Brittney Marie Reynolds is a woman from Fargo North Dakota who was topless when she broke into a church and destroyed a Jesus statue. According to police reports 911 received a call stating that a topless woman had broken into the St. Mary’s Cathedral . When officers arrived at the scene they would find Brittney Marie Reynolds running across the street but officers easily caught her . Brittney Marie Reynolds was unable to answer any of the officers questions as she was clearly on some sort of substance. Brittney Marie Reynolds would be transported to a nearby hospital where she would assault a member of the hospital staff.
Brittney Marie Reynolds More News
Police said a woman wearing no shirt or bra broke into a Catholic church in North Dakota and destroyed a statue of Jesus.
Fargo police said they responded to a call at St. Mary’s Cathedral in downtown around 6:30 p.m. Tuesday for a topless woman damaging property. When officers arrived, they said they saw a woman running across the street but were able to detain her.
According to court documents, the woman also had no shoes on. Police identified her as 35-year-old Brittney Marie Reynolds.
Officers said Reynolds was not able to answer basic questions and appeared to be under the influence of narcotics.
The Rev. Riley Durkin provided security camera footage to authorities, and court documents state it showed Reynolds enter the church and knock over a potted plant before making her way to a large Jesus statue on the wall.
The statue was ripped from the wall and smashed on the floor. The woman on the video can be seen leaving shortly after that.
Police reached out to Monsignor Joseph Goering for an estimated cost of damage. He said he was unsure of the exact value, but a similar statue was found online at a price of $11,500.
Reynolds was being held at the Cass County Jail and was set to make her first court appearance Wednesday. Officials also issued an additional warrant for Reynolds after she was accused of assaulting Essentia Health Emergency Room staff.
Nichole Rice has been charged in Anita Knutson murder that took place fifteen years ago. According to police reports Anita Knutson who was a Minot State University freshman at the time was found murdered in her bed. Anita’s father would make the grim discovery after not hearing from his daughter for a few days. Anita Knutson died from several stab wounds. The case to find her killer went nowhere for a long time with the Knutson family blaming the local police for screwing up the investigation. Nichole Rice who attended school with Anita Knutson and was her roommate at the time of her murder told police that she was with her family during the time that Anita was murdered however her story and that of her family was full of inconsistencies however she was never arrested due to lack of evidence. However that changed this year when Nichole Rice would confess to an ex boyfriend that she was responsible for the murder of Anita Knutson. When they broke up the ex told the police and Nichole Rice would finally be arrested and charged with the murder of Anita Knutson.
Nichole Rice More News
Nearly 15 years after a North Dakota teen was found murdered in her home, a crack has finally been made in the case. Police in Minot say that Nichole Rice, 34, has been arrested in connection with 18-year-old Anita Knutson’s killing, after more than 10 years in which “there was no person of interest, little evidence, and a murder victim with no justice,” per KXMB. The Minot State University freshman was found dead in her bedroom on June 4, 2007, after her dad, Gordon Knutson, hadn’t heard from her in a few days, drove to her apartment, and saw a blood-stained mattress through the window, he told Crime Watch Daily in an earlier interview, per the Washington Post. Police say Anita Knutson, who was found on her bed with a housecoat placed over her, had been stabbed to death.
Knutson’s family wasn’t happy with the yearslong investigation that followed, claiming that law enforcement botched the search to find her killer. On Wednesday, Minot Police Chief John Klug announced his team finally had a suspect: Rice, who’d gone to high school with Knutson and was Knutson’s roommate at the time of her murder, per InForum. When the probe into the killing initially began, Rice is said to have told police she was with her family the weekend before Knutson was found, but according to an affidavit of probable cause for Rice, police found remarks by both Rice and her parents to be “inconsistent and contradictory,” per the Post. Those who knew both young women also labeled Rice “hot-tempered and reactionary.”
“Anita was scared of her,” Knutson’s mom, Sharon Knutson, told Crime Watch Daily in the earlier interview, noting her daughter had planned to move out of the apartment she shared with Rice. But police say they didn’t have enough evidence to charge Rice—until earlier this month, when they were able to track down an ex-boyfriend whom Rice allegedly confessed the crime to, per the affidavit. Rice was arrested Wednesday while at her civilian job at Minot Air Force Base. Police haven’t yet revealed a motive. Rice, who was released from Ward County Jail after posting a $120,000 bond, faces life in prison without chance for parole if she’s convicted of the felony charge of intentional murder against her, per KFYR. (Read more cold cases stories.)
Hannah McMillin has been sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole for the murder of her one month old infant. According to court reports Hannah McMillian and her husband Tank McMillian were charged last year with child abuse after the one month old infant was found buried underneath a bunch of pillows and not breathing, the infant who had a number of bruises on his body could not be rescued. Later on Hannah McMillian was charged with the murder of the infant, Heath McMillian. Hannah would use an Alford plea and would be sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole for the murder and child abuse charges. Tank McMillian would receive a prison sentence of three and a half years in prison.
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A woman only tried to withdraw her plea after the state seized some of the $3,000 in her prison account to pay for court fees and restitution, prosecutors say.
In May, Hannah McMillin, who entered an Alford plea to a class AA felony count of murder in January, asked to change her plea back to not guilty. In an Alford plea, a defendant doesn’t admit guilt, but does acknowledge they would likely be convicted at trial.
Hannah McMillin was arrested and charged with child abuse in April 2019 after the death of her 1-month old son. She was charged with murder several months later.
After entering the Alford plea, Hannah McMillin received $3,000 in her prison commissary account and used it to buy mp3s and other items.
“While the means by which this was acquired are not yet known, given the restrictions on internet activity at the Williams County Correctional Center, the State notes that the Defendant was somehow able to convince one or more persons to send roughly $3,000.00 to her in the form of money orders,” Nathan Madden, assistant state’s attorney for Williams County, wrote in a 54-page response to McMillin’s motion.
The prosecution found out about the money and filed a civil suit to use some of the money to pay for costs Hannah McMillin will be required to pay.
“The State’s civil proceedings made it clear that, upon conviction, the money was not going to be available to satisfy her whims, but instead was going to reimburse taxpayers for a portion of the costs of the proceeding and to reimburse other family members who paid for Doe’s cremation,” Madden wrote.
That, rather than anything else, was what drove her motion, Madden argued.
“The motion to withdraw the guilty plea only came after the Defendant knew she was losing the remaining commissary money effectively at sentencing and that she was very likely going to prison for a very, very long time without that money and the fun things she thought she could buy with it,” he wrote. “It came only after her gilded image of what she thought life in prison was going to be like came crashing down around her; prison would suddenly seem much less exciting.”
Hannah McMillin’s request to change her plea back to not guilty centered on a claim that her husband, Tank McMillin, admitted his part in the death. In his response, Madden outlined the evidence against Hannah McMillin, including her statements to police and others after the infant’s death.
Hannah McMillin told investigators she’d held a pillow over the baby’s face, killing the child.
“A pillow with what appeared to be the imprint of a small human face was also located, and the impression area was found to contain (the infant’s) DNA,” Madden wrote. “(The state medical examiner’s) autopsy report indicated that (the child) died by smothering/suffocation. This corroborates the Defendant’s incriminating statements about the acts of violence committed against (the baby) which ultimately culminated in his death; something which she ‘now’ knew occurred before she left for the pool/spa. All of the acts of violence that the Defendant stated she perpetrated against (the child) are fully supported by the evidence gathered in this matter.”
Madden also questioned how the claims about what Tank McMillin had been saying came to light. Defense filings say only a reliable anonymous source.
“While this ‘anonymous’ source is likely known to the defense, it is interesting that the defense has chosen to not identify whether this ‘reliable anonymous source’ is a ‘citizen informant’ or a member of the criminal milieu,” Madden wrote, “and it is also interesting that the defense has chosen to not indicate the presence or absence of any link to the Defendant that this ‘reliable anonymous source’ may have.”
A hearing on McMillin’s request is scheduled for July 23
Alfonso Rodriguez was sentenced to death by the Federal Government for the murder of college student Dru Sjodin. According to court documents Dru Sjodin was walking to her car after leaving a shopping mall, the college student was talking to her boyfriend when the call suddenly ended. Three hours later her boyfriend received a call from Dru numbers but all he heard was buttons being pressed. The first call was from North Dakota and the second was believed to have come from Minnesota. A week later Alfonso Rodriguez, a convicted sex offender, would be arrested. A search of his vehicle would find a knife that was soaked in cleaning solution and another knife that would have the DNA of Dru Sjodin. The body of Dru Sjodin would be found six months later in Minnesota. Alfonso Rodriguez would be charged with kidnapping, sexual assault and the murder of Dru Sjodin and sentenced to death. As of 2021 he mains on Federal Death Row
After 13 years of litigation, the judicial system is still far from finished with Alfonso Rodriguez.
Rodriguez, the Crookston, Minn., man who was convicted in 2006 of kidnapping and killing UND student Dru Sjodin, continues to appeal his death sentence. As costs mount, experts say the process could drag on for years — maybe even another decade.
“It’s basically all on deck. We’re going to now throw in everything,” said U.S. Attorney Drew Wrigley, who prosecuted the original case and appeal. “I think most people in a free society would say, ‘Good. We’ll all check one more time.’ But there are no limits placed on that in law. In time, it has expanded. In this case, it has expanded a bit like a gas. It has filled the fullness of time.”
Rodriguez’s counsel rested in February after a nine-day hearing, during which they claimed he is intellectually disabled. The ruling, however, won’t come for a while. Wrigley said it could take months for a transcript to be completed and then attorneys will have four months to submit briefs on the issue.
Robert Durham, director of the nonpartisan Death Penalty Information Center, said the case could stretch another decade without reaching a conclusion.
Wrigley said he’s not surprised Rodriguez is still alive or that the case is still under scrutiny. Ultimately, he believes Rodriguez’s final appeals will prove unsuccessful and he will be put to death.
“I recognize, having personally handled the appeal to the Eighth Circuit and ultimately up to the Supreme Court in that first go-around, that it is a conviction that is on solid footing. … I continue to believe that lawful, well-founded appropriate sentence will be carried out,” Wrigley said. “I couldn’t tell you when I think that time frame will be, but you can see important next steps from where we’re standing.”
Durham said the most common outcome in death penalty cases is actually not execution — it’s lesser sentences and removal from death row.
At present, there are 62 federal death-row inmates. The death penalty was reinstated in 1988 and 78 people have been sentenced to death since. Only three have been executed. Meanwhile, 12 have been removed from death row and three defendants had death recommended but the sentence was not imposed.
“What typically happens in a case that’s been around that long is that it’s gone through the appellate process and been overturned and gone back for a resentencing and a retrial. … So when it gets sent back — which a majority of cases do — you start all over again in the appellate process,” Durham said. “The single most likely outcome of a death penalty case once a death sentence is returned is that the conviction or death sentence will be overturned.”
Neither Minnesota nor North Dakota allow for the death penalty under state law, but because Rodriguez’s crime crossed state lines and was therefore tried in federal court, the death sentence could be, and was, imposed. Rodriguez lost an appeal through the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2009. The Supreme Court declined to hear his case afterward.
And so began the habeas corpus motions. The motions call on things not discussed during trial or appeal that normally could be considered outside the record, such as juror fairness or effectiveness of counsel.
For the habeas corpus motions, which are the last leg of appeal before execution, Rodriguez is represented by federal public defenders out of the Minneapolis office.
Meanwhile, taxpayers continue to foot a mounting bill to incarcerate, prosecute and defend Rodriguez.
It cost at least $1.2 million to defend him during his original trial, according to Todd Dudgeon, deputy clerk of court at Fargo’s federal courthouse. The case was among the most costly in the courthouse’s history.
His Eighth Circuit appeal cost about $158,000, according to federal court documents.
A large chunk of that cost and subsequent expense is the cost of prosecution and the public defenders working on Rodriguez’s behalf. It’s difficult to get an accurate tally on Rodriguez’s impact on taxpayer dollars because public lawyers work for a salary, and not on a case-by-case or hourly basis.
“My staff and I who were working most directly on that, the lawyers I would say in a lot of instances we put in over twice as many hours as we would normally be putting in probably,” Wrigley said. “Which, all it did was it had the impact of cutting our salary in half because you don’t change the salaries in the office. So while you can say ‘these eight people were working on this case,’ it would be inappropriate to say those entire salaries are attributable to the Rodriguez case. A, it wasn’t the only thing we were doing and B, that’s what we’re there to do — work on investigations and work on cases that we think have public merit.”
Now Rodriguez waits out his days in a prison in Terre Haute, Ind., where nearly all federal death-row inmates are housed. It has cost approximately $380,000 for his incarceration since 2007, according to inmate costs listed by the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
His actual incarceration cost may be even higher, though, because death-row inmates are housed in a specific block of the prison. Studies have suggested it may be more costly to incarcerate an inmate facing death.
Rodriguez was housed at the Cass County Jail before his death sentence was imposed at a cost of $88,840, according to the U.S. Marshal’s Service.
Durham noted Rodriguez’s appearances in the Fargo courtroom are also expensive because additional security is needed at all times to monitor him.
“If you want to do the death penalty right, it’s going to be expensive,” Durham said. “And if you don’t want to do the death penalty right, we shouldn’t have it.”
Wrigley said prosecutors will continue to fight for what he thinks is the most lawful sentence — even if it takes another decade.
“It’s a serious decision to seek death and having gotten a death penalty in that case that was rightly instituted, we will fight for that conviction until it’s logical conclusion,” he said.
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