Sergeant Goodman
Appearances
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
For the most part, nobody really saw or heard anything during the time frame that we believe the homicide occurred.
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
Yeah, she had been texting Michael Vann into the late night, early morning hours of Sunday, June 3rd. And he appeared to be the last one to have any sort of a conversation with her.
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
There was nothing that we could see that would indicate that she was sexually assaulted. It was definitely something that we were concerned about and it was on our minds.
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
We found out that there was superficial cuts or marks on Anita's neck. So it led us to believe that somebody is there, kind of in her face, holding the knife to her neck and angry. And then that just escalated to the point of stabbing her.
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
We did have one witness come forward and say that she saw somebody running early that morning.
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
We learned that they had kind of a poor relationship, that there was some minor fights and some arguing between the two of them.
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
He's somebody that kind of always was in our minds. Could he have been involved? Can we come up with any motive that he would have had?
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
We did. And it got to a point where it did raise some red flags with us.
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
Yes, his name came up many times in different meetings about the case and if there was anything further we needed to do with him or ask of him. So yeah, his name definitely stayed on our radar.
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
Tyler remained a person of interest pretty much throughout the investigation. There was different investigators that had different theories of what could have happened and who could have been responsible. His name was always somebody that we thought of.
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
Devin Hall is somewhat of a troubled teenager. He was in a facility for troubled teens. He had been involved in some break-ins where he'd gone in through some windows. So that started raising some suspicion as well.
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
I ended up talking to somebody that works for the Family Services Department. She made the comment that she hoped that Devin Hall was not involved in the murder in Minot.
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
I talked to one relative. I showed her a picture of the knife that was used to kill Anita. She initially positively identified that knife as at one time belonging to her or her mother.
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
He denied being involved in the murder in Minot, denied knowing Anita at all.
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
I showed Devin a picture of the murder weapon and he right away showed interest in it and thought that it looked like something that he had had at one point.
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
Yes. Yeah, I was very surprised too that Devin admitted that he thought that he had a knife that I was showing him was used in a murder.
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
He didn't seem to be nervous about that at all. Somebody that was involved in a murder with that knife wouldn't be so open to talk about it.
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
The lady that picked up Devin and the other people from the train in Minot recorded them on video and was able to give us that video showing that they got off the train on Sunday evening about 9 p.m. 9.20, 9.30 p.m.
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
Eventually, I ended up coming back to Wolf Point to talk more with her about the knife. And at that point, she had remembered that the knife that she was talking about had a wolf medallion on it and not an Indian headdress.
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
At that point, we wanted to keep an open mind and investigate everybody that we could think of that would be somebody that would have crossed paths with Anita.
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
We had an individual come forward and say, hey, I was running in the neighborhood, and he looked like the drawing.
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
There was mixtures of different DNA profiles on that knife, but nothing that we were able to ever turn into anything useful in the investigations.
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
He was a decent guy. He was very cooperative with us. What's Tyler like?
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
There had been talk about them figuring out the apartment and going their separate ways.
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
What did you learn from that? I learned that after doing that, I didn't feel that it was possible that the person that committed the homicide entered or exited out the window.
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
Because it shows that the only other person that would know these details are people that, or someone that was at the crime scene or somebody that did the murder.
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
I was new to investigations, kind of wondered what direction we'd go in and are we going to solve this right away? Is it going to be difficult?
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
I believe they had police tape up already. The crime scene van was parked on the grass right out in front of the door, and detectives were inside the apartment.
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
It is tough to swallow. I feel like Anita can— Knutson's family did not get justice. Anita didn't get the justice that she deserves.
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
Just the layout, how many bedrooms it was, who all lived in the apartment, what was out of place.
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
I could see that she was kind of flopped over, laying on her stomach. I noticed her room seemed to be in order.
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
No, there did not seem to be a struggle at all. I had also looked around her bedroom and I noticed that her purse was there. I could see that there was cash in her purse. So I didn't feel like it had been any sort of a burglary or a robbery gone bad type of situation.
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
We could see that she had a stab wound to her right chest area and also a stab wound to her sternum area. And then we also noticed on the mattress that there was a five to six inch circle of blood where blood had drained from her body and soaked into the mattress.
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
It appeared that somebody had used a knife and cut kind of a backwards L, cut into the screen.
Dateline NBC
Murder in Minot
He was a person of interest of just knowing that he had knowledge of what was going on there or what happened there. So, of course, the maintenance guy would have access to keys.