Cold Cases in Minnesota
ColdCaseIndex documents 9 cases in Minnesota, dated 1989 to 2023. 5 are recorded as unsolved. The earliest is Jacob Wetterling (1989) and the most recent is Madeline Kingsbury (2023).
- Unsolved 5 (56%)
- Solved or convicted 3 (33%)
- Closed without conviction 1 (11%)
Homicide clearance in Minnesota, 1965 to 2024
A homicide is "cleared" when police make an arrest or close it by exceptional means, so an uncleared case is not always an unsolved one. Source: Murder Accountability Project analysis of FBI Uniform Crime Report data, as published by Project: Cold Case. These are statewide totals and are separate from the ColdCaseIndex entries listed below.
By type
All Minnesota cases
Madeline Kingsbury
Madeline Kingsbury, 26, disappeared on March 31, 2023, after dropping her two children at daycare in Winona, Minnesota. Her remains were found on June 7, 2023, near Mabel in Fillmore County.
George Floyd
George Floyd died on May 25, 2020, after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes during an arrest.
Philando Castile
Philando Castile was shot and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. His girlfriend broadcast the aftermath live on Facebook. Officer Jeronimo Yanez was acquitted of manslaughter in 2017.
Henry McCabe
Henry McCabe, a 32-year-old Minnesota state auditor, disappeared after a night out over Labor Day weekend in 2015, following disturbing phone calls in which relatives heard him screaming in distress.
Brandon Victor Swanson
Brandon Swanson, 19, drove his car into a ditch on a rural gravel road in the early hours of May 14, 2008, while driving home to Marshall, Minnesota, from Canby.
LeeAnna Warner
Five-year-old LeeAnna Warner vanished on June 14, 2003, while walking home from a friend's house about a block away in Chisholm, Minnesota.
Joshua Guimond
Joshua Guimond, a 20-year-old junior at Saint John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota, left a late-night card game at the Metten Court dormitory around 11:45 p.m.
Christopher Kerze
Christopher Kerze, 17, has been missing since April 20, 1990, when he left his family's home in Eagan, Minnesota, in the family van.
Jacob Wetterling
Eleven-year-old Jacob Wetterling was abducted at gunpoint near his home in St. Joseph, Minnesota, on October 22, 1989. His disappearance led to the 1994 Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender…