Dateline NBC - Murder in Minot

Episode Date: May 6, 2025

College student Anita Knutson is found stabbed to death. The case took years and the unwavering commitment of loved ones and investigators to reach a resolution. Blayne Alexander reports.

Tonight on Dateline. She was so beautiful, inside and out. So smart. She might have said it more gently, but I just remember Anita's dead. Everything kind of stopped. Your mind just goes everywhere, like who could do this? Tyler Schmalz was kind of infatuated with her. Get a crack on it.

She kind of friend zoned him pretty quickly. Yes. Nicole Rice's name came up. I overheard Nicole's mom asking, how could you think my daughter did this? It wasn't me. We were dispatched to a call of someone entering an apartment.

There was a male. He had a knife. If there's a chance that he crawled in the window and killed this girl. You know I did, bro. There were many possible suspects. If someone told you you were at a party and you said you killed a meter, would you be lying?

We've been reliving this every single day for 18 years. It's really scary not knowing how that's going to turn out. A popular college student murdered, a case that dragged on for years. Could revelations during a party finally solve the mystery? I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. [♪ music playing on guitar and guitar playing in background, singing in background, and guitar playing in background.] Here's Blaine Alexander with Murder in Minot.

The town is mostly quiet now. Just a few stores line the streets. But ride through this small North Dakota community, and you'll see them. These weather-worn pink ribbons, and a faded photograph of a young woman no one here can forget. Reminders of what this place has been through,

of a mystery that spanned nearly two decades. You talk to police. All the time. All the time. of a mystery that spanned nearly two decades. You talk to police? All the time. All the time. For the whole 18 years. This story is about a young student, away at college, killed in her own bedroom,

and about the family and friends who never stopped pressing for answers. We're not forgetting about this. We weren't gonna give up. She wouldn't have. We weren't gonna give up. She wouldn't have. We weren't going to. Tell me about Butte, North Dakota. Butte is a tiny little town.

It's, I mean, eight streets. Eight streets. Eight streets, 50 people. Tiny, tiny. Fifty people. Tiny, tiny. Tiny, yeah. It's where Anna Knudsen spent much of her late childhood, raised with her brother Daniel and their older sister, Anita.

What was it like living there in a place that small? Quiet. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's kind of all I can say. It's so quiet. My dad was a mayor for 12 years in Butte. My friends would come over and have sleepovers

and like my dad, the mayor, would wake us up to go like hang up the holiday decorations on Main Street. Like it wasn't that fun. That's what you do when you're the mayor's kids. Yeah, yeah. Anna's big sister, Anita, left for college in nearby Minot, a bustling big city by North Dakota standards. Anita's aunt, Karen

Lear, lived there too. How excited was she for college? Very much so. And you know, she also worked a couple jobs up here in Minot too. Some of the weekends she would go back to Butte and help her mom in the store. She and my mom talked like every single day on the phone. Even when she went to college? Yeah, even when she went to college, she was always calling my mom. She was such a hard worker, but she still made time for her friends and for her family.

So when Anita's family didn't hear from her one weekend in June 2007, they figured she was at work. At least at first. Saturday passed, then Sunday. Was it out of character for them to not hear from Anita? Very much so, absolutely. By Monday, with no word from Anita, her dad Gordon made the hour-long drive to his daughter's apartment to check on her. When he peered through Anita's window,

he saw her lying face down in her bed. The apartment manager let him inside and immediately called 911. Is this a police department? Yes it is. I had a father come to my apartment here to check on his daughter. We just came in the apartment. I think she's dead. And what makes you think that?

Or is she moving? No she isn't. We came in, into the apartment, her dad went over to her and he goes, oh my god, she's cold in her blood. That's not true. Is she moving? No, she isn't. We came into the apartment, her dad went over to her and he goes, oh my god, she's cold in her blood. That's with her father, sir. I didn't touch her, but I see there's blood on the blankets.

Right away, Anita's dad called his sister, Karen. He said, you've got to come here. He must have said she's dead. When she arrived, police were already on the scene. So you drive up to the apartment, and the only thing that you know is? That she's gone. Anita's gone. Right.

I can't imagine Karen, him coming to check on Anita, and being the one to discover that she had been killed. Mm-hmm. When you got there and saw him, how was he? Oh, in shock. I mean, it's just something you never, ever can prepare yourself for. Karen stayed on the scene as Gordon left to break the news to his wife and the rest of the family. You know, he's waiting for more information from the detectives, and yet he knows he needs to go back to Butte and talk to Sharon and the other two kids. So he stayed for a while, but then he knew he had to leave and go do that.

You stayed? I wouldn't leave. What made you stay? Couldn't leave. We had to stay there for her. Yeah. You felt you were being there for her. Had to be there. She knew in that instant everything had changed.

From that day on when it got to be dark, the doors were definitely locked, the shades were pulled. And the mystery of who killed Anita was only just beginning. Somebody is there kind of in her face holding the knife to her neck. It was scary, I mean, because anybody and everybody is a suspect to me.

If there's a chance that you crawled in the window and killed this girl. No, I didn't, bro. That's what I've heard, man. It was pressure from a TV show. They put an incredible amount of pressure to bring charges in this case. David Goodman, a newly minted detective with the Minot Police Department, had a lot to think about as he made his way to the apartment where Anita Knutson was murdered.

The sudden, unexplained death of a promising young college student was virtually unheard of in Minot, North Dakota. So as you're on your way there, what are you thinking? I was new to investigations, kind of wondered what direction we'd go in and are we going to solve this right away? Is it going to be difficult? On that early evening in June, Sergeant Goodman knew very little when he arrived at Anita's apartment. So when you got here to the scene that day,

what did you see? I believe they had police tape up already. The crime scene van was parked on the grass right out in front of the door and detectives were inside the apartment. Is that the front door right there? Yes, that's the front and only door going into apartment number five. The bedroom window caught his eye.

What did you notice about her window? I noticed that the screen was gone. An important detail that remained to be seen. As police began processing the crime scene, Anita's father, Gordon, had begun the grim duty of telling his family. Anita's 15-year-old sister, Anna, got the news from her brother. Daniel comes to pick me up, and I get in the car, and I could tell he'd been crying. Like, something was very wrong.

And I was like, well, what's going on? And he's like, and I can't tell you. Finally, he spoke the words. Anita was dead. This is, of course, my first time with any type of grief at this level. But I learned about myself in that moment. Like, I don't want people around.

I don't want people coming in to ask me if I'm okay every five seconds, especially people that don't want people around. I don't want people coming in to ask me if I'm okay every five seconds, especially people that don't know me. Daniel was also taking it hard. I understand that Daniel and Anita had a very special relationship. They did. They were very close.

Gordon and his wife Sharon adopted the three siblings when they were all very young. They spent their early childhood in sunny Southern California. It was a fun little childhood, yeah. Lauren Lessig and Anita became forever friends in kindergarten. What was it about Anita that just really drew you to her?

She was just positive and happy and just the best. I mean, she always did what was right. She never like wavered in that. Then when Anita was almost 14, Gordon decided to move the family up north to his hometown of Butte. One day your dad comes in and says, we're moving to North Dakota.

Yeah, Southern California is such, it's obviously very different than North Central and North Dakota for sure. For Anita, I think it was really hard. I mean, friendship was so important to her and leaving all of her friends behind. And I mean, it was a tough age too. I mean, we went from being, you know,

like being in a school where lots of kids look like us to being in a school where we're the only three black and brown kids there is pretty jarring, to say the least. How did she overcome that? You know, I think for Anita, she was always good with challenges. Like, there was really nothing

that she couldn't make it through. What was your first impression of Anita? Just this, like, teeny tiny little ball of energy and sunshine. Amber Nicks met Anita when they were freshmen in high school. Even at that young age, she thought Anita was perfectly put together. Matching clothes, matching shoes to her clothes,

bows in her hair that matched, her purse matched, and pink was her color. She was a pink kind of girl. She was. Anita was always moving. School, hanging out with friends, dancing. She joined a future business leaders club. And here she is doing a weather report for a class project.

This is Anita Knudsen, reporting live from Poverner, Dakota. There is a Knutson reporting live from Governor of Dakota. There is a ginormous tornado coming towards us from the southeast. It is getting kind of bad. Larissa Rao loved Anita's can-do, generous spirit. She literally became friends with anybody. She always went towards the people that probably never would have a lot of friends. So she always, you know, tried to be friends with everybody.

After high school, it was on to college in Minot, about an hour from Butte. She wanted to be a teacher, and she loved kids. Kids loved her. So she majored in elementary education at Minot State. After a semester in the dorms, Anita and one of her roommates, Nicole Thomas, decided to move off campus. I think they just wanted to have their own space.

So then they were both like, let's just get an apartment together. So they did. Anita's apartment had become a crime scene. Those who knew and loved her gathered outside, brimming with questions for police. And police would have questions for some of them about Anita, her life, and the people who surrounded her. or anything that she's interested in or that are interested in her? I don't know. She was going to stay also a lot by Manchester. The quiet apartment complex where Anita Knutson lived was now a tangle of police activity and crime scene tape. What did you need to know about this apartment?

Just the layout, how many bedrooms it was, who all lived in the apartment, what was out of place. There, in a bedroom clothed in a pink bathrobe, he saw Anita's body still on the bed. I could see that she was kind of flopped over, laying on her stomach. I noticed her room seemed to be in order. So it didn't seem like there had been a struggle. No, there did not seem to be a struggle at all. I had also looked around her bedroom,

and I noticed that her purse was there. I could see that there was cash in her purse, so I didn't feel like it had been any sort of a burglary or a robbery gone bad type of situation. They moved Anita's body to the floor. We could see that she had a stab wound to her right chest area and also a stab wound to her sternum area. And then we also noticed on the mattress that there was a five to six inch circle of blood where blood had drained from her body and soaked into the mattress.

Anita had been stabbed in the heart and the evidence suggested she was killed Sunday, the day before. Then, right by Anita's bed, investigators made a key discovery. A knife with a distinctive tribal insignia on one side. There was blood on the blade, and testing would confirm it was Anita's. Investigators gathered more evidence, like the missing screen from Anita's window. The maintenance man said he had taken it to be repaired earlier that day. It had been slashed. It appeared that somebody had used a knife and cut kind of a backwards L cut into the

screen. Is that how the killer got in? Or did someone come through the apartment door? That door was locked when Anita's father tried to enter, so if someone came in that way, they would need a key. This wasn't a sort of lock that you could maybe pick or get in from another way. You needed an actual key. You needed a key, yes.

A key to unlock the door and relock it on departure. Four people had keys to the apartment, Anita, her roommate Nicole, the manager, and that maintenance man, Marty Annell. Police spoke with him that first night. I happened to see the screen was cut. So I removed the screen to now get back to repair it, and I put the shade and the rod back in the apartment. Into the same room where Anita lay dead.

He said he didn't look in, but he did call out. No answer. And could you tell at all if it appeared that somebody had gone through that window, it appeared that somebody didn't go through it, it appeared somebody came out of it. Just in those first initial hours, was he ever a person of interest for you? He was a person of interest of just knowing that

he had knowledge of what was going on there, what happened there. So, of course, the maintenance guy would have access to keys. Something to consider as police dove into the investigation. Are you learning more about Anita while you're there at the scene? Yes. We learned that she lived there with another girl. Anita's roommate, Nicole Thomas, was at work when police asked her to come to her apartment. Now a crime scene.

She said she'd been away most of the weekend at her parents' home. She was in tears when they asked her about Anita. She got any guys or anything that she's interested in or that are interested in her? I don't know. She was going to, so a lot of guys mentioned her. What else can you tell me? She have lots of friends? Yeah, a lot. Popular girl?

Yes. Nice girl, I assume? Is there anything else you want to add to the statement this time, Nicole? No. They talked to Nicole one more time that night, and she mentioned a dance club that Anita liked. When you talk to people here, especially the people who were in the same building, what are they telling you? Do they hear anything, see anything?

For the most part, nobody really saw or heard anything during the time frame that we believe the homicide occurred. And no one in the complex seemed to know Anita all that well. No one except an old high school friend, 20-year-old Tyler Schmaltz, who had an apartment close by. Police found him hanging around outside Anita's apartment that evening. Like everyone there, he said he was just trying to find out what happened to her. He told police he had recently spoken with Anita, so they questioned him in the crime

van. Tyler took Anita to prom when she was new to high school. They had stayed close for years. We all knew that he had a crush on her. Everyone knew it, but it just didn't bother anybody. Police would have more questions for Tyler down the road. But at that moment, they got busy bagging evidence, Anita's hair, clothing items, and a pink sheet from her bed to send out for testing.

As they did, the story of a well-liked young college student killed in her own bedroom was becoming big news. There are no suspects at this time as police continue to canvas the neighborhood to find out if anyone knows more details. There was one person who might. Sergeant Goodman found his name on Anita's cell phone. On the last night of her life,

she had been texting with a man named Michael Vann right before she was killed. So who was Michael Vann? As the news of 18-year-old Anita Knudsen's murder spilled into the city of Minot, the fear was palpable. Police arrived at the scene shortly after 5 PM yesterday and found Knutson in her bedroom. It appears at this time that her death was caused by an unknown intruder.

I want to ask you just from the very beginning when this first happened, how major was this news? Wow, it was. It was huge news. Kim Fundingsland was born and raised in Minot. He covered Anita's case, first for the local TV station and later for the Minot Daily News.

So it was monstrous news. The whole community was mesmerized by the story and riveted to it. While some were riveted, Anita's family and friends were frozen in place. Was this a scary time for you? Definitely. For us living in Minot, what we think is a safe community,

and who really cares if your doors are locked or not, from that day on, the doors were definitely locked. When it got to be dark, the shades were pulled. I felt like for a long time, and I still am, I'm like very hyper aware of where I'm at, who's around. People were worried. I mean, it's just that's the way it was. Meanwhile, investigators began piecing together a picture of what happened in Anita's final moments. Looking through her phone, you saw some text messages that caught your eye.

Yeah, she had been texting Michael Vann into the late night, early morning hours of Sunday, June 3rd, and he appeared to be the last one to have any sort of a conversation with her. Police wanted to talk to him about that. Michael, you came down here, obviously, you heard the news about what occurred, is that correct? Yeah. And you want to talk about Anita Knudsen, who you said was a friend of yours, is that correct?

No, no, no. Okay. Twenty-four-year-old Michael Vann had been a military brat his entire life, but settled for a while in North Dakota. He told police that texting Anita late at night was nothing unusual. He worked at a local Wendy's and their schedules rarely aligned. trying to talk to each other, but we were never on compatible schedules. So when she would get off, I would text her. And usually we talked for a couple hours, and either she'd say goodnight or I'd say goodnight. Never, never did.

And while they regularly texted, he told police it had been a while since he'd actually seen Anita. The last time I saw her was on one or three weeks ago. seen Anita. Anita and Michael often ran into one another at a local downtown dance club where he said Anita never met a stranger. who would want to murder? I don't know anybody with a murder. She was a really bad person.

A few days after Anita's murder, Michael visited MyNotPD for a second interview. Police drilled down into his relationship with her. I didn't tell you a lot about her, huh? She was really depression. She was probably the most decent person I had met in a while. Michael and Anita's texts in the early morning hours of Sunday, June 3rd was probably the most decent place in my life in a while.

Michael and Anita's texts in the early morning hours of Sunday, June 3rd, ranged from the mundane to the personal. I asked her what she's done, she said, I made the buck. So you're home alone again, where she goes? Yeah. Coincidentally, our roommate showed up

midway through our conversation as well, her roommate didn't show up. Anita's final text messages with Mike were just before 5 a.m. She asked about his past relationships. Anita wrote, How do you move on after being engaged? Twice. That's a huge, life-altering thing. He responded,

You never move. You just become jaded. Hope that you find someone who will love you for you. Investigators pressed Mike further. You don't know anybody for any reason might have wanted done this? Anybody you suspect or anything like that?

No. Did you do anything to hurt her, man? Michael said he had been texting Anita from a friend's house and he stayed there the rest of the night. Police told Michael he was free to go for now. Two days after Anita's murder, the medical examiner released the autopsy report. Was there any sexual assault? There was nothing that we could see that would indicate that she was sexually assaulted.

It was definitely something that we were concerned about, and it was on our minds. But the autopsy did reveal something that piqued their interest. We found out that there was superficial cuts or marks on Anita's neck. So it led us to believe that somebody is there kind of in her face holding the knife to her neck, and then, uh, and angry, and then that just escalated to the point of stabbing her.

Hmm. When you think about those details, does that sound like possibly someone she knew, complete stranger? We felt like it was somebody that she knew. And as Minot police continued talking to those close to Anita, they got a promising tip. We did have one witness come forward and say that she saw somebody running early that morning. It was a man running near Anita's apartment.

He appeared to be in his late teens or early 20s, about 6'2", 200 pounds, with dark hair. And there was something more. The witness said there was a stain on his shirt, possibly blood. It was their first big lead. Now they needed to find the running man. Maybe it's running away from a crime scene. That's what she thought it could be.

About two days after Anita Knudsen's murder, police were chasing a new tip. A woman said she saw a young, dark-haired man running right near Anita's apartment around the time of the murder. And he looked like he was in a big hurry. So she's thinking maybe it's not running out for exercise. Maybe it's running away from a crime scene. That's what she thought it could be. Minot police released the running man description to the media and it did generate some tips, but none of them went anywhere. Back in Anita's hometown of Butte, her presence was everywhere.

And on one particular day, her friends honored her with a brilliant burst of light in true Anita style. There was an outpouring of love in light in true Anita style. There was an outpouring of love in Butte after Anita died. Yeah. Leading up to the funeral, a lot of us girls had gotten together and we made bracelets and pins and decorated Main Street with pink ribbons. I mean, it's such a close-knit community. It's really amazing.

All over town, there's all these little pink ribbons tied up you could drive by, and it wouldn't be weird to see a pink bow tied to a light post type of thing. When Anita's friend Lauren arrived from California, she was blown away. I remember the entire town was pink. Every storefront, car, light post, everything

had a pink bow on it. We will miss you, Anita, written in pink marker. Everywhere, everywhere you drove, there was just pink everywhere. Were you surprised to see the whole town just painted pink for her? Yeah, I was from Southern California, so everybody doesn't know everybody.

So coming out here, it's definitely a smaller town and everybody was affected out here just because everybody knows each other. And on the day of the funeral, the entire community gathered to say goodbye. What stands out to you the most about her funeral? I think just how many people were there to celebrate my sister. I mean, she truly was so well-loved.

I mean, the whole church was full. They ended up having to open up the gym at the school for all of the overflow people, and they watched it like on a stream. Did you speak that day? I did, yeah. I got up there and just said a few words about my sister and just talked about how just effervescent she was and beautiful and perfect really.

I think I wore one of Anita's dresses to her funeral. To her funeral. Yeah. Was that a way of feeling close to her? Yeah, yeah. But in the midst of the grief, there were suspicions, rumors about who could be involved in Anita's murder. At the time, did you remember any whispers

about who it could have been? Yeah, I mean, tons of whispers all the time. That's, you know, people never stop whispering. But yeah, Constant, you know, Nicole's name, of course, has always been, never not been in the mix. Police had also been hearing things about Anita's roommate, Nicole. We learned that they had kind of a poor relationship, that there was some minor fights and some arguing between the two of them.

They had roommate drama. They did, yes. Police were there at the funeral, watching from their car as mourners arrived. At the same time, they asked Nicole to come in for another interview later that day, a move that may not have sat well with her mother. Anita's friends remember a painful exchange

between Anita's mom and Nicole's. And I overheard Nicole's mom asking her rather aggressively, like, how could you think my daughter did this? I can't believe that this is the rumor going around. I'm paraphrasing, of course, because I can't remember the exact words, but something to the effect of, you know, I can't believe that people are blaming my daughter for this. This is all happening at the funeral?

Yes, before the actual funeral started, yeah. I like turned around and like, it was just wild. It was just wild behavior for an adult. But the dust settled and the memorial moved on. And a very close friend took over, Tyler Schmaltz, the young man on the scene that first night. He was now in the middle of Anita's goodbye. We made a slideshow for her parents. What kind of pictures did you want to pick of Anita?

The prom ones where she's dancing, where she's with friends and family. Yeah. Just her living her life. He also took it upon himself to arrange where she's dancing, where she's with friends and family. Yeah. Just her living her life. He also took it upon himself to arrange a send-off with pink balloons. We handed out to everybody, all 150 of them.

Through it all, police wondered if the killer was among the mourners. And they had some very particular questions for that close friend, Tyler Schmaltz. Three days after the funeral, Tyler found himself once again talking with police. Did you have anybody that you thought, that you suspected at the time?

Back then, Tyler. She was the victim at the heart of this case, but investigators were learning she was so much more. By all accounts, Anita Knudsen was magnetic. Police learned she was an object of admiration and more than a few crushes. But she also knew how to fend them off. She doesn't like judge people, but if you were like too persistent on things, she would tell you like, no, like, leave me alone back away. So what if someone loved her and she didn't love them back? When you think back on that time, did you have anybody that you thought that you suspected at the time? Back then, Tyler.

You thought Tyler? Mm-hmm. Me and my mom both did. Like Anita, Tyler also went to Minot State after high school. Tyler Schmaltz actually lived in the same apartment complex as Anita. He did. I mean, just proximity alone, does that make you take a closer look at him? He's somebody that kind of always was in our minds.

Could he have been involved? Can we come up with any motive that he would have had? He's somebody that kind of always was in our minds. Could he have been involved? Can we come up with any motive that he would have had? Tyler always seemed to be in the center of the tragedy. He was on the scene the night Anita died. He helped plan her funeral, launched a Facebook page in Anita's honor, and police say he checked in with them a lot. He seemed, in their view, almost too involved.

If there's somebody who's calling, sometimes it may be a little too much, right? Like wanting to know too much about the case, or that can cause you to raise your antenna of, why do they not want to know so much? Did you get any of that with Tyler Schmaltz? We did. And it got to a point where it did

raise some red flags with us. So it really kept him on your radar because he kept calling and pushing for information. Yes. His name came up many times in different meetings about the case. And if there was anything further we needed to do with him or ask of him.

So yeah, his name definitely stayed on our radar. You knew Tyler. Yeah. Knew him as your sister's prom date. Mm-hmm. What did you think when you heard his name come up? Did you think that he could have been involved? Yeah, I mean, I think for me, anyone and everyone is a suspect.

Even her friends. Yeah. Even a prom date. Yeah. — Even a prom date. — Yeah. — Eleven days after the killing, police asked Tyler to come down to the station for another interview. And this time, their questions were more pointed. And where did you see her at? She came over and watched a movie.

Watched a movie at your place? Where she went for a walk. And they went for a walk? Yeah. Just the two of you? Yeah. OK. He said they were just friends, but.

Did she crush on her? Yeah. Did she know that? Yeah, she did. Does she think you have boys around you? One girl. He seemed to have a real romantic interest in Anita, but she kind of friend zoned him pretty quickly.

Yes. Okay. Had you been down to the station before? No. That was my first time there. What was that like? They wanted my fingerprints and DNA voluntarily. So, everyone in the complex, they asked to come down and give fingerprints and DNA.

Then they asked just generic follow-up questions. But their questions went far beyond generic. Have you ever had any sexual relationship with her? No. Have you ever kissed her? No. Have you ever tried to kiss her? No.

Were you ever bothered by the fact that she didn't like you or didn't want to go out with you? No. No? No. Seriously? Yeah. That didn't hurt to go out with you? No. No? No. Seriously? Yeah. That didn't hurt your feelings or anything?

No, it didn't hurt my feelings. Does it hurt my feelings? Yeah. I don't want to. Huh? I don't want to. Did it ever make you mad? No.

Would you ever hurt her because it made you mad? Tyler says he didn't find those questions particularly alarming. Did you ever think that maybe they were looking at you? Never. I never got that feeling from them. Were you ever nervous during those interviews? The first one, yes.

Yeah. Because I just couldn't believe what was happening. I'd never been in a police van before and talking to police ever. Just weird. Sure. Sure. Anybody would be nervous. Yeah. Yeah. There was just a lot happening.

Yeah. There was a ton happening. Police everywhere, crime tape everywhere. And I'm in the back of the morgue's van talking to police. It just was weird. Tyler told police he was at home that night playing video games. He gave them that DNA sample. And after the questioning, they let him go for the time being. How long did Tyler remain a person of interest?

Tyler remained a person of interest pretty much throughout the investigation. There was different investigators that had different theories of what could have happened and who could have been responsible. His name was always somebody that we thought of. So they weren't done with Tyler Schmaltz, but there was someone else they wanted to talk to.

There's a chance that you crawled in the window and killed this girl. No, I didn't, bro. I was married to a man. And a fresh set of eyes would join the case. Could they finally crack it? They provided resources, DNA experts, testing. When Cold Justice came to town, word spread very quickly.

Yeah, it was no secret that they were there. Since 18-year-old Anita Knudsen had been found dead in her off-campus college apartment, police had been working around the clock, talking to possible suspects, but so far, none had panned out. Then, about a week after the murder, John Klug, a patrolman at Minot PD, responded to a call about a man who'd entered an apartment

and was hiding in a bedroom closet. We entered the apartment, searched the room, we kept ordering him out, and eventually he came out. The responding officers noticed the man seemed dazed out of it, perhaps intoxicated. And then they made a discovery. We searched him. In his back pants pocket, he had a knife.

Klug realized this MO, a man with a knife who'd broken into an apartment, could match the profile of Anita's killer. Police identified the man as 17-year-old Devin Hall. A potential new suspect was welcome news to Sergeant Dave Goodman. What do you come to learn about Devin Hall? Devin Hall is somewhat of a troubled teenager. He was in a facility for troubled teens. He had been involved in some break-ins

where he'd gone in through some windows. So that started raising some suspicion as well. Then Goodman got some intriguing information he needed to run down. I ended up talking to somebody that works for the Family Services Department. She made the comment that she hoped that Devin Hall was not involved in the murder in Minot. And this is someone who knew Devin Hall, had worked with him in some capacity. Yes.

And it was enough, she knew enough about him to say, I hope he's not involved. That's correct. You don't say that about somebody unless you think they could possibly be involved. Right. Sergeant Goodman didn't delay. He, along with an FBI agent, crossed the North Dakota border into a remote corner of Montana,

where they got in touch with one of Devin's relatives. I talked to one relative. I showed her a picture of the knife that was used to kill Anita. She initially positively identified that knife as at one time belonging to her or her mother. So you have someone who's saying, oh yeah, that murder weapon, that was ours.

That was in the family. Yes. It was time for Goodman to go see Devin Hall. He was being held at a juvenile. It was time for Goodman to go see Devin Hall. He was being held at a juvenile facility after his arrest for trespassing. Investigators wanted to know when Devin had arrived in Minot.

He said he got there by train on Sunday, June 3, and met some friends. So I met him over there and met some Minot then. Went to Jeronica house and smoked some weed. And this was on Sunday the 3rd? Yeah. Okay. Investigators believe Anita died in the early morning hours of June 3rd,

just after she sent that final text to Michael Vann. And while Devin did admit to the trespassing on June 11th, he said he had nothing to do with Anita's murder. There's a chance that you crawled in the window and killed this girl. No, I didn't, bro. That's what I'm married to, man. He denied being involved in the murder in Minot,

denied knowing Anita at all. But investigators thought he fit the bill, so they pushed harder. There's been a murder here where it's just brutal. Oh. Sometimes when you don't need for something to happen. I only got a chance in the case on me for a murder. I didn't do anything.

I'm telling the truth. I didn't do nothing, man. I don't know that girl. I know I didn't kill nobody up there. I'm telling you guys the truth, man. Then Goodman pulled out a photo of the knife. I showed Devin a picture of the murder weapon, and he right away showed interest in it

and thought that it looked like something that he had had at one point. So he recognized it. He thought he recognized it. He readily admitted, oh, yeah, I have something like that. Yes. Yeah, I was very surprised, too, that Devin admitted that he thought that he had a knife that I was showing him was used in a murder.

Devin Hall recognized the knife that killed Anita. But Sergeant Goodman says something wasn't right. Devin Hall was so cooperative, Goodman says, he started having second thoughts about him as a suspect. He didn't seem to be nervous about that at all. Somebody that was involved in a murder with that knife wouldn't be so open to talk about it. In a sense, his honest reaction

did him a favor in this case. Yes, I believe so. Goodman continued talking to Devin's friends and family about his whereabouts the weekend Anita was killed. One of them was actually taking home video during Devin's time in Minot. The lady that picked up Devin and the other people from the train in Minot recorded them on video

and was able to give us that video showing that they got off the train on Sunday evening about 9, 920, 930 p.m. Investigators believe that video placed Devin's arrival in Minot on the evening of June 3rd after Anita's murder. So he's got video backing up his alibi. Yes. Sergeant Goodman also went back to Montana where he met with Devin's family member again,

who told him the knife didn't belong to Devin after all. Eventually I ended up coming back to Wolf Point to talk more with her about the knife. And at that point she had remembered that the knife that she was talking about had a wolf medallion on it and not an Indian headdress. Goodman believed that the knife used to kill Anita was not Devon's.

That once promising lead now felt like a dead end. At that point, that was your strongest suspect, and now he's cleared. Where do you go from there? At that point, we wanted to keep an open mind and investigate everybody that we could think of that would be somebody that would have crossed paths with Anita.

The investigation that once had momentum slowed to a near halt, but not for long. Remember the running man? Minot police are hoping to put a name to this face. If there's one thing MyKnotPolice did not lack, it was tips. In the year after Anita's murder, they tracked them down by the dozens. But as they looked into possible suspects, there was a lingering question. Who was that running man seen by Anita's apartment around the time of her death? It was definitely a loose end that we needed to tie up. In a last-ditch effort to find him, police released a sketch.

Minot police are hoping to put a name to this face. They came out with a sketch and I remember we published it in the newspaper, and it was on television. And it worked. Well, they got a call anyway. We had an individual come forward and say, hey, I was running in the neighborhood, and he looked like the drawing.

He agreed to take a polygraph and give a DNA sample. Police later concluded he was just out for a jog that morning. There was nothing to indicate that he was doing anything else. It was another unfortunate dead end in a case that seemed to be slowing down. Even the DNA found on the murder weapon offered no help. There was mixtures of different DNA profiles on that knife, but nothing that we were able to ever turn into anything useful

in the investigation. And all those other items sampled at the crime scene never led to a forensic profile of the killer. Investigators were growing frustrated. I didn't like it, just knowing that we had this cold case. Are you starting to think, my sister's case may never get solved? Yeah, I definitely thought that. And I would certainly email the Minot Police Department, like, hey, where are things at?

As years kept passing, the police were fighting against time. Investigators retired. Witnesses left town. The maintenance man from the apartment complex, Marty Annell, died by suicide in 2009. And Michael Vann, the guy Anita was texting right before her death, passed away that same year. Just the sheer passage of time was taking away people who possibly knew something about this. That's correct. Police came to believe that Marty and Michael

were not involved in the murder, and the same went for Anita's friend Tyler. Police learned he'd been playing those video games with a friend, and he struck investigators as genuine. He was a decent guy. He was very cooperative with us. What's Tyler like? What did you think of him?

A well-meaning person. So there were a lot of people who were pointing at you. Yeah. But they had no facts or evidence to back any of that up. What was that like for you, Tyler? It was hard. Did you push back? Did you speak out? There's nothing behind it all, so I didn't feel the need

to confront it, because my consciousness is clean. As possible suspects fell away, it did little to ease the suffering of those who'd loved Anita. Not for her friends, her family, and especially not for her little brother Daniel. One day in the spring of 2013, six years after Anita's death, her sister Anna got a call that would once again shatter her life. My mom calls me and she says, Zach's coming to pick you up. Zach was Anna's then boyfriend, now husband. And I knew almost immediately that something was wrong. Like this is the second phone call I've gotten

where somebody's coming to pick me up is like almost like the same exact scenario. Very, very nice. And I call Zach and I'm like, what's going on? And I'm like yelling at him kind of on the phone. And he tells me on the phone that Daniel has passed away. And I just dropped to my knees. Her beloved brother, Daniel Knutson, was gone at 22.

I just felt like my whole body just kind of like fell away in that moment. Yeah, and my brother Daniel died by suicide. Anita and Daniel had always been close. Daniel too, just like Anita was so vibrant and just like a total light. I mean, the two of them, I mean, just like, people could only dream of having that, just the brilliance that they had. Did you see the change in him after she died?

Yeah, I mean, he got a giant tattoo on his arm of one of her senior photos, and he was just different after she passed. Just different. He just maybe didn't hold on to joy in the same way. Anna and her parents buried her brother Maybe didn't hold on to joy in the same way. Anna and her parents buried her brother in the grave right beside Anita's. The family couldn't help but feel that whoever killed Anita took Daniel too. Do you believe that Daniel would still be here today?

Absolutely, if Anita was alive. I absolutely do. The person whomever, you know, killed my sister also, you know, certainly was a catalyst for Daniel, making the choice that he made. You felt that this killer struck your family twice. Totally. For Anita's family, it was too much.

They refused to let the killer take any more from them. twice. Totally. For Anita's family, it was too much. They refused to let the killer take any more from them. So they doubled down and brought together a small army of family and friends. There are always things we thought we could do. We did everything we could think possible to keep her name alive, keep her memory alive. Tyler and Anita's aunt Karen set up billboards around Minot and Butte.

We worked together a lot. He would raise money to pay for some of the billboards. We'd keep pushing and trying and following leads and putting the billboards up, keeping her name in the media and the news. On June 4th of every year, I put a tribute in the Minot Daily. She would disseminate information

and make sure that nobody ever forgot that a murderer is still out there. So it became almost a cadence every year. Clockwork. There was another story. Clockwork. She always wanted to keep that case alive in everybody's mind, so nobody forgot about it.

And nobody did. The newspaper blurbs, the media interviews, of course that's a way to keep Anita's memory alive. But for you guys, was it also a way to kind of signal to Minot police, hey, we're here? I definitely think it was. Keep some pressure on them? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's like, we're not forgetting about this.

And that's when Tyler got an idea. Invite the true crime TV show, Cold Justice to Minot. So you'd seen them come in, come into towns, take a case that had been seemingly forgotten. Mm-hmm, and solve it. Maybe they could do that here. Yeah. Tyler and Anita's other friends started a petition in 2015 to convince Cold Justice to take up Anita's case.

You got more than a thousand signatures on that. Oh, we got like thousands of signatures on it. Thousands of signatures? Yeah. It would take nearly seven years, but Cold Justice would come to town. Maybe this cold case would finally heat up. She got drunk and she told you that she killed Anita.

In 2020, John Klug became the police chief in Minot. Anita Knudsen's case had been so cold for so long, he knew it needed a jolt. We got the physical case files, and they were all in binders. And we got a small bookshelf that would hold all the binders. Klug assigned two investigators to take a fresh look. Then the real jolt. We were contacted by Cold Justice. In 2022, Cold Justice, the investigative crime program on our sister network Oxygen, offered to help with Anita's case. Clueg said yes. They provided resources, DNA experts, testing. They brought staff in to help keep track of information,

to kind of look at everything. When Cold Justice came to town, words spread very quickly. It was no secret that they were there. They were garnering a ton of attention. Did it feel like there was a new buzz? It had the effect that they wanted. It brought attention back to Anita and got people talking.

Cold justice spent more than a week with Minot police. Together, they went over the case files. They brought in witnesses with both Minot police and Cold justice doing the questioning. And they put people back in the hot seat, like Anita's high school friend, Tyler. She would never do anything like that, though, right? Not me, no.

Along the way, the double investigative team of Cold Justice and MyNotPD got a bombshell tip. A man named William May came forward. He said about a year after the homicide, a woman he dated confessed to killing Anita. She got drunk and she told you that she killed Anita. Do you remember that? Correct, yes.

And who was William dating at that time? Anita's roommate, Nicole Thomas. I mean, she was belligerently drunk, and that's what was said. And there was multiple people that heard it. And then I tried to get her to say it when she was sober, but she wouldn't. Police and Cold Justice went through the files

and learned the roommates were fighting about a lot of things. Anita's alarm clock, Nicole's aquarium. Amber Nix said she heard all about it. Nicole had a fish tank. Anita didn't like the fish tank. I think at one point Anita unplugged it. I would imagine Nicole wasn't very happy. She was very unhappy.

The tension was reaching a boiling point. I mean, it was just constant arguments between the two, so much so that Gordon, Anita's dad, installed a lock on Anita's door. There had been talk about them figuring out the apartment and going their separate ways. So they were getting ready to split up, move out. Yes. It was that bad.

Yes. Then there were the text messages between Nicole and Anita in the months before the murder. In one, Nicole wrote, What goes around comes around. I have tried the being nice strategy, and that just obviously didn't get the point across. Amber also remembered Nicole making an odd comment

after Anita's body was found. She told us that she had to go to the apartment, I believe the next day day to walk through it, see if anything had been taken or moved. And then she stated that they better not have taken my pink iPod. Her pink iPod. Right. And it was just a strange thing to think about in a time like that. This wasn't hard proof of anything.

And Nicole didn't seem to be living the life of someone weighed down by a violent secret. She still lived in Minot, was a wife, a mother to a daughter, and was close to her family. But still, in 2022, police and the Cole Justice Team wanted to question her again. And she agreed. I don't remember anything else about the fish tank. Was anything missing from your room? No.

Did you ever tell them the iPod was missing? I think my iPod was missing, but then I ended up finding it in my car somewhere. If someone told you you were at a party with William and you said you killed Anita, would they be lying? They'd definitely be lying. That would be a horrible thing for anybody to say. Nicole sensed law enforcement had heard a lot of stories about her that she said unfairly suggested she hurt Anita. Why would people do that? I don't know. I don't know if people just were trying to put the pieces together themselves. Investigators came to doubt Nicole's alibi. At first, she said she'd spent all weekend with her family, miles away from Minot.

But according to police, her story kept shifting. At one point, she spent Saturday night watching a movie with her mom and sister. At another, she'd gone to a bar to see her cousin. There's just a lot of things, Nicole, that over the years your story has changed so many times. This has been 13 years ago. I can't remember what happened for supper. Nicole insisted she didn't have anything to do with Anita's death.

I never hurt anybody. I want this taken care of and I want it solved and I want people to know that it wasn't me. After spending nearly an hour at the station, Nicole was done. I don't want to talk anymore. That's fine. I haven't done anything. Nicole walked out of the station, but Minot police weren't done with her yet. Armed with the information from William May, they presented their findings to the Ward County State's attorney. The case against Nicole might have been circumstantial, but the prosecutors felt it was enough. might have been circumstantial, but the prosecutors felt it was enough. With cameras rolling, Anita's family gathered. Cold's justice captured the big moment,

the moment Anita's family had been awaiting for nearly 15 years. A Minot police detective became emotional when she shared the news. We are on board with moving forward with criminal charges from Nicole's office. She's going to be arrested. It's a load off of all of our shoulders.

I really had the focus to stay collected myself. There was so much emotion. A few days later, Chief Klug made news of the arrest public. At about 3.25 PM, 34-year-old Nicole Rice was arrested for murder. The next day, Nicole appeared in court virtually from the local jail. Ms. Rice, is there anything you would like to say

before I set your bond, ma'am? No, I'm sorry. I mean, I just, like, felt so, I think, shocked, but also so angry. There's a person who they're arresting who has gotten to live her life very normally. For the last 15 years, she's done these things that are so normal, and my sister didn't get a chance to do any of that. Anita's family felt the state's attorneys had a chance to set things right, but it would take years for Anita's case to finally see a jury.

And when it did, it would be an all-out fight. We are confident that you are going to find Nicole Thomas Rice guilty. It was pressure from a TV show. They put an incredible amount of pressure to bring charges in this case. It was late March 2025, but winter still had a grip on Grand Forks, North Dakota. That's where Nicole Thomas, now Nicole Rice, was facing possible life in prison for the murder of Anita Knudsen. It had been three years since her arrest. Anita's little sister, Anna, was now 32

and bracing for the horror of, once again, hearing the details of her sister's murder. Going through this the very first time as a 15 year old person and then going through this again through the trial still felt like somebody had just died, like my sister had died a second time. That really is why that was important. Prosecutor Tiffany Sorgan opened on a poetic note. You're going to hear whispers from the past across the void of time that led to these charges.

Silent no more. She laid out the prosecution's theory. The state intends to show you evidence. There was bad blood between these two girls and their living situation was highly toxic. State intends to show you evidence that on the early morning hours of June 3, 2007, Nicole Thomas Rice stabbed Anita Knudsen twice in the chest,

killing her. To get a conviction, the prosecutors had to convince the jury that only Nicole Rice had the motive and the opportunity to kill Anita. First, they took the jury back to that terrible day by calling Anita's 80-year-old mother Sharon to the stand. How often did you speak with Anita? Oh, all the time it seemed like daily almost. Sharon remembered how she couldn't get Anita on the phone, how she asked her husband to go check on her.

What was the next thing you heard about where your daughter was? He called one of my neighbors in Butte and had her come and stay with me while he told me on the phone what he found. And what was that? He found Anita dead. Anita's 90-year-old father, Gordon, relived that moment on the stand.

What did you see when you were at the window? I seen Anita. Where was Anita? She was just lying in bed just inside the window. Oh, just kind of tore me up. I just, it made me so sad. Was it hard for you to watch? Yeah, yeah.

I walked in and put my hand on her leg and see it was cold. Prosecutors then turned to an essential question. Did the killer get in and out of that apartment with a key or through that slashed screen? They showed the jury an experiment conducted about a week after the murder. Minot police made an identical cut in a new screen and then tried to climb through it

without tearing it further. What did you learn from that? I learned that after doing that, I didn't feel that it was possible that the person that committed the homicide entered or exited out the window. The state suggested that cut screen was staged, a killer's attempt at misdirection, and that the killer got in and out through the door with a key.

Laura Knapp, the apartment manager, testified the door was locked when she led Anita's dad inside. You had to have a key to entrance and to leave the apartment to have it locked. So you couldn't just pull it shut behind you and it would lock? No. You had to have the key to do it. Prosecutors told the jury that only four people had keys. Anita, the apartment manager, Marty the maintenance man, and Nicole. Throughout the trial, there was an elephant in the courtroom, the Cold Justice TV show. The prosecution had to address it because the defense certainly would. So the prosecution asked the most recently detective, Sergeant Carmen Asham, to clarify

the program's role in her investigation. Now, Sergeant, I know there's been a lot of talk about Cole Justice. Yes. You were assigned to this case before Cole Justice came on. Is that correct? Correct. Was Cole Justice calling the shots?

No. Sergeant Asham told the jury how thoroughly her own team had investigated possible suspects and then cleared them, and how Nicole's inconsistencies about where she was the night of the murder led to her arrest. What did you find that was inconsistent? Her statements about her whereabouts the weekend of the murder. Did her statements change over time? They did.

What's more, according to the sergeant, Nicole was less than honest about her feelings toward Anita. Anytime an investigator brought up information that they had received about them fighting or arguing, she downplayed it. Okay, specifically fighting about what? The alarm clock, the fish tank. Primarily those were the issues that came up. In fact, a witness testified that Nicole blamed Anita for killing her fish,

just a week before Anita was killed. Nicole's own aunt, Brenda Glentz, testified that Nicole's hatred for Anita continued after her murder. What'd she say? She deserved to die. The aunt admitted to the court that she didn't want to be there,

but she testified, under subpoena, that her niece said something that seemed to put her at the scene of the crime. She told me that whoever did this cut the screen. She said that it was so horrible, she said, to just see Anita lying there. But she looked so peaceful covered up. The screen and Anita's body were in fact gone by the time police brought Nicole to the apartment.

So her comments to her aunt were significant to investigators. Because it shows that the only other person that would know these details are people that, or someone that was at the crime scene, or somebody that did the murder. Nicole's old boyfriend, William May, told the jury what he had told Cold Justice and Minot Police, that during a party, Nicole had actually confessed.

Nicole and I were sitting on the couch, and someone from the kitchen was talking about it. And that's when it was stated. From Nicole Rice, it was that she had did it, that she had killed Anita. Nicole said that? Yes. Okay. Then another witness testified to almost the same thing, that after a party, Nicole had

confessed to her. What did she specifically state to you? I'm not 100% word for word, but that she had gotten into an argument with her and had stabbed her. The prosecution argued with all the evidence, there was only one possible conclusion. In the early morning hours of June 3rd, 2007, Nicole Rice took this knife

and plunged it to the chest of this girl and killed her. But defense attorneys would have something to say about that. They would argue that the investigation was a mess and the presence of a TV show made it even messier. How would you rate the overall investigation in this case? I hate to be critical, but not very good. You're going to hear a lot of evidence in this case. Right from the start, defense attorney Rick Sand made one thing perfectly clear. The evidence the state had presented against Nicole hadn't changed much over the years,

although something did reignite the investigation in 2022, and it wasn't exactly evidence. It was pressure from a TV show, a nationally syndicated program that came in, worked with the Minot Police Department, didn't dig up anything of substance, but put an incredible amount of pressure on the state's attorney's office, the police department, to bring charges in this case. Piece by piece, the defense worked to take apart the state's case, like the theory that the killer had to have a key and didn't go through the window.

The defense suggested that for months after the murder, detectives like Robert Barnard were saying the opposite. You speculated that someone exiting through that window had caught the curtain and the curtain rod. That was my most reasonable assumption at the time, yes. On their way out of the window. It would seem to me that the most reasonable conclusion an average person could reach, knowing what I knew at the time,

that if they exited through the window, it was inside out. The defense suggested some witness accounts changed over the years, like that from Nicole's aunt, for instance, who testified about Nicole saying Anita deserved to die? This is the first time we're hearing that. Are you aware of that? Nicole did say Anita deserved to die. We have not made a loss, correct? That's what you told the detective? I did.

Okay, thank you. When it came time to cross-examine Sergeant Asham, Rick Sand challenged her competence, her integrity, and her judgment, suggesting she ignored viable suspects developed by the first investigators. Did you ever talk to Tyler Schmalz? I did. Had you read in the reports that they were concerned he was obsessed with Anita?

Yes. Tyler didn't hear any of this. As a possible witness, he was barred from the trial. So that was the hardest part, not being able to watch the whole trial for a whole week where they're talking about you, accusing you, and saying stuff about you, and you can't be there to defend yourself.

And then came the heart of the defense case to show the jury that the partnership between Cold Justice and the Minot Police Department had skewed the investigation toward Nicole. To do that, the defense called just one witness, legal consultant and former FBI agent, Doug Coons. Now there's been some testimony from Sergeant Ashram about inconsistencies in Nicole's interviews.

Yes. If you were that, what are your thoughts about those inconsistencies? You know, I saw them too. I don't see anything that jumps out to me as like, oh my god, we got her. You know, it's small details. It's like we went from the house in Velva to the family function and then, okay, in this first version we left out the bar, but why is that significant?

She still isn't back in Minot where she would have had access to Anita. He said those were minor inconsistencies that came from multiple interviews with Nicole spanning 18 years. And Coon said the Cole Justice Minot PD investigation ignored a suspect that was staring them right in the face. It jumped right out to me that they left out Devin Hall. Devin Hall. He was the teenager who arrived by train around the time of the murder.

He had a record for burglary and was currently incarcerated. You said Cole Justice came in for 10 days, correct? About that, yeah. What day did you guys interview Devin Hall on those 10 days? We did not. That was a big omission, according to the defense. And remember the running man tip that surfaced early in the investigation?

Have you seen photographs of Devin Hall? I have. Can you describe him to the court? At the time, he looks fit, about 200 pounds, six foot two, short hair, dark hair. I don't know what color his eyes are. It matches the description given by Becky Ehrman of a person that she saw running away

from the scene that night. A local guy had identified himself as the running man, but he was just a jogger. The defense argued, what if another man was out that night, running away from the murder? What are your thoughts on that? Again, highly coincidental that a person matching the description almost to a T of Devin Hall

seen running away from the area of the crime scene with a dirty or bloody shirt is something I as an investigator am going to thoroughly pursue. The expert also disputed Devin Hall's alibi that police believed a videotape showed him arriving by train after the murder. There's nothing to indicate on that video what the date was that it was recorded. As for the witnesses who testified that Nicole actually confessed to them? What sticks out to me is there's very little context leading up to when this alleged confession was made.

We know that there was this drunken party and that Nicole has been reported as being belligerently drunk. Now was she the only one that was that drunk? How drunk were the people that allegedly heard this confession? It doesn't make sense for me. So was there no logical follow-up conversation to that? William May said he reported all of it to police in 2008. But investigators testified they had no record of it.

All in all, Kuhn said, the state's case was flimsy. How would you rate the overall investigation in this case? I hate to be critical, but not very good. Why is that? There's a lack of attention to detail. There's a lack of attention to detail there's a lack of thoroughness They spend seem to spend a lot of attention running down Dead end rabbit holes while glossing over some very important facts details

What if anything about this case piques your interest? I? Just don't think we have the I don't think we have the correct person. His withering critique was just what the defense felt it needed. The question now, would the jury buy it? After six days of testimony, it was time for the jury to decide whether the mystery of who killed Anita Knudsen would finally be put to rest. Was it, in fact, Nicole Rice? Did she enter Anita's room in the wee hours of the morning and stab her roommate to death? Ryan Chandler was on the jury.

She had access to the apartment. She knew where Anita was going to be. They were, you know, having their roommate differences. Or, as the defense had argued, could someone else have killed her? Jurors began their deliberations, and as the night wore on, the seriousness of the decision weighed heavy. That's quite a burden that you're putting on us 12 jurors to decide somebody's fate, and if they're going gonna go to prison for the rest of their life

or if they're gonna get to walk free. As he watched the case unfold, Ryan was able to eliminate some of the possible suspects the defense put forward, like Michael Vann and Tyler Schmaltz. And he had trouble believing some of the prosecution witnesses, like William May, who gave testimony about Nicole's alleged confession. There was never a record that he had ever called the police. There was never a record that he ever made a statement.

Jurors went through the evidence and talked about the case for four hours, well into the evening. Finally, they called it a day. I think we started at 9 o'clock the next morning, and in about 45 minutes, we casted our first vote, and it was unanimous. The court has received notification that the jury has reached a verdict.

They came in and told us, like, we have a verdict. And the state's attorney was like, you know, no matter which way this goes, like, we need you to keep your reactions under control. They told that to you, to your family? They told that to us, yes, yeah. He was, like, very intentional. And then we all, like, kind of start walking up,

and I'm just like, my hands, even I like are so clammy I'm like shaking. The court will now have the clerk read the verdict. We the jury duly impaled and sworn find the defendant Nicole Erin Rice not guilty. Yeah! Give me the information. It was an unbridled, some would say, unseemly show of joy, of victory, and for Anita's family, a complete gut punch. Can you calm down a little bit, please?

I want to forget how their screams sound so much, but they're just like in my brain, like burned into my mind. What are you feeling in that moment? Yeah, I, you know, just really, But they're just like in my brain, like burned into my mind. What are you feeling in that moment? Yeah, I, you know, just remember wanting to get out of there. Miss Rice, you've been found not guilty. You are discharged. Like I understand if you went to a trial like that, you don't want to be happy,

but you got to have some courtesy to the family that's sitting next to you. That had to be gut wrenching. Nicole and her defense team declined our interview request. They issued this statement. When the verdict was read, we reacted emotionally. We sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended, especially to Anita Knudsen's family.

The loss of Anita is heartbreaking, and we in no way intend to disrespect. The prosecution and cold justice also declined our interview requests. Our attempts to reach Devin Hall went unanswered. You worked this case for more than a decade. You know the information, the evidence in and out. And at the end of the day,

no one has been held responsible for Anita's death. Is that tough to swallow? It's, it is tough to swallow. I feel like Anita Knudsen's family did not get justice. Anita didn't get the justice that she deserves. I have no regrets in how we handled the case. We arrested the suspect we believed killed Anita Knudsen. They were found not guilty. To me, it's case closed.

That's been hard for some people to accept. Tyler Schmoltz, for instance. Anita will forever live in his memory. He can't forget that magical prom night when she did something so unexpected and so kind. Anita's friends tried to get her to the lead prom and go to a different party off campus. And she told him, no, she wanted to hang out with me.

So she chose me a second time and said, I'm going to stay at prom with Tyler and dance with him instead of leaving the party. So she chose me a second time for that prom. That felt really good. If you close your eyes and think of Anita, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? Just that she was so beautiful, like inside and out. So smart.

Brilliant, really. Do you feel that there are pieces of her still with you today? Sure. A lot of the time, you know, struggling with things, life, you know, getting stressed out about things that seem very insignificant. She would be so upset if she saw that I was angry or frustrated or, you know, giving up

or anything like that. So when I say that she, you know, made us, all of us friends, better people, I wasn't lying. Those pink balloons may be long gone, but those faded pink ribbons still dot the streets of Butte, a lasting reminder of an unsolved murder and a tribute to an unforgettable young woman. That's all for this edition of Dateline, and check out our Talking Dateline podcast. Blaine Alexander and Josh Mankiewicz will go behind the scenes of tonight's episode, available Wednesday in the Dateline feed wherever you get your podcasts.

We'll see you again Sunday at 10, 9 Central. I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.