Blayne Alexander and Josh Mankiewicz sit down to talk about Blayne’s episode "Murder in Minot.” When college student Anita Knutson was found fatally stabbed in her off-campus apartment, investigators struggled to find a killer due to the lack of physical evidence. Eventually investigators turned their attention to Anita’s former roommate, Nichole Rice, who stood trial and was acquitted of the crime. Blayne and Josh discuss their experiences reporting on acquittals and Blayne shares a podcast-exclusive clip of her interview with Anita’s sister on grief and moving on. Plus, they answer viewer and listener questions. If you have a question for Talking Dateline, send us an audio message on social @datelinenbc or leave us a voicemail at 212-413-5252.Listen to the full episode of “Murder in Minot” on Apple: https://apple.co/43gVGmKListen to the full episode on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5X2MzLrmE77HGB2wV2zMQO
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
Hi, everybody. I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and we are talking Dateline today with Blaine Alexander. Hi. Hello. So we're here to talk about Blaine's episode called Murder in Minot. Now, if you haven't seen it, it's the episode right below this one on your Dateline podcast feed. So go there, listen to it, stream it on Peacock or go to your DVR.
Chapter 2: Who was Anita Knutson and what happened to her?
And watch it because you record it every single week, which is what you ought to be doing. And then come back here. Now, to recap, college student Anita Knutson was found stabbed to death in her North Dakota apartment in 2007, and it took nearly 15 years for investigators to make an arrest immediately. in that murder.
And then that turned out to be one of the first people they spoke with at the crime scene, which was Anita's roommate, Nicole. Now, she maintained her innocence. And as you saw or heard in the episode, she was acquitted after a week-long trial.
So for this Talking Dateline, we have an extra clip for Blaine's interview, really great interview, I thought, with Anita's sister, Anna, and how she talks about that long fight for justice for her sister, which ultimately did not lead where the family wanted it to lead. So let's talk Dateline. Let's do it. a couple of things I loved about this episode.
One, like it wasn't clear until pretty close to the end who police thought the guilty party was. A lot of times you have a pretty good idea earlier on, uh, There were a lot of sort of equally rated suspects as you sort of tick them off through the investigation.
And then, of course, this great twist in which the person that gets arrested that everybody thinks did it, at least at that point, is acquitted. So let's talk a little bit about that for starters.
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Chapter 3: What were the key twists in the investigation?
You know, this was an interesting story for me to do, Josh, because this was my first time doing an acquittal story for Dayline. Not like I have a whole heck of a lot of them under my belt, but it was a very different process.
Almost throughout, I would say, starting with the family, because typically, you know, when you sit down with families, you kind of have a there's a hate to use the word closure because you don't bring the person back.
But I mean, we hate that word. Yeah.
Yeah.
There's a period at the end of the sentence. And somebody almost always got convicted. I mean, you're talking about this was your first acquittal. I mean, in 30 years here, I've done, I don't know, maybe 10. I mean, they just don't come along that often.
It's rare, right? And in cases like this, because I mean, I think when you have a murder case, you take it all the way to the courtroom. Typically, by the time you get there, you're pretty certain if you're the prosecutor that you're going to get a conviction. That was obviously not the case here. So it was a very different type of story to tell.
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Chapter 4: What challenges do families face in acquittal cases?
And to your point about the suspects, there were a lot of them. And I think that that's what sowed a lot of seeds of doubt in the jury. When you heard from our juror, he was like, yeah, I was able to eliminate two of them and say they definitely didn't do it. But that still left him with several other people that he thought could have possibly done it.
And you don't typically have that many suspects who kind of have to some degree equal weight and impossibility of guilt.
You know, prosecutors are not supposed to bring murder cases unless they're very certain that they're going to get a conviction. You're not just allowed to try somebody because like, hey, maybe we'll get lucky and the jury will go along with us. Like the prosecutors don't do that. They tend to not go into the courtroom unless the deck is significantly stacked in their favor.
And that clearly was not the case this time. There was not an overwhelming case against Nicole.
There wasn't. I mean, it was a circumstantial case to begin with. There wasn't physical evidence. You know, in a number of stories we do, they never find the murder weapon, right? Here, the murder weapon was right on the bed, right next to Anita. But even that didn't give them any sort of DNA evidence, any sort of forensic evidence to lead them any closer to the killer.
So there were all of these different things that fell through. The typical things that you think of as this is what's going to be something that points to the eventual killer. None of those existed for investigators.
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Chapter 5: How does lack of physical evidence affect a murder case?
Yeah. And you've got to believe that what Nicole is so sophisticated that she could leave the victim's DNA on the knife, but wipe hers off. She doesn't she doesn't really strike me as that kind of killer.
And that's the other question, right? Was somebody wearing gloves? Was it more planned than what prosecutors were kind of saying would have been more of an act of anger between two roommates? If that were the case, you're not putting on gloves, you're not wiping off evidence.
And so, yes, I think that that was a big hole, of course, when it came to the investigation, why it took so long for an arrest to be made and then ultimately why there was an acquittal.
So the motive is what? They weren't getting along as roommates, so she decided to kill her?
That's the prosecution's theory, yes. They said, though, that there were a number of things that were showing that it was getting increasingly tense between the two of them.
You know, I've covered cases in which people who live in the same house, one of them ended up killing the other. And I will say that, I mean, look, every case is a little bit different. I'm not seeing the level of tension between the two roommates that gets you to murder. And also, like, and then what? And then you don't have that roommate anymore? I mean, there's no financial gain here.
There's no third party. They're not supposedly fighting over some boyfriend or girlfriend. Right. You know, nobody got custody of the home afterwards. I mean, it's... It feels thin kind of from the get-go.
What prosecutors would point to would be rage, right? That it was just one of those crimes of passion, a fit of rage. That's kind of what prosecutors, you know, walked in with.
And if that's what it is, if it's second degree, heat of passion... Then where's her DNA on the knife? One of the things that came up in my last story, which was the widow of Woodland Hills, was something very common in stabbing homicides, which is that when you stab somebody else, you frequently get cut. There wasn't any of that in this one. There weren't two sets of blood on the knife.
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Chapter 6: What was the community's reaction to the murder?
So everyone was talking about it. There was fear. There was also the very real, you know, question of. Who did this and how could they have gotten away with this? I thought it was so telling when we heard from Klug once he became chief that they almost kind of put up this reminder of Anita Knudson.
I mean, they pulled out her binders, put her picture up, and people who were in the investigations division had to walk past that every day. Just a reminder of, hey... This is still open. We need to do something about this. And then you had a family, a very diligent family. I mean, the billboards went up. They had this Facebook page that really gained a lot of traction, which was a big deal.
And all those ribbons are still up. Yes.
Like that's not happening in your big cities.
Yeah. No, absolutely not. They're still there. That faded photograph is still very much hanging. And so, yes, it impacted the community in a way that, to your point, a lot of others don't. A lot of other places don't have.
When we get back, we'll have that clip of Blaine's interview with Anita's sister, Anna, and how she describes the family's journey to find justice and also how they're looking ahead now. It was really heartbreaking to see Anita's parents on the stand as bad as it was. It's a great example of sort of how excruciating this whole thing is from beginning to end for the families involved.
And I say this all the time, like, you know, people always want to know, like, what's it like to sit across from murderers? That's easy. The hard part is sitting across from those families and watching what they have to go through.
I think that I have a lot of thoughts about sitting down with Anna Knudsen. One... What she and her family have had to go through in losing not only Anita, but losing Daniel, who died by suicide a few years later, was really unbelievable. And they all have carried this sense of the killer, whomever the killer may be, took from their family twice.
And so they've had this pain that has then been compounded. They were waiting for an arrest. The arrest happened and then they had an acquittal. And so it really is a difficult place for them. And I think when you saw their parents on the stand, I mean, they are elderly. Yes, Sharon was 80 years old. Gordon was 90.
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Chapter 7: How did the family cope with the trial and acquittal?
Now let's talk about the verdict. So the judge issues this instruction beforehand, like everybody, you know, stay quiet. And then... the verdict is delivered and it's not guilty. And again, You know, they're acting like they just won a bowl game. I'm surprised that they didn't exercise a little bit more self-control, the defense.
They got a lot of flack for that online, by the way. I'm sure. There were a lot of angry comments. There were a lot of people who said that was just a terrible taste, poor taste. And I think, you know, talking to Anna... She said, yes, that was a hard moment hearing the not guilty. But she said when she heard that celebration on the other side, she said, I just felt the room getting smaller.
I just had to get out of there. I'm curious when you, I mean, have you, obviously acquittals are rare. So this is a rare thing anyway. Can you recall such a courtroom response?
Not like that. I mean, I recall some outbursts. I can't remember anything on that level. Anything, you know, the fist pumping, the whooping, that I don't remember. I remember, you know,
judges saying i don't want to hear anything afterwards and then you do hear something you hear people you hear somebody go you know yes or good or you know and it's usually a gasp right or like and then people contain themselves and you hear people crying that's the other thing and and uh and and that's sort of an emotion that people are unable to control but but
Generally, over all the years that now I've been doing this, the reaction you hear is from the gallery, from the people watching on both sides, not from the defense or prosecution. That's the unusual part here was that it was it was a an outburst that really sort of started at the defense table.
Absolutely. That's absolutely it.
You know, and I will not forget Anna saying, you know, I wish I could get that out of my head, but I can't. I can hear those. I can still hear those those screams of triumph. So you spoke with her in a clip that we are now that didn't make the broadcast that we're going to play now about you.
In which you were talking with her about sort of what those 15 years have been like, not just the trial itself, but the actual period of time of losing your sister and not knowing what happened. So let's listen to that.
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