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Martin County Star Newsmakers
A Small-Town Murder, A Web Of Predators, And A 50-Year Search For Truth
All right. Welcome to believe it or not, Liz. This is uh season two, episode 15 of our news uh newsmakers podcast. I forgot the name. Right. Folks, this is Liz Smith with me today.
SPEAKER_03:Hi, this is Liz. Good day, Mike. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_00:And and Liz is one of our newer reporters. Well, you know, you've been around a long time.
SPEAKER_03:Around, but enough is reporting. Talking about uh yeah, we're good. I'll just move forward, Mike. Liz.
SPEAKER_00:Well today, today this is gonna be interesting. We're gonna go back 50 years. Right. I'm gonna stretch both of you. I have with us today, Liz. This is Donovan Mickelson. And Donovan used to be the police chief in St. James. I didn't do it. You probably heard that a time or two, didn't you? From 1974 to 1996. So, first of all, thank you so much. I have a lot of respect for the police. I've been pulled over more than one time for speeding, you know, or something. And I always thank them when they leave, they always look at me. They would look at me like, really? It helps say thank you so much. I always figure it might work. It might work. Sometimes it does, sometimes not so much. But uh anyway, what's wrong?
SPEAKER_03:No, no, I was just wanting to double check on these dates and and when he was was in there. So I was trying to lean over your looking at your face.
SPEAKER_00:I thought, uh oh, I did something wrong here. No, no, you are perfect. Okay, go on. I was trying to listen in. I was trying to listen and get that. Far from perfect. We're gonna talk today. We this is 50 years. Yep. We have a crime that was committed in Martin County in uh well, October of 75. 75. October of 75. What was the girl's name again?
SPEAKER_01:It was uh Joanne Bonches. Joanne Bonches. B-O-T B-O-N-T-J-E-S.
SPEAKER_00:Now, is she from uh Martin County or from St. James?
SPEAKER_01:Sherburn. From Sherburne, okay.
SPEAKER_00:All right. So I'm gonna ask some questions because like I said, I told you a while ago.
SPEAKER_01:Sure.
SPEAKER_00:1975, I was in the military, I was in Edwards, California, and so I don't know anything. So can you give us a little bit of background on the story?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I yeah, I I can I was just moving to Tribont at that time.
SPEAKER_03:So in 1975, I was in seventh grade, and uh so we just moved to TriMont that spring, and this murder had happened. And I'm so sorry again for the family and for all the community and how it affected all of us and how it still affects us today. You know, I was one of those children that was told do not stop for the police if you're out in the country because that's who they set it up to believe. And and so that's why I'm trying to look over your sh your shoulder and double check what date dates were you? You were so you were 74 to 96. So you were chief of police in St. James.
SPEAKER_01:I was on the police force from 1965.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Until 1990 uh 1996, but I was the chief from 1949 until 1996.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:So my last 20, whatever, 22 years, whatever it was.
SPEAKER_00:Um what can you tell me about Joanne?
SPEAKER_01:Uh the thing I know about Joanne, and her mother used to run a uh the Highway Cafe in St. James, Minnesota. She leased it from a uh from a guy who owned the the Highway Cafe, and he owned the gas station, the Deep Rock gas station in St. James on the east edge of St. James. And he leased the he leased the Highway Cafe out to people. So Mrs. Bontz leased it from this guy by the name of James Johnson, who later on was convicted of rape and murder of a young girl.
SPEAKER_03:Right. Please write his name down because that's an important character in the story. I'm sorry to interrupt, but whose name? Mr. Johnson, because these things were not anything that I was aware of, so thank you.
SPEAKER_01:So his name was James Johnson. And we knew that at that time there was something wrong with him because he hated police officers so bad. And we had never done anything with him, but we always knew that he had hated police officers. So we were always thinking there's a chance that maybe someday we'll be able to run a background check on him to see something about it. Anyway, during that time, um uh Joanne and and Joanne worked there for her mother. She must have been maybe 15, 16 years old at the time, and she worked with another lady that I know was from the uh from the Oranspie area, Mrs. Jerome Christensen, and uh who comes into play later on. And so they worked together as friends. And uh anyway, uh as they grew up, of course, they uh they moved out of the area. They only rented or at least the uh the station for a short time. And we didn't go in that gas station a lot, or not the gas stations, a gas station, highway cafe. Us as a law enforcement, whether it was the the sheriff, police, or the state patrol, didn't go in that highway cafe mud because they weren't fond of law enforcement, because I had chased James Bonches on a high-speed chase, ticketed him, and that went over bad apparently with the mother, and you know, so we we were not treated friendly when we went in there, so we went into another uh gas station on the other end of St. James for our coffee at nighttime and things like that. So we didn't see a lot of them, but I knew who Mrs. Uh Bonches was, Wilma, and uh she reminded me of uh um Ma Kettle from the old movies. I don't know if you remember the Ma Kettle. She she kind of reminded me of that, and you know um, probably a nice, very nice lady. I don't have any doubts about it. And I remember the the husband, her husband a little bit, Bonch Bonches. I remember him a little bit. Um, you know, the rest of the boys, I don't he had two boys in that family and two girls. And uh anyway, later on, Joanne's sister, who's older than her, Linda, she was around St. James a lot more. And her husband worked in St. James at Cher to Michael, which has built uh tools for government and all sorts of uh micrometers, things like that. And her husband lived there, uh worked at the time, and his name was uh Lorenzen. So uh her name was Linda Lorenzen at the time. Anyway, there were quite a few people that did work in St. James from this area and uh Trimont and Ormsby and all these towns out around there. It was a big, big business. So anyway, uh um we didn't see much after you know of Linda after that, but she moved, apparently they moved to Sherbourne, the family moved to Sherbour, and then Linda worked for a uh lady in the beauty shop over there, and at that time you rented a chair. If you were, and and she rented a chair, and then she did people's hair over there. And uh we didn't uh we didn't see or know her at all, really, at that time. Um I may have seen her when I came over and played ball. We played uh slow pits for Curry's annotation team, and then there were four players out of Trimont and about ten of us out of St. James. We were a joint team, so I got to be friends with uh the players over here. And um, so anyway, we didn't see much of her. And then what was what happened is that I had been chief about a year, and we went into the the uh a lakeshore drive-in. It was a it was a drive-in right next to Lake in St. James. And we went in for coffee one morning. I and some sheriff's department, I'm sure, uh, officers. And we go in there, and uh the minute we come in the door, Linda comes running up to me and she says, Have you heard any more on my sister? And I had no idea what she was talking about. And she's I said, What do you what do you mean any more than your sister? She said they found her car south of Trimont, about two miles south of Trimont, and the car was pulled over on the side of the road. Her shoes were next to the car, her keys were in the car, her purse was in the car. Nobody stole anything, but she was gone. And she was not seen. So this is the next day.
SPEAKER_00:So this day was this?
SPEAKER_01:This would have been on a Thursday morning.
SPEAKER_00:That was when that's when Linda talked to you.
SPEAKER_01:That's when Linda talked to me. Yep. That's yeah, Linda book talked to me on Thursday morning. And uh the night before was Wednesday night or or early Thursday morning when she was abducted. When she was abducted off the highway. So uh this is on on the 2nd of October, or 2nd of the October. And so since we were in a different county, uh see, Ormsby is a cutoff, right? Okay, and uh we're in a different county, and this is Martin County, so we didn't get a lot of information from what was going on here. Is that my phone? I don't probably anyway. So we didn't get a lot of information what was going on, and we didn't ask for it. It was their job to do it over here, not our job. Right. So we didn't, you know, we didn't do much, we didn't know much. Uh all we would hear was rumors once in a while as to what could have happened and who did this, and there was always the suggestion that the town cop or a cop.
SPEAKER_03:And that's what that's that's what I was saying.
SPEAKER_01:You're right.
SPEAKER_03:So but but let's go back to the newer characters. Now I have not had so I read I read the book that you had said was not that was written by Right. I so so I I that might be another podcast.
SPEAKER_01:Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_03:But I won't but when you brought up Mr. Johnson.
SPEAKER_01:Yep.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, so so what I read in the book um is is that Mr. Johnson was quite a character.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And he was a charged and and and charged and did time for murder. Is that correct, Steve?
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely, yeah. He may have died in prison, in fact.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, and there was multiple women that he was that he may have killed, multi across states. Is that correct, Chief?
SPEAKER_01:Before, I'm not I I'm not positive on that. But he had been in, I think I think he had been in a psycho ward, I think.
SPEAKER_03:Right? So this guy, this guy is who his her mama is is renting from.
SPEAKER_02:Right, right.
SPEAKER_03:And she's 14 years fifteen years old.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Now, am I accurate that they were asked to um thank you, Mike. Uh that that they were asked to testify in his in his trial.
SPEAKER_01:On his behalf.
SPEAKER_03:On his behalf.
SPEAKER_00:So wait a minute. Now, how old was uh Joanne? Joanne when she was.
SPEAKER_01:I'm just making a guess that she was probably about 15 years old, 14 years old.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, when she was killed, she was 20 years old. Oh, she was 20 then. She was 20 when she was killed.
SPEAKER_01:When she testified.
SPEAKER_03:But she testified against this guy when.
SPEAKER_01:Hold on. She was 21 when she was killed. Okay. Okay, thank you. This case was this what happened with the James Johnson case, he lived in Pryor Lake. He had the place in St. James, the Duke Brought gas station, the Highway Cafe, and it was on the East Edge of town, way on East Edge. And what he would do, he'd drive back to Prior Lake. That's where he lived.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:So on his way back to Prior Lake, he went back in the afternoon, grabbed a, I think it was your 14-year-old girl coming home from school, grabbed her. He had a pickup camper that fit in the back of a pickup, you know. He had one of those, and she was raped and murdered. And they found a body, and then they they matched in his pickup and the collar of his pickup and all this sort of stuff with him. And before they came down and got him, he and another guy who worked for him at the Deep Rock gas station took this camper, which was a very nice camper. It wasn't a beaten or abused or worn out. They went out to the local dump ground and they took that camper off and disposed of it. At the local St. James Dump Ground. And the guy who worked for him, his name was Kenny Christensen. And Kenny said, he said, I can't believe he got rid of us. Such a nice camper like that. There's nothing wrong with it. And he could have sold it or given away something, but he had to dispose of it. Well, then later on, as I understand it, they found one of her uh earrings underneath where the camper sat on the that little 14-year-old girl. Yeah, yeah, that was her. And she was from up a small town, and I can't think of the name, but it's yeah, but it's Millisuer County area.
SPEAKER_00:So so this is the case then that uh Joanne was testifying in. Yes, right.
SPEAKER_01:So her and her mother, her and her mother testified for him.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, for him. For him.
SPEAKER_01:To say that he was at the gas station at the time. He couldn't have committed the murder.
SPEAKER_03:He couldn't have done it, Mike.
SPEAKER_01:That's what that's what he did.
SPEAKER_03:They hanging out, they rent from this guy, they got no bad vibe whatsoever, and he bludgeoned this young woman to death. Not one, but he ended up being they they think, or was he actually charged with several?
SPEAKER_01:I I'm not sure that. And see, here's the thing. Uh since since the crimes he committed there weren't in our county, and that we weren't privy to a lot of that. Right. But wherever they he did these things, they knew everything. And of course, when he killed this girl now that we're talking about uh in this small town, I think in Lasur County on the way up to Prairie Lake, when he did that, we were privy to that information because we're just in St. James, the city of St. James, and in Watanwan County, and it didn't happen in either one of our county. The crime committed up there in that Lasur County or whatever the town is what they can't say. But so they had the whole case along with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Appreciation. So they did all that case. So they didn't come and talk to us about anything. They didn't have any reason to because they had the case, they were investigating, so they they did this. So anyway, he had them convinced, apparently.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, Mrs.
SPEAKER_01:Bontzus and her daughter, Joanne, that he was at the gas station cafe at the time. He couldn't have been in Lasur County murdering this girl.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. So so then so then she, but she's testifying for him.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:Because I was thinking at first, I thought, okay, this was he was getting even, but that's not the case.
SPEAKER_01:This was this was about in 1970.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, right, right. About five years before.
SPEAKER_03:So then he got acquitted for that. And was he later charged for something else? Because he did do time in jail, correct?
SPEAKER_01:He was in he was in prison. He got charged with it. He and what he did when he went to prison, he got to be an attorney and started writing, he started writing uh um what do you would call it for the prisoners.
SPEAKER_03:Uh I can't think of the word appeals and all the prisoners.
SPEAKER_01:That's what he did.
SPEAKER_03:Again, the reason the reason I want to put point point out this this individual is because it seems to me that Joanne came along several gnarly characters throughout her story. It wasn't just one bad guy, it was multiple bad guys. So for the chance, see, I'm I'm a hometown girl, and they like to throw hometown men under the bus and say it was this guy or it was that guy or it was this guy or that guy. The fact that she knew this scandalous person, and then let's go ahead and move forward with the rest of the people that are involved.
SPEAKER_01:She's okay. So anyway, here's here's the thing. Uh Joanne would have been uh at the at the time that she worked at that gas station, she would have had to been about 15 years old. I I think about 15. And then she testified in 1970, her and her mother. Okay. I think it was 1970, okay. And they testified for him in his defense. Right. And whether it meant anything or not, I don't know. I think they knew they all knew better. So anyway, and then when she had her beauty shop in that, she was 21 years old, born Sherbrooke. Okay, Sherbrooke, right.
SPEAKER_03:So um yeah, it was just a case where so so what you you what we know about her is that she was an individual who could speak her mind. She was a waitress, she'd been waiting tables with with with a kind of corrupt crowd, because the police aren't going through there. That was a question I wanted to ask, Chief. Were you guys there? Because as a waitress, I've had the police come in, they knew me, but you but you were not you were not frequent that that was a good thing.
SPEAKER_01:Well I could say we just didn't go there because the mother didn't care for us. And of course, the owner of the who owned the gas station, he didn't care for us either. He really didn't. He had been in before for I want to say in manslaughter or something. I think he I think he preferred to use hammers on people.
SPEAKER_03:I think yeah, Ray Johnson, yeah. That's what that's a big hammers.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, used hammers on people, hit him in the head, and that's how that young lady passed. So so his here's the deal. I'll see if I could fit this in. So anyway, he went to prison, and after this thing happened with Joanne, these people thought, well, maybe he did it because Joanne testified against him. Joanne testified for him, and so did her mother. They testified the same same thing, I guess. But you know, we we don't know the testimony, but yeah.
SPEAKER_03:You know, I and I know, I know he was in jail at the time, but again, for me, I just that that just tripped me out that she'd been been connected with so many, so many gnarly folks, and that she, you know, I mean, how many murderers have you met in your life, Mike?
SPEAKER_01:And see none, I know she had, yeah, and she had uh two older brothers, and you know, they were they weren't rough, tough guys, but they'd mean they're older brothers, and and uh they would have gone, in fact, they supposedly, supposedly got their guns and they were gonna go after the first suspect. They were gonna go after him. And who was the first suspect? I think the first one was that Dwayne Anderson.
SPEAKER_03:And and who was Dwayne Anderson?
SPEAKER_01:He he lived right out on Fox Lake. Uh he was gonna buy her car. Supposedly, supposedly, everybody said he wanted to buy her car. But as I'm told, he didn't want to buy her car, and she wanted to sell it to him. He didn't want to buy it because he was a big guy. He couldn't fit in that little bag.
SPEAKER_03:See, see, see, I I guess the the the whole the whole thing of one guy being able to pull it off, yeah, for one guy being able to hold her up for 24 hours. So, so so Mike But we haven't gotten there yet, though. Oh, we haven't got there yet.
SPEAKER_00:No, we haven't got there yet. Okay, okay. Okay, my own.
SPEAKER_03:Well, he said he said he said they found they they they found it.
SPEAKER_00:They found the car. They found the car. And this was on Thursday. Uh Thursday morning. Oh, or Wednesday night as well.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, and Thursday morning was when the uh the guy from Sherburn, who d does the the Seifert, Ben Seifert, he had the drugstore.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:He's delivering he's delivering medication over here.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:So he comes by the car, sees it sitting on the road, and nobody around, and he comes here, does his thing, goes back to Sherburn, and stops on the way and checks over the car, and then he gets back to try and calls Bonch Bonch is the dad, and says, Your daughter's car is parked out here on the road, see? So then what happened is that the Sherburn cop got involved, Flores is his name, F-L-O-H-R-S or something like that. He was involved, and he went out and sat and kind of guarded that car the whole time until Martin County Sheriff's Department could get there. Martin County Sheriff's Department, I'm telling it as accurate as I know it, okay? I don't know everything. Uh uh, Martin County Sheriff's Department was transporting some other prison or something on a on a murder case or something at that time. They were trying, they were busy, so they couldn't get right to the scene. Not that it mattered that they're fast, or they could have sat for 10 hours as long as nothing moved the car. But anyway, so they couldn't get the car right away. So this Forez, this uh chief of police from Sherburne, sat there and watched the car so nobody messed with it and things like that. So he sat there and waited and waited and waited, and then they came and they took the car. They must have processed it for what they could, fingerprints maybe there, maybe they took it in and to Martin County and to the uh law enforcement center and processed for fingerprints and that in there.
SPEAKER_00:And this was all prior DNA, of course.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. There was no way back, no DNA at that time. Right.
SPEAKER_03:So so so can I uh you're talking about the scene. So can can I is it okay? You tell me when I can step in when I need to because I'm you know, I'm curious, curious, curious. Yep, absolutely. So the pictures that I've seen, now I tried to pull out what we had on the TriMod Progress or whatever was the newspaper at the time. I apologize. Um, I was disappointed. So we didn't really have anything, but I'd seen pictures from the Sentinel, and it looked like there was a lot of people hanging around that car.
SPEAKER_01:There were there were a lot of people around that. Now, I don't I don't think I don't think maybe they showed as many. Here's what I'm saying. Where the car was on the highway, uh-huh, I don't think they showed many people around there. I I think maybe the picture you saw was at the scene of the body. Then they had all sorts of people there. They had a football team there. Oh, yeah, that's what it looks like. But at the time, at the time of the car, I don't think there was anything that was really shown out there about of other people being around the car. You know, it could have been just an abandoned car, as far as they knew. They weren't sure if anything happened at that time. Nobody knew.
SPEAKER_03:No, right, but they keep talking. Okay, again, I don't mean to refer back to the book, but uh so was a shoe found by the front tire, was that correct?
SPEAKER_01:Both shoes, both shoes were by outside the car.
SPEAKER_03:Were there tread marks being dragged like she was dragged forward?
SPEAKER_01:That's what they said, or she was dragged forward. Okay.
SPEAKER_03:Did it look like there was a car that pulled up and stopped facing forward into her? What did it look like they were pulling up forward? Nothing we don't have.
SPEAKER_01:There's nothing I know of that. You don't have nothing. No, and here's here's the thing. Just to go through something, just to tell you how it is done. When you're in law enforcement, okay? When you're in law enforcement, Joanne knew the law enforcement around her. She knew them all. She knew every state patrolman. She knew every deputy sheriff, she knew uh every uh town cop.
SPEAKER_03:Right, right. Because she's coming, I don't know if you we we mentioned this, Mike. This is 12 30 at night. She's coming from the bar from TriMont. They're saying that that yeah, this is this is 12 30 a.m. She's coming from the bar from TriMont. Okay. And and so she was they that was about the last time she was seen.
SPEAKER_02:That's right.
SPEAKER_03:And at the time that we were we were all they were we were we were playing, we were going from bar to bar. We were going, you know, so people don't know if she was going back to another bar, but they said that she had a hair appointment at 8 a.m. the next morning. They did not is that all is off am I up to speed?
SPEAKER_01:No, that's fine. You just you just say if there's something I th I know isn't correct that I know. Thank you. That's fair.
SPEAKER_00:So what was processed at at the car as far as evidence? You said the two shoes.
SPEAKER_01:First, first of all, uh let me make this statement. Okay. When she was coming before she came to Trima, she stopped at Ormsby. Okay. The Ormsby bar, the the night's lounge out there. Yep. Right in the edge of town. She stopped there, she saw Jerome Christensen. Jerome's wife worked with her in the Highway Cafe in St. James.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:And Mrs. Jerome wasn't there, but but Jerome was. Jerome was, okay. And we knew him as Monk, Monk Christensen. He was a classmate of mine. Anyway, she went up to him and said, I have to get over and see your new baby. And who her his new baby they just had, the baby's name was Kent. Kent Christensen. So I always remember Kent's birthday because that's it. So they celebrated just this year before the 50th, you know, reunion of this thing.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_01:So, anyway, so uh she left and went to TriMont, and then she came over to TriMont. Supposedly party went in the Trimont uh bar down there, the TriMont Legion. And uh supposedly she came in there and there are a couple of guys playing pool.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_01:And one was Carlson and one was Borson. Tall Carlson out here in town.
SPEAKER_03:Uh uh, I don't want to know about my people.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, here's okay.
SPEAKER_03:They were arrested. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:Here's what happened. They were playing pool against a couple guys from Fairmont.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_01:They're playing for$20. In 1975,$20 a lot of money.
SPEAKER_02:Right, right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So they went in there, she went in there, and supposedly she was feeling her oats, and she she liked to drink. And supposedly took the pool balls and went and messed the pool balls up. See? And when you're good idea. I'm in the I'm in the International Hall of Fame for pool. Okay. Yeah, you can't see it. I've been around the International Hall of Fame. So anyway, it's a it's a case of where uh they took the game pretty serious and when they're playing for that. Right, right, yeah. In 75. So they got mad in this board, and I guess he and Joanne got into a heated argument out there at that at the bar. I don't think it was going to be enough for one of those boys would kill her. But anyway, I don't know who the boys from Fairmont were either. But but anyway, they got it all settled down. The bar bought them another drink, whatever it was, and I don't know how they did it if they re-racked the balls, whatever it got and taken care of. So then Joanne was around there till 12:30. And and as I understand, I think this Dwayne Johnson Anderson was one of the last to see her there.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:But Dwayne, I was told, was too big for the car. He didn't want to buy this little Vega. Yeah, she wanted to sell it, and she hadn't had it that long. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know details about that. And in the processing, I can't, I don't know myself. They didn't tell us everything. They don't tell me anything. And I got a little bit on the cyheder side with the sheriff because I told him 11 years ago, I don't think you guys are working on it. And the sheriff said, Don't tell me we're not working on this. He got red in the face. And so that that didn't start it off real well with he and I, but I thought this thing should have been solved years ago. I know it's local, without a doubt. And anyway, so uh I like I say I was in the office there three, four, three times for sure in that office and and talked with the either the deputy or uh Owens or I talked with uh assistants.
SPEAKER_03:When did you when did you really really start being active in it?
SPEAKER_01:About 11 years ago, right? About 11 years ago, yeah, late in uh 2014 or early in 2015 because I had a quadruple bypass on October 7th in 2014, and it was discussed at that time because I helped, or I tried to help, uh-huh, the girl down in um the girl down in Albert, no, Blue Earth. She took over trying to find the identity of this girl that Bob Nelson murdered, the state patrolman.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, co okay, so now let's let's take a beat. So, Mike, not only was Ms. Bonchus murdered at about that time, but according to a little bit of references, we've got the young lady that was killed being boshed over the head by Mr. Johnson. There might have been or Nelson. No, no, the second guy, the ri the original guy, the original guy, the cafe guy.
SPEAKER_01:You're talking James Johnson.
SPEAKER_03:James Johnson, the original guy. So we've got the young lady here that we're got connected. Okay. About the same time that Miss Joanne was was killed, they said he chief just said they were hauling a murder suspect from Fairmont, someplace that was in his car. Now, was that the guy that was accused of of killing somebody at the Jackson Wayside Rest, or was that somebody else?
SPEAKER_01:I think it was. I don't know.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, so now we've got now we've got number three. And okay, so you started helping. There was a body found on I-90 about Blue Earth within 18 months.
SPEAKER_01:That was no, it was 19 it was 1980.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, it was four years later.
SPEAKER_01:Four years later. Yeah. Four or five years later after the city.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, okay, okay. But who was charged with Bob Nelson State Patrolman? State patrolman Bob Nelson. Okay, let's back up. But Mr. Bob Nelson was on duty as a state patrolman at the same time Miss Joanne Bonchus was killed, correct?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I I think he was on duty at the time. I th I I don't know that for sure. I don't know that.
SPEAKER_03:But I mean duty, duty, but duty, I mean on duty, not duty, but would know how who's driving where, who's who's on which roads, which women drive which streets, who's going which direct direction.
SPEAKER_01:He knew her as well as But see the the girl that was murdered and dumped in a drainage dist in Blue Earth got kicked out of a van.
SPEAKER_03:Got kicked out of a uh But she but she did but he was but he did it.
SPEAKER_01:He picked her up.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, and then he did it.
SPEAKER_01:He picked her up and was gonna give her a ride somewhere. Murder of convenience. And then he and then he decided he wanted he this Bob Nelson was he was a wacko. I knew him. And he decided that he wanted to have sex with the scale. And she no, no, no, no, no. So anyway, he got real physical with it, took her along a drainage ditch out. By uh Blue Earth on the uh east side of Blue Earth out that way. And the water was low at the time, but anyway, he had her and he was forcing her into different things, and it got to be so bad that what he did to put pain into her was to take the pliers and pull out every one of her fingernails. Oh my god. Okay, nobody knew this. Except law enforcement and the killer. Nobody knew that. Nobody knew that. You know, nobody knew that. So anyway, he kills her. I don't remember if he strangled her or what he did, threw her body in the drainage ditch, this big county drainage ditch, threw her body in there. Well, during this time, the water started going up. They had a lot of rain. Her body floated down, it floated down this drainage ditch where a farmer found her out there. So then they called, you know, all the authorities, and of course, the body was pretty much uh in bad shape being in the water that long and all this sort of stuff.
SPEAKER_00:How long had it been in the water?
SPEAKER_01:I I think it was weeks. Uh you know, and so anyway, uh anyway, they determined, you know. I mean, it was a gal, she was dead, they figured out the age, the height, everything else, what they could, but they couldn't determine according to face, see. So she was she was taken and they did some sort of a thing for her. She was buried out in the Blue Earth Cemetery. And this Deborah Anderson, who's from Blue Earth, is going through the grave sites out there in Blue Earth and sees his name, Jane Doe. And she said, This is awful that we've got a girl here that nobody's identified. I want to find out who she is. So she started digging into it, and as she's digging it to it, it's made public in the Mayakito paper and things like that. And they start talking about some of these people and Bob Nelson and Rodney Johnson. So I called her up from in Blue Earth, and I said, I said, hey, if there's something I could help you with, I will. I said, I knew Rodney Johnson, I knew Bob Nelson, I knew Shane, I knew all the state patrolmen out that way. And I said, if you need some help. So her and I met up in Manquito at the uh Cloft Pie place up on 22 and Madison Avenue. I can't think of the name. We've met up there and had a meeting on this thing, and she showed me the places she went through in the on the computer where you find missing people and this and that. So we went, she went through all these. She'd been done doing it quite a while. So I jumped into it too and tried to find out people who were missing a certain time, certain date, and there was month one missing from the end of May, and in uh in Texas. We didn't know it at that time, but and uh end of May is when this one was missing, and a body was found. She was uh found in May, a little June, right in June, so shortly after her disappearance. So, but she had been hitchhiking and like 19, 20 years old. Anyway, what what happened after that is that nobody knew who she was, and nobody I never I always thought I I always thought people knew who she was. I didn't know that. And we're see, we're we're in St. James, and then you got Blue Earth, you're kind of ways away, right?
SPEAKER_03:Right. So so that's when you got connected with the the lady in Blue Earth who's trying to write the story of the city.
SPEAKER_01:Deborah Anderson, a private citizen.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, but this was 11 years ago, so this would have been in what 20 to 20.
SPEAKER_01:Well, it was 2014. I had been doing it before that was.
SPEAKER_03:But in the meantime, this this police officer, this police officer, the one that you said was by Johnson, is that what Nelson.
SPEAKER_01:Nelson.
SPEAKER_03:Nelson, but thank you for keeping track. Um uh think because there's a lot of characters. So he has admitted to this, to he's admitted to another murder. He's in Texas, he's in jail in Texas. How did he get connected with this this body in the world?
SPEAKER_01:He was he was he was a real weirdo when he got like into a cult and all this sort of stuff, and he didn't know. And taking his money, everything else, I guess. But anyway, he ended up he ended up going down to Texas, moving down to Texas. He had sexually abused one or two of his sons. So that's this is how he went to prison. So he went to prison not for any murder, he went to prison for sexually abusing one son or two sons. Anyway, he ended up in the Texas prison system, which a lot of people don't like. They prefer to be in Minnesota. That's right, right. So he people thought, so his minister or someone else told him, I I don't want to say positively the minister, but somebody else said, Is there anything else you want to confess to? And he said, I killed this girl in Minnesota. So that's how it came about that he killed this girl, and her name was Busha. B-U-S-H-A is her last name.
SPEAKER_03:So you guys did find her, find her, find her identity in the house.
SPEAKER_01:But it wasn't taken until uh it wasn't taken until 11 years ago or whatever. Right. 20414 or 15, right then.
SPEAKER_03:I can't remember reading about you.
SPEAKER_00:So now then she's been identified. She's been identified. The family, of course, can go to the city.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, and the reason the reason was is that the family had never given any DNA or anything themselves, and finally they did down in Bay City, Texas.
SPEAKER_00:Texas.
SPEAKER_01:Bay City, Texas. They gave their DNA or whatever, and that matched up with what they had on file for her. So they came up and got the body. They didn't want any big story about it. They came and took the body back to Bay City, Michigan. And he got, I don't think he got charged with murdering her, but I think it was just a sentence that got stretched out from his previous one.
SPEAKER_00:All right. So hold on a second. We are going to we're gonna end this section and then we'll do part two. Okay. We'll be right back, folks. So stick around. This is this is interesting. Hold on a second, let me get this. Are we doing okay?
