00:48:12
Yeah. Well, occasionally even our bad deeds will come back to help us. Sometimes.
00:48:18
But what about all those other potential suspects and their alibis? Like Mindy's neighbor, Robert Linz, the guy with scratches on his hands,
00:48:26
who was so worried about his prints at the scene. I checked his alibi, talked to his employer, got a copy of his timesheet,
00:48:33
determined that it had been almost impossible for him to make it from where he worked to her apartment.
00:48:40
So, a good Samaritan after all. And Jordan? He told us Mendy's brother-in-law was wrong about him.
00:48:50
He wasn't jealous or controlling. As for that inconclusive polygraph, It turned out that really was just about a broken heart.
00:49:01
His alibi proved it. Eventually he was cleared too. Investigators were also able to clear her ex, Kyle.
00:49:11
He was at work around the time of the murder. And as for his dad, Rodney, the older man who'd seemed so suspicious to investigators,
00:49:21
he was almost 200 miles away, eating sandwiches with his family. Couldn't have been him. Couldn't have been him.
00:49:30
That was no surprise to Mindy's parents, and Larry and Eunice have always been pretty good judges of character.
00:49:37
And I think he really wanted her and Kyle, his son, to get together. And when they couldn't get back together, he kind of was really disappointed,
00:49:47
and I think he just still stayed in a good friendship with her. We weren't suspicious of him.
00:49:53
At all. No, the police were, but you weren't. No. One dead end after another. They figured out pretty quickly that those missing photos of the crime scene
00:50:06
had nothing to do with Mindy's murder. She had just been preparing for a modeling shoot.
00:50:12
And remember that man in the blue car who terrified Mindy just weeks before her death?
00:50:17
We did find a man who was living in his motorhome across the street from the restaurant that Mindy and some of her friends worked at.
00:50:29
That man owned a bluish car. Teal was what they called it. But investigators couldn't link him to Mindy.
00:50:37
Who was the man in the blue car? We worked on different leads on that, and we never did come up with who that person was for sure.
00:50:46
At this stage, what were you thinking? We're really not getting any place with this.
00:50:53
An unsolved murder in a small town has consequences. The chief of police said so himself.
00:51:00
I don't want to panic the public, but we have to make sure that they're very aware of their surroundings
00:51:05
and aware of what's going on. And I don't know how to stress that enough. No one wanted to go out.
00:51:12
No one knew if this person was going to kill again. I couldn't go anywhere without being afraid.
00:51:18
I couldn't take a shower without being afraid because I couldn't see what was on the other side of the shower curtain
00:51:24
and I was afraid that whoever it was, I didn't know. Were they going to come after me?
00:51:29
It wasn't just the college students who felt it. It scared me. I didn't want to be anywhere near there.
00:51:37
The anxiety was especially acute for Mindy's neighbors, like Chrissy. She was relieved that she and her husband were moving out of the building
00:51:46
and into her parents' home. I was seven months pregnant and I had a one-year-old and I did not feel safe anymore in that building.
00:51:56
But law enforcement was about to get a break. What was it like to find out about that DNA match?
00:52:02
It was a shock. A shock and a horror. Because the DNA told the story of a whole other crime.
00:52:11
And another mystery to solve. Pretty soon, they were running out of suspects. About everyone who knew Mindy Morgenstern had been looked at, some of them pretty hard.
00:52:36
And it all went nowhere. Anyway, Mindy had no enemies, wasn't a soul who had a bad thing to say about her.
00:52:44
And just about then, as they were casting about for what to do next, the crime lab called.
00:52:52
And what do you know? The crime lab came back and said, we have DNA from those fingernail scrapings and clippings.
00:53:01
DNA that wasn't hers. Yeah. So maybe the investigator's initial hunch was correct.
00:53:09
Maybe DNA would tell the story. They entered the DNA into the federal criminal database, and voila, sort of.
00:53:22
I got a call from one of the lab techs. She said, I got good news for you, and it's like, awesome.
00:53:28
She said, you have a positive match. Perfect. Who is it? She said, I don't know.
00:53:33
So that was kind of a deflating part of the really positive conversation. Deflating because the database is filled not only with the names of known criminals,
00:53:45
but also with forensic DNA from unsolved cases. She went on to tell me that whoever murdered Mindy also had done an aggravated rape in the Fargo area Had committed a rape in Fargo but they didn know who he was That correct
00:54:05
Still, the Fargo case could nudge the Mindy investigation forward, open up new leads.
00:54:14
So, a BCI agent traveled to interview the survivor of that sexual assault, and she also spoke with us.
00:54:21
We agreed not to disclose her identity. Have you told many people about this? No.
00:54:27
Because it's a hard thing to talk about, right? Right. You get questioned as to whether you're telling the truth or not.
00:54:36
She was just 22, studying to become a teacher, when she went out one night with three friends.
00:54:43
They saw a live band at a fair and then went to a bar. We were just socializing, having fun, doing what college girls do.
00:54:52
Were you there a long time? No. I remember getting water and setting it on the table
00:55:00
and telling my friends I was going to go use the bathroom. And that's the last thing I remember.
00:55:05
Was she drugged? Maybe, the police said. And when she came to, she was pinned to a mattress in an unfamiliar apartment
00:55:14
and a man she had never seen before was raping her. I was on my stomach. He was on top of me.
00:55:22
He had his arm in my mouth so I couldn't scream. I just remember fighting and struggling him.
00:55:31
He's twice my size. I mean, I can't begin to wonder what, to even imagine what that moment feels like as you look back on it.
00:55:40
It's terrifying. I thought that was the end of it. That he was going to kill you.
00:55:46
Yeah. The next thing I remember, we were in the hallway. So he let you get up or something?
00:55:56
Yeah. And he said that there was a cab waiting outside. I knew that there wasn't a cab.
00:56:07
She was barefoot. Her clothes were a mess. Her purse was gone. She had a flash of clarity.
00:56:13
And I thought, I either have to get away from him or he's going to take me somewhere else and kill me.
00:56:22
Lord. So I started running up and down the hallways. Eventually I heard people inside of one apartment.
00:56:32
So I stood at that apartment door and I banged and I screamed. And they finally let me in.
00:56:39
I curled up in a ball under the kitchen table. I told them to call 911. When you described to the police what this man was like, what did you tell them?
00:56:52
Well, I said it was an African-American male, over six feet tall, over 200 pounds.
00:57:02
Muscular, too. But the man she described was nowhere to be found. Because he did a disappearing act as she was running away.
00:57:11
Yes. The young woman was taken to the hospital, where an attending nurse did rape kit tests.
00:57:19
I had bruising on my neck, bruising on my thighs. She was able to get his DNA. Fargo PD entered that DNA into the federal criminal database and waited.
00:57:32
While the young woman's life was swamped with emotions, and a kind of fear she'd never felt before.
00:57:39
I had to have somebody sleep with me at night for a long time. It took me a long time to go back out in public.
00:57:47
Why a long time to go back out in public, particularly? Just the fear of the unknown.
00:57:54
Weeks and months passed, and police were no nearer to solving her case. Once it got close to two years, I really started to lose hope that it would ever get solved.
00:58:05
Was it a bigger problem that nobody was going to have to answer for this, or that somebody was there, somebody was out there, somebody knew who you were?
00:58:14
I think there were equal parts. But slowly, slowly, she began to heal. She did become a teacher, and two years after the assault,
00:58:25
she was in school one day when she got a call. The police wanted to speak with her again.
00:58:31
They were looking for the man who attacked her and killed Mindy Morgenstern. They just asked me if they could jog my memory about anything else from that night,
00:58:41
anything to add to the description that I had given them. Did they tell you anything about DNA in that conversation?
00:58:48
They did tell me that they had a match at that point, but they didn't know who it was.
00:58:54
What did you feel like when they told you that? It made me really hopeful. that they were finally going to solve the case.
00:59:04
Solve hers and maybe Mindy's too. At least now they had a description. That narrowed things down, but how did you progress from there?
00:59:13
We continued to collect DNA from different people. Did you kind of concentrate on muscular black men after that?
00:59:22
We probably did a little more work as far as what black males Mindy would have known.
00:59:27
and they all volunteered their DNA. Everybody in this investigation sounds to have been very cooperative.
00:59:35
Everyone was very cooperative. As the crime lab worked overtime to process the DNA,
00:59:42
one sample was about to light up like a match. There he was, after all, hiding in plain sight.
00:59:57
The End Investigators had matched DNA from Mindy murder to a rape in Fargo and were looking for a man the rape survivor described as tall, black, and muscular.
01:00:21
Well, there were not many men of that description who knew Mindy, there was one such man living in her apartment building just downstairs.
01:00:31
The Barnes County jailer that lived in that basement apartment was a black male subject.
01:00:37
He was Mo Gibbs, a 34-year-old corrections officer, husband to Chrissy, who'd been so freaked out by the murder upstairs.
01:00:48
She and Mo had been together for nearly two years. I met Mo shortly after I found out I was pregnant with my first daughter.
01:00:58
He very much loved her like she was his own. He worked nights and I worked days, and so he was with her during the day quite a bit, just the two of them.
01:01:08
Mo had come a long way from his early life as a Crips gang member in Central California.
01:01:12
At 18, he chose to serve his country in the Navy and then played college basketball.
01:01:18
divorced with kids he moved to valley city and worked as a college security guard before getting
01:01:26
a job at the county jail he holds a little clout in our law enforcement community because he's
01:01:32
helping us put bad people away how well did you know mo gibbs i knew him fairly well seemed like
01:01:38
a nice guy yeah just the sunday before we were playing in a state softball tournament in fargo
01:01:46
and he was on my Coyd softball team. As one of Mindy's neighbors, Moe had given a witness statement early on,
01:01:53
along with a DNA sample. The crime lab had his and samples from other men matching the description
01:02:00
given by the Fargo rape survivor. And a week after Mindy's murder, a BCI agent updated Sergeant Swenson.
01:02:08
I said, well, one of them was a match. And I said, who is it? The agent told him the man's name.
01:02:16
And I was shocked. It was Mo Gibbs. I said, are you sure? Are they sure? And they said, yes.
01:02:26
They said the person that's in charge of the crime lab redid the results and verified that it was him.
01:02:33
First thing I said is, OK, let's make a plan. Let's get him to come down to the police department.
01:02:37
How'd you do that? They actually called him up and said, we need to just do some follow-up questions for if you wouldn't mind coming in.
01:02:46
Gibbs is exiting the apartment where the homicide took place. Mo Gibbs had no idea that investigators had put together a surveillance team.
01:02:54
Looks like he's turning out on 8th Street. With Swenson and the other officers tracking him.
01:03:00
I have about two blocks behind him. I stayed back quite a ways where he couldn't see me,
01:03:05
just in case Mo would get spooked and decide to run. Gibbs is just pulling up to the law enforcement center.
01:03:14
But he drove straight to the police department. Hey, we appreciate you coming in.
01:03:18
Not a problem. Mo Gibbs didn't come alone. Called to shake. 15 months. He had a stepdaughter.
01:03:26
That's a moment, isn't it? It is. After his stepdaughter was taken aside, the investigators asked Mo where he was
01:03:34
during the presumed half-hour window of Mindy's murder, about 12.30 to 1 p.m. Mo said he left his apartment at 11.30
01:03:43
and had lunch with his wife Chrissy till about 12.35 when he dropped her at work
01:03:49
and went back to their apartment with his stepdaughter. So what time did he get back to the apartment room?
01:03:55
I said between 12.45 and 1 o'clock. He said he didn't notice anything unusual there
01:04:01
other than the smell of pine saw. And I thought it was the manager cleaning the apartment upstairs.
01:04:08
He told the investigators he stayed just 10 minutes in his apartment and because his family was in the midst of moving to his in-law's home,
01:04:16
he drove straight there with his stepdaughter and a truck full of stuff. The last time he'd seen Mindy, he told them, was maybe a week before she was murdered,
01:04:29
when he had come to her aid. She was coming home and she was holding her pants, holding a laundry basket and a book bag.
01:04:36
I helped her out to her apartment and that was it. But other than that... So that's the only time you've ever been up in her apartment?
01:04:41
He admitted to being in her apartment one time. But this was more than odd. The scene Gibbs claimed he saw a week before the murder, complete with laundry basket, book bag,
01:04:54
was also a description of the actual crime scene. What he described when he was there was pretty similar to what we found when she was dead.
01:05:04
So then investigators confronted Moe with their new evidence. How would you feel if I told you that your DNA matches DNA that we found on Vindy's body?
01:05:15
I'd be like, that wasn't true. I was there watching from another room on camera.
01:05:21
Could you sort of see him squirming? Did it look like he knew the jig was off? He didn't squirm at all. He was very calm.
01:05:27
and they confronted him again. Did he have anything to do with that violent rape in Fargo?
01:05:34
Two years ago in Fargo? Yep, in 2004. Well, I know I didn't do it. Sure, he'd lived in Fargo, he said,
01:05:42
and had plenty of sexual encounters there. It happened a few times that I picked somebody up at the bar
01:05:49
and went somewhere. But I know for a fact that I never assaulted anybody The investigators weren buying it Not on the rape not on the murder The only thing that really going to help you out here is to cut your losses
01:06:07
Well, I had nothing to do with her death. I know that. Nothing at all? Nothing. But the investigators weren't moved.
01:06:16
They placed him under arrest and charged him with murder. I have an arrest warrant for the murder.
01:06:25
of Mindy Portman's name. Sergeant Swenson made one last appeal to Moe to confess.
01:06:33
Your family's going to want to know. I said, you're a father just like I am. You have children just like me.
01:06:40
I said, what am I supposed to tell them when they get older? And Moe put his head down and...
01:06:45
Didn't say anything. He denied it. He's like, Dave, I didn't do it. Mindy's family heard the news of the arrest that same day.
01:06:54
I was shocked. Just that some random person could do what he did. He was the neighbor just downstairs who'd made Mindy feel safe.
01:07:04
Remember, she liked having law enforcement types in the building. It was just a total big mystery of who this person was and why him and a lot of questions.
01:07:17
For Ashley, the news was chilling. She recalled that Mindy had been honored at a football game four days after the murder.
01:07:25
Today we'll be taking a moment of silence in honor of Mindy Morgan's turn. I remember sitting in the bleachers, and Mo was sitting four or five rows down from where our group was sitting.
01:07:39
When the penny dropped, and you remember seeing him in the game, tell me about that.
01:07:44
That he was that close to where I was sitting scared me. Mo's wife Chrissy was shaken, too.
01:07:51
When the police told me they had his DNA and that he had done it and he was arrested,
01:07:58
I couldn't believe it at all. I really didn't think he was capable of anything like that.
01:08:06
A jury would soon hear the case against Mo Gibbs. The DNA evidence appeared to put him in a corner.
01:08:13
And the DNA evidence couldn't be wrong. Could it? Are you kidding me? What do you mean?
01:08:19
I saw all the evidence. I heard the evidence. It just kind of blew my mind. In the fall of 2006, Mo Gibbs was in jail awaiting trial for the murder of Mindy Morgenstern.
01:08:45
But a trial who knows when was little comfort to Mindy's mom, Eunice. A few weeks after Mo Gibbs' arrest, she wrote him a letter.
01:08:54
At the time, it seemed the right thing to do because it was tearing me apart inside.
01:09:00
I mean, I have a strong faith, but I'm normal too, and I had a lot of feelings, emotions, and questions.
01:09:10
I wanted him to tell me that he was sorry that he did it, that he would admit it.
01:09:15
Never expected to hear back from him. But you did. Yes, I did. He denied everything.
01:09:22
He said, you know, he'd worked his whole life to try to prove his innocence. But as his trial date approached, Mo Gibbs looked less and less like an innocent man.
01:09:33
After the word came out that we arrested him, there was five females that came forward.
01:09:39
that claimed that Mo had sexually assaulted them in the correctional center while he was working.
01:09:46
He was charged with those along with the sexual assault that took place in Fargo.
01:09:51
Former North Dakota Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Byers would help prosecute the murder case.
01:09:57
He learned that even though Mo Gibbs had been an officer of the law, he had a criminal past.
01:10:03
they discovered a background that they were totally unaware of when he was hired as a jailer at the Barnes County Jail.
01:10:10
Nobody had any idea that Mo Gibbs wasn't even Mo Gibbs. Right. He changed his name.
01:10:18
Before he was Mo Gibbs, he was Glendale Morgan Jr. While he was in the Navy, he was involved in a drive-by shooting,
01:10:26
spent more than five years in prison. and now he was facing life behind bars as his trial for murder got underway in june 2007
01:10:38
how are you feeling well we just thought that you know okay they've got the guy you know this should be over in a big hurry the prosecutor told the jury mo gibbs his own story
01:10:51
the one where he brought his stepdaughter to the interview that story put him at the apartment
01:10:56
building during the critical window of the murder. And there was also this. Mo Gibbs was an extensive
01:11:05
texter and emailer doing searches on his cell phone, even at work. But around 1230, which is
01:11:12
when shortly after that we believe that she was murdered, he was off the grid. And he stayed off
01:11:19
the grid for more than an hour before resuming his phone activity. So there was that. And also,
01:11:27
a former cellmate of Moe's came forward, said he'd heard Moe actually admit to the murder.
01:11:34
He seemed pretty believable to us, so we decided to put him on the stand and we thought he did pretty good. Tony testified, too, about finding Mindy's body.
01:11:44
I was nervous. I was scared. I think I even started to choke up and cry at one point. You're reliving that horrible night again and again. But the backbone of the prosecution's case was DNA. It was under her
01:12:00
Her fingernails, that's as good as it gets. That's as good as it gets. 21 men had given DNA samples to investigators, said the prosecutor,
01:12:08
and the only match was Moe. Did you present a motive for murder? Our general consensus was that it was sexually motivated.
01:12:19
The prosecution's theory was that Moe Gibbs went into Mindy's apartment, likely wanting sex.
01:12:25
And when she fought back, he flew into a rage, strangled her with her belt. and stabbed her with the knives from her own kitchen,
01:12:33
dousing her with pine saw. But we were not allowed to present our belief in that motive.
01:12:40
Nor did the judge allow the jury to hear anything about the sexual assault allegations by women at the jail,
01:12:46
and they would hear nothing about that violent rape in Fargo. Too prejudicial, he ruled.
01:12:53
That, of course, was helpful to Moe's defense, as was this quite remarkable fact.
01:12:59
neither Moe's fingerprints nor his DNA was found on either one of the two knives used to kill Mindy.
01:13:06
In fact, wasn't some other male person's DNA found on those knives in that apartment?
01:13:12
There were two other males' DNA found on those knives. Another thing was a hair in the palm of Mindy's hand as she lay there.
01:13:22
Which wasn't Moe Gibbs' hair. Which wasn't Moe Gibbs' hair. The forensics seemed to cut both ways.
01:13:27
The defense argued Mo Gibbs' DNA could easily have been transferred to Mindy from something they had both touched.
01:13:34
The hallway doors, or the outside door in the apartment building, and that Mindy touched the same door and got his DNA under her fingernails
01:13:43
was what they presented to the jury as their theory. And as for that jailhouse snitch who testified Mo had confessed to killing Mindy,
01:13:52
the defense countered he had a long rap sheet and a history of giving false information.
01:13:59
The jury listened attentively and then went away to think about it. And Mindy's family waited and waited.
01:14:08
It went on and on. It went on and on. After four days of back and forth in the jury room,
01:14:14
six jurors were sure he was guilty, and six were not. Deadlock. I didn't really understand what a hung jury was, and I thought, does this mean he's getting off?
01:14:28
It just didn't make any sense to me, but you had to just accept it. While Mindy's family and friends were dumbfounded, Mo's wife, Chrissy, who divorced her husband, was terrified.
01:14:43
I was very scared that he was going to get out. My family was worried about the same thing.
01:14:47
I remember that we were ready if he were to ever show up there But Mo remained behind bars and stayed there until he could be tried again And I thought oh now we got to go through all this again
01:15:05
More painful testimony and more waiting. What were you thinking? I was thinking, are we going to have to actually do this a third time?
01:15:22
To Mindy's family and her friends, the deadlock in Mo Gibbs' murder trial was bewildering and shattering.
01:15:36
For it to come to that and not get any type of closure, it just kind of blew my mind.
01:15:43
As Mindy's family worried about getting justice, so too did the young woman who'd been assaulted in Fargo.
01:15:50
She was reluctantly preparing for her own trial. And you'd have to testify in a trial.
01:15:57
What was the prospect of that like for you? It was hard. It was hard to go back and look at the crime scene photos of myself.
01:16:06
I bet. In October 2007, nearly four months after his first murder trial, Mo Gibbs' second trial got underway.
01:16:16
Eunice, who hadn't been allowed to attend the first trial because she was on the witness list, sat right there in the courtroom
01:16:23
her daughter's accused killer in front of her What was your take on him then? He carried himself like, you know, a big strong person
01:16:32
and he's pretty cocky The trial played out much as it had before those pending charges of sexual assault still inadmissible
01:16:42
But when it came to the DNA evidence the prosecutor came prepared. How did you change your approach in this second trial?
01:16:52
We made sure that we were better equipped with DNA experts to explain the amount of DNA and what that meant.
01:17:02
DNA expert after DNA expert took the stand to refute Mo Gibbs' claim that his DNA must have been transferred to Mindy
01:17:11
after she touched a door handle he might have used. or else from his brief visit to her apartment.
01:17:18
The prosecution brought in an expert, and that expert testified that this amount of DNA
01:17:25
could only have gotten under her fingernails by vigorous physical contact. Vigorously attempting to grab their arm strongly
01:17:35
and run your fingernails down their arm at that point. How did the defense attack your DNA evidence this time?
01:17:40
They brought in a director of a DNA lab who was actually Quincy's lab assistant on that old Quincy television show.
01:17:49
Really? He was their I guess star witness That right The defense DNA expert had also appeared as an actor in a TV show about a crime medical examiner
01:18:01
and then he'd gone on to run his own crime lab. He said Gibbs' DNA could have ended up on Mindy's body by accident.
01:18:11
And the defense reminded the jury that their client's DNA and fingerprints were not found on the murder weapons.
01:18:17
Then the case went to the jury, and it was deja vu all over again. We had some deliberation on Tuesday.
01:18:25
Wednesday came and went. Thursday came and went. Friday is here and we still don't have a verdict.
01:18:33
Had to be worried. I mean, those hours tick by pretty slowly when you're waiting for a jury to come back.
01:18:39
It was very intense. Your heart just pounds, you know. And then the jury came back.
01:18:47
As soon as we heard that they were going to make the announcement, we headed over to the courthouse and were there for mom and dad.
01:18:55
We, the jury, do find the defendant, Moe M. Gibbs, guilty of the crime of murder.
01:19:06
You feel relief when you hear the results that he's guilty, but yet you feel bad, too, at the same time.
01:19:14
Bad? Mm-hmm. It's such a waste. It's not going to bring Mindy back, and that's the saddest part of the whole thing. It's such a waste.
01:19:27
At his sentencing, Eunice addressed Mo Gibbs and said something extraordinary. Mr. Gibbs, I forgive you publicly here, and I also want you to know that I won't forget what you did to Mindy.
01:19:45
If you don't forgive someone, they have power over you. And they can make your life miserable and bitter and full of hate.
01:19:54
But in court, Mo Gibbs kept up his same old story. I did not commit this crime. If and when the person who actually did this crime came to justice,
01:20:04
I would forgive him just as she would have forgave me. And he never did confess, right?
01:20:09
He always denied it. I'm still waiting. God is the only one who knows. The judge gave Mo Gibbs life without parole.
01:20:21
I wonder what would have happened had you not bagged those hands and had Mindy's fingernails not kind of given you the answer to the secret.
01:20:31
We would have never solved this case. So her fighting back was what helped it get solved?
01:20:36
her fighting back, she told us who her assailant was by fighting back. As for the other charges against him?
01:20:46
He actually pled guilty to the five sexual accounts at the jail in Barnes County and he pled guilty to the case in Fargo That was a relief for his victim but she did muster the courage to face him head at his sentencing for rape
01:21:00
What did you say? A lot of things. I wasn't very nice to him. He has daughters of his own.
01:21:09
So I just said to imagine his daughters screaming like I screamed that night. She still lives with the trauma of what happened, of course.
01:21:21
Told us, survivor's guilt, though perhaps irrational, is a real thing. But she is married now, has children of her own,
01:21:30
to whom she'll tell this story, hers and Mindy's, when they are older. I just want people to know that there is life, happiness, after this.
01:21:42
It's hard, but you get there. You too. In a very, you know, direct way, Mindy solved the cases, not only her own case, but the rape in Fargo.
01:21:56
Does that ever occur to you? Yeah. Just knowing her, she so much just wanted right to prevail.
01:22:04
She wouldn't have had it any other way. Knowing that all that justice was taken care of for all those other victims, she would have gladly give her life for that.
01:22:15
She was that kind of a person. It hasn't been easy to lose that kind of person. The girl who led the laughter from the head of the table is gone.
01:22:31
Our family was robbed. We were never going to have those family dinners again. Innocence was taken.
01:22:40
Yeah. Yeah. A light was kind of taken from both my parents, you know. that was the hardest part for me.
01:22:49
But in some ways, Larry and Eunice have been able to find peace. They take comfort in their faith and family
01:22:56
and their memories of Mindy. In Valley City, there's a heart-shaped garden not far from where she lived,
01:23:04
a place where all those people she connected can remember the spirit of her beautiful short life.
01:23:11
I have three kids, and they never met Mindy, but we talk often about Mindy. We were so lucky just to be touched by her
01:23:18
just the few years that we got to know her. And she lived her life with so much joy.
01:23:25
And for us here, we're still here to live like that. Carry joy, make a difference in people's lives
01:23:32
and love them well, because that's what she did. That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt.
01:23:43
Thanks for joining us.