Crime Immemorial

In the late winter of 2001, a woman in a rural town in Minnesota would vanish from her workplace during one of the coldest nights of the year.

Fifty-year-old Rachel Anthony had worked at Ultimate Liquors in Pine River, Minnesota for about a year and a half, often handling the closing shift alone. The town, situated about thirty miles north of Brainerd, consisted of little more than nine-hundred residents, and was hemmed in by thousands of acres of national forest, dotted here and there with seasonal cabins, which were mostly empty at this time of year.

On Tuesday, February 27th, 2001, Rachel had spent the day with her grandchildren before heading in to work in the evening. It was a bitterly cold night, dipping down to nineteen below zero degrees Fahrenheit, with the wind chill driving the temperatures even lower. Most of the businesses around the liquor store—save for a gas station and the American Legion—had closed at around seven p.m., and very few locals were out and about in such foul weather.

Rachel did make a few sales at the liquor store, though, and as the shop’s closing time of ten p.m. approached, she began going through her normal routine. She locked the front door, gathered her coat and purse together, and placed her things near the back entrance. She probably popped out the back door and threw a bag of garbage into the dumpster behind the store, as she usually did just before locking up for the night.

She also went out to her Ford Escort, parked only a few feet from the door, and started it up, so that it would be warm when she finally got inside. A police officer driving past the liquor store at around ten p.m. later stated that he noticed that the car was running, and assumed that Rachel was simply warming up the engine while she performed her closing duties inside the store.

The cash register at Ultimate Liquors recorded a last, uncompleted sale at nine-fifty-six p.m., a fact that would later take on ominous implications.

More than two hours after closing time, the same police officer drove past Ultimate Liquors again, and saw that Rachel Anthony’s car was still sitting in the same place, its motor still running. Concerned, he pulled into the lot and entered the store through the still-unlocked back door.

Inside, the officer noticed Rachel’s purse, coat, and cigarettes sitting near the back door, but saw no other sign of Rachel. Nothing in the store appeared to be disturbed, and no money or merchandise had been taken, but the woman who had been working there had simply disappeared into the frigid darkness.

Though the shop had security cameras, it so happened that they had not been recording on this particular night, for some unknown reason. Investigators were also unable to find any unusual tire tracks or footprints in the snow that would suggest the presence of an intruder. From the looks of the scene, it appeared as though someone had entered the store shortly before closing under the guise of making a purchase, and then had forced Rachel out through the back. Authorities were able to account for all of the purchases made at the liquor store that night save for the final one, and as this individual never came forward during the investigation, it was assumed that the final customer was likely Rachel’s kidnapper. In 2022, authorities confirmed that the individual suspected in the crime had bought Kool brand cigarettes and a bottle of Mickey’s Malt Liquor.

On April 13th, 2001, six weeks after Rachel had been abducted from the liquor store where she worked, her body was discovered by four teenagers out riding horses along a rural bypass called Nelson Road, a location about fifteen miles from Ultimate Liquors. She was found in a ditch some way down an embankment; she had been strangled to death.

Because the place where the remains were found lay in an extremely rural area along a road only travelled infrequently by locals and essentially unknown to outsiders, investigators surmised that Rachel’s murderer was most likely someone who lived in the small town and was very familiar with the back roads and byways.

Further, because the night Rachel had vanished had been an unusually cold one, it seemed reasonable to assume that the killer had either used the weather as an ally, knowing that not many people would be outdoors and therefore not likely to spot him as he went about his nefarious task; or that he had planned the attack on Rachel in advance, and had simply gone ahead with said plan in spite of the added difficulty of the freezing temperatures.

The strange case has remained unsolved for nearly two decades at this writing, and residents of the small town are still disturbed by the fact that Rachel Anthony’s killer is almost certainly someone they know, though his identity is still a complete mystery. A reward of $50,000 is on offer for information leading to a conviction.