Martin County Star Newsmakers
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Martin County Star Newsmakers
Who Holds A Secret For 50 Years In A Place This Small?
All right, welcome back. We are here at the news uh newsmakers podcast. I forget my name most of the time. I'm Mike Innis, along with Liz Smith. She's here with me, and also Chief Donovan Mickelson, right? Yeah. Uh Chief, you were Chief uh in St. James from 19 uh seventy four to nineteen ninety-six. Yes. But you worked there for a little longer than that, didn't you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We've been talking about the murder case from 50 years ago in uh Martin County. Because it's all tied together. It's all tied together. Yeah. But we where we left it at, we we just discovered that you, along with others, have solved a missing woman's uh identity case. A Jane Doe in Blue Earth. We discovered that she really was a Boucher. Is that correct? She was a Busha, yeah. Busha Busha. And they discovered that in 2014, a former uh was it a highway patroller?
SPEAKER_04:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:A former highway patrolman. Well that was Ron Nelson.
SPEAKER_04:Bob Nelson.
SPEAKER_00:Bob Nelson had killed her. And and he was a terrible, terrible person.
SPEAKER_04:Yes, he was.
SPEAKER_00:So let's get back now to um Joanne. To Joanne. You know, keep looking back at the end.
SPEAKER_02:I know. I want to call her Sharon, and I do apologize for that. But Joanne Von.
SPEAKER_00:So so when we left Joanne last time, before we we went off a little ways, it was Thursday morning that you discovered the car. Not you, but the police had discovered the car, and everybody's there. And now when was she discovered?
SPEAKER_04:Okay. Before I if I could go back just a second, I want to make it clear that I was not the I was not the main person to find this girl's identity. Deborah Anison was the big and she was a private citizen. I think she might have been a uh worked for the college in Manquito. And she was on her own. I was trying to help out, and I did what I could. Well, but anyway, anyway, she I give her all the credit. I good. My picture's on TV with her at the end of a story on uh one of the channels on TV showing us next the grave site, but I don't, I don't, I'm not looking for any credit for that.
SPEAKER_02:Right. And again, I think the original question was, Chief, how did you get involved with starting to look for murders and solve murders a couple years ago? And you said that's what interests you, right? That started you moving. Yeah. Okay, so Joanne was bound.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, now we want to know about yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Okay, so now so now the they took the car back to Fairmont, whatever they did. They the law enforcement took it back to Fairmont. And then, of course, they hunted, they hunted for Joanne all day Thursday. So that was a that was the day, and they hunted for Joanne. They looked for her all over whatever they could do or whatever they could think of, they hunted for her and didn't find any farmer's of course, right?
SPEAKER_02:Bringing out people. So it would have been October, and the would there have been uh cornfields?
SPEAKER_04:They were doing the combining and picking the beans. It was during the big harvest season. Oh, sure. So anyway, what happened is that uh at seven o'clock in the morning on Friday, the third of October, okay, Donnie Faber Jr. Donnie Faber Jr. heard a shotgun blast.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_04:It would have been south of Donny Faber Sr.'s farm near the gravel pits out by the conservation area on this side of Trimont. Okay. And he heard one single shotgun blast. And he said to his dad, he said, Boy, they're starting the season early.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, okay. And what happened? He was thinking deer season or something, or ducks and pheasants.
SPEAKER_04:Ducks and Pheasants, yeah. And here's the here's the thing. During those years in 1975, the seasons didn't start until Saturday at noon. Not Saturday morning, daybreak like it is today. It's at noon on Saturday. That was always the rule for many, many years. So you heard that one single shot. And if a person's out hunting, I I hunted a lot of ducks and geese and all that sort of stuff, if you're and pheasants, but it when you're hunting for ducks, uh, when the ducks fly in, it's not a single shot. People rarely shoot only one shot because they come flying in fast, and there's normally one, normally it's boom, boom, boom. You know, you know, one, two, three shots, something like that. And it was only one shot. And I asked Donnie Jr., I said, Well, where did it come from? Could you tell? He said it was back. He said it was to the south of us. He said, I couldn't tell why, where, because it's just a little bit over a hill or that, and they got trees back there and a gravel pit back there. So he said, somewhere back in there, he said, I couldn't tell. So nothing more was thought of it at the time because nobody knew of a a murderer at that time. Oh, sure. Nobody knew what's happening.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_04:So what happened about, I want to say, within 15 minutes, roughly, and I'm gonna I'm gonna go out and say that I believe this kid, Troy Olson, who was a young eight, eight-year-old kid, he was in the school bus. The school bus was going up that road towards Donny Faber's seniors farm, and he saw something. He saw something in the ditch right next to the road. And he didn't know what it was. But whatever it was, it wasn't something he recognized, see?
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_04:Right there in that area. So he didn't tell anybody because he didn't know he couldn't tell anybody what he saw. I don't know what he saw. I saw something, did no, he was pretty much alone about the only one in the bus.
SPEAKER_02:Right, and they would have been out there in the fields, they would have had uh plastic bags from from bags of whatever because you don't know as a kid.
SPEAKER_04:So anyway, you know, he goes to school, comes back home after school, and and I believe I believe him. I I really do. I've I've gotten to believe him. Martin County, I know didn't, but I believe him. He got home, and his mother said they found Joanne's body. And he said, Where? And she told him where and he said, I saw her. He said, I know, I saw her. And he didn't know it was a woman, he didn't know it was a human.
SPEAKER_02:But whatever it was in that ditch is what so then later in the day, so the the kids are hearing the noise in the morning because they're getting up for school, and then who would pass later at what time? Wow did they finally find her body actually?
SPEAKER_04:Well, when they found the body, it was across the road. Donnie Sr., Donnie Faber Sr. and his hired man. They were working right across the road at Gravel Road, Little Gravel Road. They're working in the field, and it's kind of a hill up here, and they could see the body right from right from the So they didn't was the body moved from where the kids had had seen it?
SPEAKER_02:No, it wasn't.
SPEAKER_04:And it was right around 3 to 3:30 in the afternoon.
SPEAKER_02:In the afternoon? Yes, afternoon. They didn't see the body just I'm so sorry, Joanne. I'm so sorry.
SPEAKER_04:So here's the thing: they uh they got the uh uh Dr. Donovan from um Estherville, they got him up because I think why they didn't take that body to St. Paul like they do to all the others, I have no idea. But they got this Dr. Donovan in from uh Estherville, and then they take the body to the Fairmont Hospital, and that's where the autopsy was done at the Fairmont Hospital. And he he determined, and I don't know how good he was, apparently I don't think he was real good if if I'm going by Donnie Faber Jr.'s shotgun blast when he heard it, and when the body was found, that would have been a period of well, you got you got nine to twelve, and then you you got six, six to six and a half, not nine to twelve, seven to twelve, five hours, and then three more hours out of that. So you're looking eight, eight and a half hours. And Dr. Donovan said that it would have been probably maybe I I don't know, I'm not saying but maybe five hours, maybe six hours.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I mean that's that's that's close enough.
SPEAKER_04:That's close enough because to me it is.
SPEAKER_00:Well, what was the cause of death?
SPEAKER_04:And it was a shotgun blast to the left temple. Oh right here, and it went in just by the left temple, and I did, I ended up, I did see they showed me a picture in the uh Mark County Sheriff's Department of the Head. And I've seen uh I've seen shotgun blasts with suicides in St. James from in houses and out in the basements and all this. I've seen that. Not something to look at. Anyway, normally if you're shot right here with a 12-gauge shotgun, which they said it was, right? The head does it. Oh, it's well, what happened? I did some more checking, digging into it. I talked to the original detective from uh Sweigart is his name. He used to be a deputy for the Sheriff's Department. Sweigert, he's out in Oregon or or Washington State, I think Oregon. And he said, I'm trying to get out of law enforcement, you know, mentally.
SPEAKER_01:Right, right.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, that's what he said. But he said the reason there wasn't a lot of blood there was because it was a downward shot. So when you shot downward, the blood went down through the throat.
SPEAKER_01:Oh.
SPEAKER_04:Instead of going up, it went down through the throat and broke her jaw, I guess, and went down through the throat. So that's where a lot of the blood went.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, so let's let's let's back up a little bit just for the folks that you know we're talking about an area of town that we're all familiar with. So we're south of Trimont. We're about two miles three miles south of Trimont by this uh cemetery road.
SPEAKER_04:It's the yeah, it's a cemetery road you called, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And we found her car there on that road on that was on Highway Four.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:That was on Highway Four. Highway four. But I mean it's within with it's it's with two miles of that. Yes, okay, so within two miles. Yeah. Because again, you know, we're talking a real six months.
SPEAKER_04:Remember this, it wasn't the same day now. Remember?
SPEAKER_02:Right, right, right, right, right, right. We we found it one day later.
SPEAKER_04:Yep.
SPEAKER_02:It was 36 hours. 36 hours. That's important to remember. So so she uh her car is found in the morning. She has was last seen at 12 30. So you're going to assume that she didn't drive back, that she probably went missing about 12.50, 1245. That for some reason she was stopped. For some reason she was dragged out of her car, she got in some way somehow. And she was a scrappy woman. You know, she'd been through enough, she'd seen enough, she was she she she already got in a bar fight that she started.
SPEAKER_04:She was you know, again, I don't know disrespect to the people in town, but she was a uh nice looking gal, but she wasn't what you'd call lady-like.
SPEAKER_02:If if it's maybe that's how it shouldn't have been, she stood her own. She's I'll I'll say she stood her own. She was a rough girl.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, when you looked at her, she was a very attractive gal and someone you would expect to see in a beauty shop. She always had her hair done nice, they said. Sure. All the time. But she stood her own. She sure she didn't take crap from anybody. I imagine not. Okay. Right.
SPEAKER_02:So about 12 45, she gets dragged out of the car. Yep. The car is found uh uh on the side of the road, and then that was that was Thursday, and then Friday afternoon, where they've tramped through this whole area where people have driven around this whole area where there have been multiple, multiple people looking for this young woman in this area. I I I can just imagine, because I can just imagine what they were going through because I I know how we rally. I know how we rally. And then she was found two miles away in a ditch. So where was she for those 36 hours? I think that's the point that I really want to get to. Where was she for 36 hours?
SPEAKER_00:So when they found the car, was it running still or had it been turned off? Were the keys in it?
SPEAKER_04:I think, and I'm not positive of this. I I think I was told by someone that the drug store, uh what's the name that I spent as early? Seifert's seifert might have shut the car off, but I don't know that. I'm not I'm not positive of that. And see, another thing that happened uh quickly, there were there were two or three boys that were going to college to uh to school in Jackson that morning, Thursday morning. Okay, and one was Oofer, Ufer, Oofer, something like that. Okay um can't think can't think of the other two right now. But they were going, they were going to pick up Donnie Faber Jr. to take him with to college in Jackson.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_04:And they saw that car there, and as I recalled, they had stopped there. And like I say, I I don't know all the details, but they were there and I know it. And and I even asked one a long time ago about God, he said, I I almost forgot about that. He said, like it wasn't a big thing. That's how he that's how he put it at the time, like like it wasn't a big thing at the time. Well, well, there's no body there, it was a car that was sitting there, and right, right, right.
SPEAKER_02:So there was still a lot of people that are tramping around the area that you've already talked about.
SPEAKER_04:Well, this is this is at the scene, this yeah, this is at the scene of the car.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, we've got four or five people there. That's not what they do on law and order.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, well, yeah, and this is on the highway, on highway four, state highway four. So so anyway, what happens is that they get the uh um they get the call on this body, and at the time they get the call on the body, they got the state patrol airplane out flying, they're out flying, and they got uh Larry Steinberg was with him. Okay, and they had just they had just been to a field out to the east of that a couple miles, and they had just stopped to take a take a leak in the a picked field. And uh, and they aren't even back in the plane yet, and they get the call that the body's been found over by that conservation area, that little road that goes back up there. So they get in the plane and away they go. And he said, Larry said from he said, from the other side of the highway, looking over the highway lamp, he said, we could see your body from that far away. So he said, it was very obvious. The body was very obvious, and and the squad car might have that squad car was there already that was you know so there were so there were no footprints there at the body? I don't know that I can't tell you. I I wouldn't want to make that statement.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, well, but it was so tramped over, but there was no blood, there was no blood.
SPEAKER_04:Well, see, the blood would have been they looked under her body, that's what they had to do. So they had to pick up the dirt, and that was under her her head or whatever to make sure that. But they said what a lot of went down the throat.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Esophagus and that. Yes, I know. I know that's how I feel. Again, still, and then they talk about it. They talk about, and I and I don't know this either, whether it's true or not. They talk about um pistachios. I don't know if you ever heard that so part of it. Pistachos were found.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, pistachio, oh yeah, yeah. Well, something, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Were found either at this at the car scene or at the body scene. And I don't, I don't know enough to tell you. I don't want to say, but that was always a point of the case.
SPEAKER_02:Something about uh different cigarettes too. Did you hear anything about cigarettes?
SPEAKER_04:They had different cigarettes that were been opened and and this and that.
SPEAKER_02:Salem's uh and she smoked Marlboro's other Salem. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so let me let me let me kind of summarize a little bit here at give you my thoughts, and you guys can tell me where I'm off. All right, so we know Joanne at for some reason stopped at around 1245, one o'clock in the morning, because somebody must have flagged her down. Right. It's somebody that's right, somebody she must have so it's either something that she knows, or it is law enforcement, and she's pulling over because she thinks she's being stopped.
SPEAKER_02:Right, and and and I think it could have been a tactical move, you know. And then I'll stop.
SPEAKER_00:And then at some point she's sitting in her car. Whoever is outside the car must open must have opened the door and dragged her out. Yep. And her and her shoes fell off, and she and they drugged her uh drag uh whoever it was dragged dragged her to their vehicle and took off.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so now it's a day and a half later, 36 hours later, and we find the body's been found with one single shotgun blast. Yep. And okay, so now where are we at? What are the what's what is the investigation telling us? Is she clothed? Is she raped? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Well, here's the thing. At first, it was never given out that there had been any sexual abuse at all. But I learned later on from Owens that there had been some sperm found okay, uh, either on her body or something like that. That's what I was what I was told. I I can't positively say it, but that's what I was told. But I knew at first they said it wasn't sexual, and I thought, oh, that's pretty strange because she was a good looking gal. Yeah. So if somebody did it, they did it out of hate, which was a thing that she had one guy that she and this guy didn't get along because she had turned them in one time for letting the air out of uh Melinda Hawnet's car, the tires, let the air out, and and he did it twice. He was uh he used to date her, and then he was being mean to her. His last name was Cruz.
SPEAKER_02:Right, but but Joel Cruz. I guess so on the point that she was held for 36 hours. Yep, and just on the solve the crime theory of of it all. So I've heard she went willingly because she was wanting to date whoever and she was hanging out with them in 36, you know, and that doesn't make sense. No, no, no. Why would somebody bring her back to the same place? That's the part that's gonna be.
SPEAKER_04:And here's here's the thing, Ed. Go ahead. When it first started out, you didn't have that fear of uh not stopping for a police officer at that point. Because that wasn't the point yet at that time. Nobody was afraid to stop for a police officer. They would have pulled over it, so she would have pulled over it. Absolutely. You know, she and she knew all the policemen, so what the hell? Why wouldn't she? She knew every one of the everyone in this area. In fact, these girls used to hang around at the sh at the Sherburne police station downtown BSing with these officers.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yes, uniform chasers. We like uniform.
SPEAKER_04:That's what it was. And and they did that. And it was her and her other friends, and Melinda Hahnett, I suppose, is probably one of them. Here's a here's another point. She preferred Trimont. She was from Sherburne, but she preferred Trimont. So she would come over here. Melinda Hahnett, who lived west of town here, they were the best of friends at that time. At that time, there and before, before the murder happened, uh, she and Melinda were the best of friends. But then Melinda moved down to Spirit Lake, Iowa, see. So then they were they weren't as close friends. Then she became friends with uh uh Crumwoody.
SPEAKER_02:Uh yeah, yeah, you're gonna get me choked if I say that game, so I'm just gonna leave it alone. I love you guys.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, so she became friends with uh Luann, Luann Cromwity. They were the best of friends, and they were at the bar together. So they were they were they were the best of friends at that time, see. So Joanne went home, Luann knew that Joanne had left, and I thought if anybody knows who did this, it would have been Luann, okay? Now I'm saying that if Joanne didn't have boyfriends, okay? She dated maybe one guy, and the only guy I ever heard she dated was uh Bruce Eisenmanger way back when. But and I didn't know him hardly at all. Another thing was everybody said she didn't have a boyfriend. She didn't have interest in guys, although she was not gay or lesbian, and I looked into that. I talked to Melinda about it too, because they were good friends. And no, no, no, no lesbian sort of stuff.
SPEAKER_02:So that so then with that theory, Chief, you're you're looking at at a clo at a personal relationship versus a a random abduction. And I guess I mean what is your theory for why somebody would take somebody for 36 hours and drop them back a while away?
SPEAKER_04:My th my theory.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_04:Okay, and and anytime I come up with a theory, the author has to shut it down no matter what. The author gets her and I don't get along. I met with her twice, a couple hours apiece, and her and I don't get along. She called me a liar, and I don't I don't know.
SPEAKER_02:Again, that that that to me, as a as a as a neighbor, uh as somebody who lives in the area, how could somebody hold that body for 36 hours and put them right back in the same place? You know, uh and and what would there be the reason and the ability and all that? So here's here's what I thought.
SPEAKER_04:No, uh no. Uh I think, I think. At that time there was uh the parties, the party groups with the swingers. Right, right, swingers club. You had it in Sherburn, you had it in TriMont, you had it in St. James, you had it. It's crazy. But at those at some some reason during those years, they had what the swingers club.
SPEAKER_02:Husbands and wives and they had the So you you think she was held hostage for twenty-four hours for for sex as a sex toy?
SPEAKER_04:No, no. Okay, no, no. So here's what I'm thinking. The guy that she was with, I think it was a private, separate, uh, separate married man. That's what I think. I've said that for a long time. It's a married man, a big shot, who's got a lot to lose, someone who might be a president of a company.
SPEAKER_02:See, now he's talking about my neighbors again. I want to go back to them police officers, them chiefs.
SPEAKER_04:And I have no interest in believing that any police officer did this. And I I talked to old James Darmer up in Anoka or up in whatever, wherever he's at, I talked to him. He was investigated real real good. Uh Rodney Johnson, I knew he didn't have I knew Rodney Johnson. I I knew him better than I did most of them and Bob Nelson and nobody like Rodney.
SPEAKER_02:Who's who's Rodney Johnson?
SPEAKER_04:The police the state patrolman that died here uh last year down by Ceylon.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, was he connected with with the Bob Nelson?
SPEAKER_04:Oh, they were the best like this.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, so okay, let's back it up to him then.
SPEAKER_04:Now, wasn't he charged with was so he had he had sexually molested his own daughter?
SPEAKER_02:Right?
SPEAKER_04:He was sleeping in, he was sneaking into her room at nighttime, and the brother knew it.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, so so we've got a Bob and a Bob and uh Rodney Rodney. Bob and Rodney, two two so so why, why, what, why I honestly I was relieved when we had some direction away from my neighbors because I hated that part of it. I hated that part of it. So so we've got these two police officers. One has already admitted to murder. He even brought up, according to this author, had brought up while he was doing time in Texas that he may have done Joanne.
SPEAKER_00:Well, that's what we saw.
SPEAKER_02:That's what we but no, he admitted to the chick in Elmore.
SPEAKER_04:But I also but Well, the he was from Elmore. Bob Nelson was from Elmore.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, so he admitted to that body, that the Boshi body.
SPEAKER_04:The one out in the yeah, Busha.
SPEAKER_02:The Boucher body. Yeah, he didn't. But then he also tried to bring up Joanne Bonchus.
SPEAKER_04:But he didn't, he didn't. I have the uh I had the transcript of him and his attorney and the uh sheriff department, who's uh in St. James, who was a hypnotist, long time 40-year-old, 40 hit 40 years of hypnotism, and he and Bob's attorney and all them went through it, and there's just Okay.
SPEAKER_02:So so the people that we're talking about now are gone because again, this age, this age, and again, no disrespect, but Miss Joanne would be 70 by now. 60.
SPEAKER_04:71.
SPEAKER_02:71.
SPEAKER_04:And then 50 years, she was 21 at the time.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, so if she would have been involved with a high-powered business, blah, blah, blah, these men would be 85.
SPEAKER_04:This guy would be this guy would be 82, the guy I'm thinking about. He's gone. He's been gone for 11, 13 years ago.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so let me let me interject again. Here's you. Here's a guy who just listening because I don't really know anything. Right. But with Chief, with your theory, if I'm understanding that correctly, uh this this person pulls, you know, waves, she pulls over. Oh, yeah, I know him, right? He gets out. Now, if there's maybe there's a little bit of um blackmail going on or something, and and he, hey, listen, you can't do this, you're you know, blah, blah, blah. And she's fighting back. Next thing you know, it gets physical. He pulls her out and he takes her. He's probably taking her to his house trying to convince her, look, you can't. Then he again realizes he's into it too far. And next thing it is, that's that's this listening to you guys. This is what I've done.
SPEAKER_02:So, how was her body? So, was she was she bruised up? Was she duct taped? Had she been held captive for 24 hours? She had bruises.
SPEAKER_04:I don't know what detail the bruises went into. I I can't tell, I don't know that. I'll tell you if if I did. But she had bruises, and I don't know what kind of bruises. Somebody said bruises on top of her knees for some reason. And the wife showed me here about two months ago bruises on top of her knees. And I said, Well, where do you get those bruises? What do you do? Well, I was lifting stuff in the garage, and I set set them down on my little boxes or whatever she had moving in my garage and put red marks up on top of here. That you know, I but I'd like to see.
SPEAKER_02:If she was I I I again, if if it would have been something where well, whatever, whatever. She should I I don't I'm not sure. I'll give you my theory.
SPEAKER_04:Okay, let me go. Go ahead. Go ahead. Let me yeah, let me continue my theory. Here's here's what happens. If if she was with a guy who's been after her for quite a while, which I know he was after her for quite a while, I've been told that, and there are others who were too because they always thought that she was the hot thing. She was the hot, yeah. Okay, they were they were out to get her. Yeah, they wanted to be with her. And if he had been with her for some time, and according to psychic, if you believe anything what the psychic said, this one psychic said that guy was quite a few years older than her and had a real deep voice. And the guy that I'm looking at has a real deep voice. Big time farmer lives lives two miles from two miles from the body, two miles, exactly. And here's my thought. When you come up, when you're out in the road, let's okay, let's say, let's say he's coming, he's going this way. He's he's going home. He's leaving the TriMont car. Joanne's come along, and she sees him, decides they're gonna meet out there. Pull over. He walks back there, and he and she's giving him an ultimatum. You either leave your wife, or you either leave your wife, or I'm gonna tell her. Okay. This is this is a big thought of mine. He he has a big, he's a big shot and a big name, involved in presidents and heads of a lot of companies in Sherburn, St. James, and Trima.
SPEAKER_02:Right, right, right, right. Okay, okay, okay. And he had to lose. But why would he why would he put her right back where, you know, two blocks from the house. Oh, that's the thing that I mean, you know, and and and you know, why would she pull over on highway four? Because, you know, for him, because if if if if that individual had power. Now, see, I would think that if it was the double team cop, you know, we got double teamed cop here option. And and, you know, they could they could have planned that stuff out, they could have radioed ahead, we could have had one guy with headlights, one guy behind, and they could have hidden her up because they would have known the area, they would have known the empty, empty buildings, and why wouldn't they bring her back to the same area to throw off the target? Because, you know, again, that that theory works better for me than blaming my neighbors.
SPEAKER_04:People used to say that people used to say, well, you know, here's the thing if they would have hauled her out to the the border, the Minnesota border or something, dumped her, that's different. But they wanted they wanted that body in that area, and they wanted that body to be found right next to the road. I mean, it was that gravel road is here, the body was right there, you couldn't miss it.
SPEAKER_00:Why would they want it? Why would they want that?
SPEAKER_04:They want that body to be found so they're not looking around in other buildings and that and uh different ways of finding finding evidence.
SPEAKER_02:Right, right. But if you get so so so with that the again, because I'm standing up for my neighbors, if it if if if if I was having all those acreage, and if I was a big farmer, I mean I could hide the body, and you would never find it.
SPEAKER_04:I know. I I have a theory where I have a theory where that body was held. Some place, some person some people own some properties out on uh Fox Lake. They own cabins out on in October. October, they're not using those cabinets in October. They have all these cabins, and one of those guys had two cabinets out there.
SPEAKER_02:I don't know, Mike. I don't know, we're we're we're running we're running long time here.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so let me okay, so we got our theories out there. All right. So what's going on now to solve this case?
SPEAKER_04:Well, you know, I I keep on pushing. They have they have DNA, okay? DNA came from, I'm told. This is Mrs. Bonds just told me this a long time ago. The DNA is touch DNA. So if you're touching this here right there, there's touch DNA on this.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_04:Okay. There's touch DNA on the elastic under underpants. Okay, there's only so many people going to be touching that underpants. Yeah. I would think. Okay. Yeah. So you and it's it's called partial. I can't think of the other word right now. Partial something DNA. And that partial DNA, according to a guy that I know that I had down here a long time ago, he's from St. Cloud, he's an instructor in touch DNA. But he said that can be matched. And Martin County, here's another thing. I talked to the daughter of my man that I'm looking at. Okay. I talked to the daughter, and she said, I heard you're looking at my at my uh dad. And I said, I said, I've been told that your dad was accused of this by his best friend's wife twice. And and the husband, his best friend, according to the best friend, told me that, yeah, he and I were just like this. Okay. And if she says that he did it and he agreed to it, I thought, oh, that's that's pretty good uh reasoning. Then the next thing I know is that she, the wife of my suspect, told people that her husband did not come home the night that she was abducted off the highway. He didn't come home that night. And in a small area, in a small town, who's not gonna come home? I mean, what one guy, one guy doesn't come home all night? He's he's 31 years old or thereabouts, he doesn't come home, he's a big, big-time farmer. Got a lot to lose if he's ever caught, he's ever charged, and he had had an affair with another woman, and his wife found out about it and said, Remember, half of this farm is mine. If you if you do this again, half of that farm is mine.
SPEAKER_02:So are so is Martin County? I I did see a letter on your Facebook page that said that the chief, he even had he the chief of Martin County.
SPEAKER_01:The sheriff?
SPEAKER_02:The sheriff, the sheriff, what's it? Or okay, he said that they were still, and he gave a name of somebody I could follow up on. But uh is there anybody to still test? And what are we looking for at this point if if all the suspects have passed? And and I mean again, we weren't we weren't satisfied, but at the same time we went Well she she the daughter gave her DNA. Okay.
SPEAKER_04:I asked her, I said, I said, if I were you, I said, if you want to know, you're DNA to Owens, Deputy Owens. Okay. She did. Okay. Owens said that she did. Okay. What do they do from there? Nothing. He said he doesn't, they can't compare her DNA to the DNA they have from that touch of DNA. That's just what he told her. I said, Well, that's pretty unusual because this place down in uh it's called Autram, O-T-H-R-A-M, Autham in in Houston, Texas. They're the top in the world. I mean, they've been finding things that nobody else could possibly find.
SPEAKER_02:But then, you know, now you're asking me as a Martin County taxpayer, I guess, sometimes.
SPEAKER_04:What's it gonna cost me?
SPEAKER_02:Um, what's it gonna cost me as you know?
SPEAKER_04:What's it gonna cost?
SPEAKER_02:Right, right. And again, no disrespect for for the bunches family.
SPEAKER_04:But 1500, what's that that's nothing? Okay, nothing. But that's a fair question. It's a fifty yeah, but it's a 50-year-old deal. Everybody wants to sell. Here's here's my point. For 50 years, okay, 50 years, people have been going around this county, especially this part of the county, looking at I'm looking at this guy. I wonder if he did it. He's looking at me one. I wonder if he did it. I'm looking at you, say, You're a man now. I'm not you're not a man. No, right, right, right. I understand what you're saying. I was I I somebody right away said there's a woman, there's a big woman that's I think she did it. I said, No, she didn't. But I'm just saying, I'm looking at you and say, one of you did. I wonder where you were that night. Things like that, see. So you everybody's looking at each other, and then and nobody knows. And that the brothers were gonna go after this. Dwayne Anderson at first with a shotgun. Right. That's what I was told. They said they were they were ready to go after. And they they had no evidence, see? They got a guess, and and I never believed Dwayne Dwayne did it. I knew Dwayne a little bit, and he was um he was always a mellow type guy to me. Just never that sort of a guy that would do that. It's just so, and then I got another gal from St. James who was a um had a lot of health problems. She lived out that way. Her name was Struess, S-T-R-U-S-S-E. Her husband got killed in an accident out there clearing the land for a house they were going to build. And uh anyway, I always thought she was a little bit she was slow, but she was A L P N. Okay. Uh, and her sister thought, well, she's wacky, this and that. But I sat down with her two or three times, and she's the one that had that note written. My husband that wrote to her that uh my husband said he killed that girl.
SPEAKER_02:Huh. So then to wrap it up, to wrap it up, we have a young lady that had was murdered 50 years ago, just south of Trimont, Minnesota. Uh, she was missing for 36 hours.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:She met a lot of savory characters along her life. She was that it that that part to me is so sad because, you know, I was out driving alone at night at that time. I was out, you know, 15 years old. Um, so so so knowing that she was unsafe in so many different ways and that this murder was never solved. Um, I was disappointed pulling up the newspapers that hardly anything was written about this. That's right. And uh Chief uh Chief here is telling us that the no no information was shared between counties. So it's it's a sad situation that we're still trying to solve today.
SPEAKER_04:The reward got up to like$700 and some dollars. I've got to tell you that. Oh, oh they took that money and gave it to something else because nobody ever claimed it. So hey, there are a lot of other things that we could uh that we could go into, and and we talk about we talk about the barn that burned down. Supposedly burned down right after the sheriff nut said that we're gonna go out and search his barn. It was right to the east of Sherburn on the right off the highway on the left side. It's all gone now. But we're gonna go out and search that barn. The barn burned down.
SPEAKER_02:Who owned the barn? The guy your suspect, or just a random?
SPEAKER_04:No, not suspect. It was another person who I think an Eisenmayer owned that barn.
SPEAKER_02:Right, but again, we know who our empty barns are. I mean, I I knew I knew it, I knew which lots to go pull up and have our you know, hangouts at.
SPEAKER_04:But she supposedly, supposedly, this guy that that dated her one time. Right. She didn't date the guy, but she did date him, supposedly, one time. He and his buddy always went out and drank in that barn. Even though they're old enough to go to bars and drink, they went to that barn and drank. But they could have gone to a bar.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And you know, this this could be totally not related to that case whatsoever. They may have burnt the barn down, whomever it was, uh, just to hide some other evidence. Something else that they're saying.
SPEAKER_02:I don't know. They're searching. Let me shut this down. I don't I don't want this out either, you know.
SPEAKER_00:Anyway, Chief, I this has been fascinating uh for a guy who knew nothing about the story. Yeah. You know, we we'll probably have you back again one day.
SPEAKER_04:I didn't bring it. I didn't see that. Yeah, you do. So I I go back, I can think because I way back on anyway. So that's why I didn't I didn't bring any papers.
SPEAKER_00:We'll have the chief back again. Okay. And we'll talk more about this, especially just as soon as you get any new information. Yeah. When you when you get a lead, you let us know.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I'll do that.
SPEAKER_00:All right, all right, folks. Oh, this has been fascinating. I hope you enjoy it. Thank you so much. That's right. Adios.
