Crime Immemorial

By the summer of 2007, however, the then-eighteen-year-old Anita’s living arrangement had become a source of tension. She shared a small apartment at 2420 Fourth Street Northwest in Minot with Nichole Thomas, later known as Nichole Rice. The two had apparently once been close, but living together had strained their friendship severely.

The disagreements sometimes involved seemingly minor domestic irritations—an alarm clock, internet access, and a noisy fish tank—but witnesses would later describe Rice as repeatedly angry with Anita. Both young women were apparently looking for a way out of their lease. Anita’s mother would eventually testify that her daughter had become sufficiently uncomfortable with the situation that Gordon installed a lock on Anita’s bedroom door so she could protect her privacy.

Sharon Knutson later testified that she last spoke with Anita on Friday, June 1st, 2007. Regular communication between Anita and her family then abruptly stopped. Anita also failed to appear for work at the Fairfield Inn on June 2nd, something investigators considered unusual for her.

Phone evidence would eventually help police narrow the probable time of the murder. Anita was communicating normally during the early hours of Sunday, June 3rd. She had a telephone conversation at approximately two a.m. and exchanged messages with a man named Michael Vann. In her final messages, Anita reportedly said that she was not feeling well and intended to take a shower. At four fifty-five a.m., another message arrived on her phone. It was never read.

Prosecutors at the later Rice trial argued that Anita was murdered at approximately five a.m. on June 3rd, shortly after those final communications ended.

For roughly another day and a half, however, no one knew what had happened inside the apartment. Anita simply seemed to have disappeared.

By Monday, June 4th, Anita’s parents were sufficiently worried that Sharon asked Gordon to drive to Minot and check on her.When Gordon reached the apartment that afternoon, Anita’s vehicle was still parked outside. He knocked repeatedly but received no response. The apartment was locked. Gordon contacted resident manager Laura Knapp and asked her to open it.

Before they entered, maintenance worker Marty Annell mentioned something unusual. Earlier that day, Annell had discovered a window screen lying outside the building. The screen had been slashed. He believed it belonged to Anita’s bedroom and had taken it aside intending to repair it.

Gordon approached his daughter’s window and looked inside. He saw Anita lying motionless, face down on her bed. The mattress beneath her was soaked with blood. Police were called, and officers arrived shortly after five p.m.

The crime scene presented investigators with an immediate problem. There was surprisingly little evidence of the chaotic violence typically associated with a fatal stabbing. Detective David Goodman later testified that Anita’s bedroom showed no obvious evidence of a prolonged struggle. Her purse remained in plain sight with cash still inside. Other personal property, including her phone, computer and camera, had not been taken. Investigators found no evidence that robbery had been the killer’s motive.

The autopsy produced another important finding: there was no indication Anita had been sexually assaulted.

The fatal attack itself had been short and devastating. Forensic pathologist Dr. Mary Ann Sens testified at the 2025 trial that Anita bled to death from her stab wounds. One wound caused catastrophic damage to her heart.

Investigators also recovered a small bloodstained folding or pocket knife from the apartment. It was ultimately identified as the murder weapon. The knife was inexpensive and relatively common, limiting its usefulness in tracing the killer.

DNA was recovered from the weapon, but it did not provide the clean identification investigators might have hoped for. A forensic scientist testified in 2025 that DNA from more than three contributors was present, making reliable interpretation difficult.

The most intriguing evidence, however, may have been outside Anita’s bedroom window. At first glance, the damaged window screen offered an obvious explanation for the crime. Someone could have cut the screen, climbed through Anita’s bedroom window, murdered her and escaped.

But investigators became increasingly convinced that this scenario did not fit the physical evidence. A reenactment suggested that someone climbing through the window would have caused substantially more stretching and deformation to the screen and surrounding area. Dust and cobwebs outside the window also did not show the disturbance detectives expected from somebody entering or leaving that way. No useful fingerprints were found on the window sill.

Most significantly, Anita’s blood was found on the damaged screen. Investigators concluded that the screen had probably been cut after Anita was stabbed. Rather than documenting the killer’s entrance, it appeared to have been part of an attempt to make the murder resemble the work of an intruder.

That changed the nature of the mystery dramatically. If the killer had not entered through the window, then the most likely point of entry was the apartment’s front door.

According to testimony from apartment management and investigators, only a limited number of people were known to have keys: Anita, Nichole Rice, resident manager Laura Knapp and maintenance worker Marty Annell.

Somehow, Anita had apparently been murdered inside a locked apartment by someone who either possessed a key, had been allowed inside or had another means of getting through the door.

Minot police interviewed dozens of people. One early lead came from a woman who reported seeing a young man running along Fourth Street Northwest at approximately seven thirty on the morning of June 3rd. She described him as being in his early twenties, with dark hair, wearing a white T-shirt and dark shorts. Investigators initially considered the sighting suspicious.

Police also investigated construction workers, acquaintances, men Anita had spent time with, college students and people who had been seen near the apartment. Over the years, the list of people examined became extensive.

Marty Annell, the apartment maintenance worker who had discovered the screen, inevitably attracted attention because he had access to the building and a key. Annell died by suicide on New Year’s Day 2009, further fueling public speculation. Later investigators said, however, that Annell had been investigated and ruled out based on corroborated information.

Another frequently discussed person was Devin Hall. Hall reportedly believed that he had once possessed a knife remarkably similar to the weapon found in Anita’s apartment. The defense at Nichole Rice’s later trial would make Hall central to its alternative-suspect theory. Investigators, however, said travel records, witnesses and even family video showed Hall did not arrive in Minot until after the time they believed Anita was killed. Police also concluded that the knife Hall remembered owning was not the murder weapon.

Other people of interest—including Michael Vann and Anita’s friend Tyler Schmaltz—were also eventually ruled out by investigators.

One person, however, remained under suspicion from the earliest stages: Anita’s roommate. Nichole Rice was known as Nichole Thomas in 2007. Detective David Goodman later testified that he became suspicious of Rice almost immediately, in part because of what he regarded as inconsistent statements and unusual behavior. Police asked Rice to return to the apartment after Anita’s body was discovered so she could identify anything that might have been missing or out of place. Investigators recalled that she quickly focused on a missing iPod from her own room.

Rice maintained that she had been away from Minot during the crucial period, staying with relatives and at her family’s farm. But investigators believed portions of her account changed.

Among the issues was whether she had remained at the family farm on Saturday night. Rice had also gone to the 41 Club in Ruso. Detectives later said her descriptions of where she went, when she slept and what she did during June 2nd and June 3rd varied between interviews and did not always match telephone records.

What concerned detectives more was the growing body of information about the relationship between the roommates. Former coworkers testified that Rice had repeatedly complained about Anita. Arguments reportedly involved Anita’s alarm clock going off behind her locked bedroom door, access to household appliances and a fish tank whose filter Anita allegedly switched off several times, resulting in the fish dying shortly before the murder.

Investigators also recovered text messages showing hostility between the two. In one exchange, Rice told Anita she was finished being nice and wrote that “what goes around comes around.” Another witness recalled Rice saying before the murder, “One way or another I’m going to get you out of this house.”

Still, irritated roommates exchanging angry words is a very long way from proof of homicide. And for years, prosecutors apparently did not believe they had enough evidence to charge Rice.

By 2015, eight years had passed without an arrest. Anita’s family, increasingly frustrated, organized a petition asking police to devote renewed attention to the investigation. More than a thousand people signed it. Among the family’s suggestions was that Minot police seek help from television programs specializing in cold cases, including Cold Justice.

The physical evidence continued to be reviewed. In 2016, the North Dakota State Crime Laboratory examined DNA recovered from the murder weapon. The sample was too limited for certain database testing, but investigators believed it could still be used for comparison. The results and their interpretation later became disputed, illustrating one of the persistent weaknesses of the case: there was no simple forensic profile identifying Anita’s killer.

By the tenth anniversary in 2017, the murder had become one of Minot’s best-known unsolved crimes. Detective Goodman said Anita’s case file remained visible in the police department, a daily reminder to investigators that they had failed to identify her killer.

Then the case received another serious review. Detective Mikali Talbott began reexamining the investigation in 2018–2019. Thousands of pages of reports, photographs, recordings and interviews accumulated during the original inquiry were revisited. In 2021, the Minot Police Department also began working with investigators associated with Oxygen’s Cold Justice.

The renewed investigation increasingly focused on Rice. And it uncovered, or reexamined, something considerably more significant than roommate arguments: Alleged confessions.

A former boyfriend of Rice, William May, told investigators that he had been with Rice at a party in approximately 2008 when conversation turned to Anita’s murder. According to May, Rice was extremely intoxicated. He claimed she admitted that she had killed Anita.

May later testified that he attempted to discuss the statement with Rice when she was sober, but she became angry and did not repeat it. He also said he had contacted police about the incident years earlier, although the defense emphasized that investigators could not locate documentation establishing such a report had been made at the time.

Another woman, Kristina Holler, eventually described a similar alleged confession. At Rice’s trial, Holler testified that Rice had told her during a 2008 party that she and Anita had argued and that Rice stabbed her. Holler associated the alleged argument with the alarm-clock dispute. Under cross-examination, however, she acknowledged gaps in her memory and significant alcohol use during that period. The supposed admissions became a crucial element of the revived case.

Police also believed Rice had demonstrated knowledge of details about the crime scene that had not been released publicly, although the defense disputed the significance and reliability of those statements.

Finally, after almost fifteen years, Minot police decided they had enough. On March 16th, 2022, police arrested thirty-four-year-old Nichole Rice at her workplace at Minot Air Force Base, where she was employed as a civilian. She was charged with Class AA felony murder. Rice pleaded not guilty.

The prosecution’s case was largely circumstantial. There was no eyewitness who placed Rice inside the apartment during the killing, no clear forensic evidence conclusively identifying her as the person who wielded the knife and no recorded confession.

Instead, prosecutors assembled a mosaic: a deteriorating relationship, hostile messages, Rice’s access to the apartment, alleged inconsistencies in her alibi, suspicious statements and behavior, the absence of a convincing break-in and the two alleged drunken confessions.

A judge found sufficient evidence for the case to proceed. But bringing it to trial proved complicated. Pretrial litigation lasted almost three years. Rice unsuccessfully sought dismissal of the charge, while the enormous publicity surrounding the case raised concerns about finding unbiased jurors in Minot. Questionnaires sent to prospective Ward County jurors eventually convinced both sides that obtaining a fair jury locally would be difficult.

The case was transferred to Grand Forks County. Further delays followed, including a change in Rice’s defense counsel.

At last, jury selection began on March 17th, 2025. Nearly eighteen years after Gordon Knutson looked through that bedroom window, prosecutors finally stood before a jury and argued that they knew who had killed his daughter.

Prosecutors portrayed the murder as the culmination of an increasingly poisonous relationship. Rice, they argued, had motive in the bitter roommate conflict, means because she possessed a key, and opportunity because investigators could not reliably account for her whereabouts during the period when Anita was believed to have been killed.

The state emphasized that the window appeared to have been staged. Anita’s blood on the screen suggested it was cut after she had already been stabbed. If the killer had entered through the front door, prosecutors argued, the pool of people with easy access became very small.

They revisited the alarm-clock and fish-tank disputes. They showed jurors hostile text messages. They presented witnesses who described Rice’s anger toward Anita and detectives who testified that her various accounts of the weekend did not remain consistent.

Most damagingly, the prosecution presented May and Holler, both of whom claimed that Rice had admitted killing Anita while intoxicated. Rice’s aunt, Brenda Glinz, also testified about disturbing statements she attributed to her niece concerning Anita and details of the crime.

Prosecutor Tiffany Sorgen argued in closing that when all the pieces were considered together, Rice was the only person who possessed the necessary combination of motive, access and opportunity. The prosecution believed a case that had remained obscure for fifteen years had finally been solved.

The defense saw something very different. Attorney Richard Sand argued that the state had taken a collection of suspicious but inconclusive circumstances and tried to turn them into proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

He emphasized the lack of physical evidence tying Rice to the actual killing. The DNA on the knife did not conclusively identify her. No eyewitness had seen her at the apartment. There was no definitive record proving she traveled from her family’s property to Minot during the crucial period. And the supposed confessions had been made, if at all, in alcohol-heavy social settings many years earlier.

The defense also attacked the quality of the investigation itself. Sand argued that police had failed to pursue alternative suspects thoroughly and had overlooked or lost material contained in the enormous case file. A former FBI agent retained by the defense testified about what he regarded as investigative gaps and argued that other leads, particularly Devin Hall, deserved greater consideration.

The defense also took direct aim at Cold Justice. Sand suggested that the presence of a nationally televised true-crime program had generated pressure to produce an arrest and encouraged investigators to settle on Rice rather than objectively reconsidering every possibility. Police witnesses denied that the television production controlled the investigation and said the program primarily supplied resources and personnel that an understaffed department had lacked.

The jury received the case on March 25th, 2025. After deliberating for just under five and a half hours altogether, jurors returned to the Grand Forks courtroom on the morning of March 26th. The verdict was read: Not guilty. The acquittal brought Rice’s prosecution for Anita’s murder to an end.

The strange result of the 2025 trial was that the case effectively returned to the position it had occupied for most of the previous eighteen years. Following Rice’s acquittal, the murder of Anita Knutson remains officially unsolved as of August 2026.