The Deck - Anita Carlson (10 of Spades, Minnesota)

Episode Date: July 8, 2026

Our card this week is Anita Carlson, the 10 of Spades from Minnesota.  In late June 1987, the town of Bemidji, Minnesota, was gearing up for Independence Day weekend. Celebrations quickly turned to panic when Anita Carlson, a college graduate with hopes of working in TV production, went missing from her nighttime job at Pete’s Place, a convenience store at the intersection of Highways 2 and 89.  By the end of the weekend, Anita had been found dead. Nearly 40 years later, investigators are still trying to figure out what happened that night.  Anyone with information about the death of Anita Carlson should call Crime Stoppers of Minnesota: 800-222-8477, or the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension tip line is 1-877-996-6222.   View source material and photos for this episode at: thedeckpodcast.com/anita-carlson Let us deal you in… follow The Deck on social media. Instagram: @thedeckpodcast | @audiochuck Twitter: @thedeckpodcast_ | @audiochuck Facebook: /TheDeckPodcast | /audiochuckllc To support Season of Justice and learn more, please visit seasonofjustice.org. The Deck is hosted by Ashley Flowers.  Instagram: @ashleyflowers TikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkie Twitter: @Ash_Flowers Facebook: /AshleyFlowers.AF Text Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Our card this week is Anita Carlson, the 10 of Spades from Minnesota. On June 30th, 1987, the town of Bimiji, Minnesota was gearing up for a busy 4th of July week. A carnival was coming to town. Visitors came to camp at Lake Bimigi State Park, fire up the grill, enjoy some Midwestern summer. But a lot of the celebrations got put on hold to search for a 22-year-old college graduate named Anita Carlson, who went missing just. days before the 4th of July. And by the end of the holiday weekend, police discovered that she'd been killed.

For nearly 40 years, detectives have considered two competing theories. Was this a crime of opportunity or something someone had been plotting on one of the busiest weekends of the year? I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is the deck. Bemidji, Minnesota is a place known for its small town charm.

access to the Mississippi River, and huge statues of Paul Bunyan and Bade the Blue Oaks. One of those unique places in Middle America that is a destination and a place people just pass through with two long stretches of American freeway, Highway 2 and Highway 89, crossing in the northwest part of town. And in the summer of 87, the city took on another legacy, home of one of Minnesota's most well-known murder mysteries. This was one that kind of rocked everybody just because of its proximity to the city, but yet in the county. And the fact that it wasn't solved right off the bat.

Sergeant Robert Billings works in investigations in the Beltrami County Sheriff's Office. He knew about the case even before he started investigating it. And so did Agent Jake Hodap, who remembers being five years old when this story began. His dad was an agent for the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, where Agent Hodap now works. Today, both agencies, state and local, are partnering on the case. My dad was a BC agent at the time. I obviously followed in his footsteps in a sense. And he worked on this case.

He would have worked a lot on this case at that time. And many cases that came out during that time, we'd hear bits and pieces just because, well, That was his life for probably a couple of years. Now, Jake Hodup has a longer title, and it's a mouthful. Assistant Special Agent in charge of the Homicide Unit at the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in the Northern Region out of the Bemidji Regional Field Office. So what that means is basically I'm a state policeman. Our agency's mission is to assist local agencies with higher profile investigations

or cases which would... require more resources. And so when he began looking at Anita Carlson's case about 14 years ago, he was reading some of his dad's own work. He's putting together the parts that he only remembers hearing about as a kid. My dad later became sheriff here at Beltrami County, and he kept that picture of Anita Carlson on his desk. Back in 1987, when Agent Hodap was a little kid,

22-year-old Anita Carlson was finishing up a late shift at Pete's pretext. which was a gas station and convenience store at the crossroads of Highway 2 and 89. She normally locked up at around 11 p.m. before heading home for the night. And the night of June 30th, at least started out like all the rest. Anita called her roommate Tina around 10.30, letting her know that she would be home soon after she got done closing up. And Pete's Place had a procedure for the way it closed. Doors locked, lights turned off, security system activated, registers set up for the next day. But that night, none of that happened.

The employee that came in in the morning to open everything up, arrives, and quickly notices that things were just off. Her cars there, you know, the lights that normally are turned off are not there, and started kind of going throughout the store and noticing different things. Things weren't in the places they should be. One till was closed, one till was open. So there was a lot of red flakes that were going, up for them right away.

The radio was still on. $1,300 in cash and food stamps were missing from the register, which was empty, save for some loose change. Anita's purse was left on a chair under a coat rack, and Anita was nowhere to be found. Well, initially came out as a missing person, but once they've kind of found out who she was, it was pretty obvious unless there was something really serious that went on

that she wasn't taken by herself because she probably would have called somebody if she was having a hard time or if there was any issues. Like, you know, she probably would have let somebody know right away. They talked to roommate. They end up talking to her boyfriend or fiance and try to get, you know, everybody's kind of whereabouts

and what they knew, what they heard the day before, how she was feeling, is everything okay? Was there anything suspicious? Word was traveling fast about Anita's disappearance. And Anita's older brother, Dale, who was in his 20s and married, living closer to Minneapolis, was at work when he got a call from his dad. Anita, Nita's missing. What do you mean missing? She didn't come home from work the night before.

And, yeah, that was a tough one. And I wasn't quite sure what to do with myself. And it was a long drive listening to on the news, you know, driving through the cities and wherever else. and it was on the news all over the place. When Dale and his wife, Lisa, got to Bimiji, investigators were well on their way searching. They started mobilizing planes, horses, dogs, and search parties to cover nearly 280 miles of roadside and wooded terrain,

according to the Bimichie pioneer. And because Bimigi is right next door to the Red Lake Indian Reservation, where the FBI had federal jurisdiction, federal agents came in to help with interviews. Anita's roommate Tina told investigators, that Anita had been working at the gas station for a month or two, usually between 5 and 11 p.m. or so. And it was normally fine. I mean, the biggest nuisance was maybe just a few drunk people who would loiter.

She said that night, when they had talked at around 10.30, Anita seemed okay, but said that she had had a long day and was going to come right home, which obviously she didn't. But Tina didn't worry. She just assumed that maybe Anita changed her mind about where she was going to go after work and went to stay with her fiance Jeff instead. The reality was, Jeff hadn't seen Anita since they met for lunch before her ship. And that night, he had been playing softball,

so he couldn't have been with her. As investigators talked to the people who knew Anita, they got a fuller picture of a young woman who was, by all accounts, very on top of it. I mean, she had just graduated Bamigi State University and was interning for the local PBS station while she was interviewing for media jobs in bigger cities, and working at Pete's place to earn extra money.

Here's Anita's sister-in-law, Lisa. And so the last time we all saw her was college graduation. Months before. And we were planning kind of a family reunion thing over the fourth. Anything was possible for her. She was valedictorian of her high school class, an honors student, and former weather girl for Bermiggi State University. She thought about moving home after graduate.

and she didn't want to because she wanted her independence and her roommate was her best friend. And so she and Tina were together and that's the way she wanted it. And so that's why she was working where she worked and all of that. Investigators went to Anita's boss at KAWE who called Anita punctual and a good employee.

Her supervisor was actually going to put Anita in charge while she was on vacation in the near future. Anita's boss mentioned something interesting, though. Anita sometimes said she was afraid of working nights at Pete's place, though she didn't say why. There had been a break-in at the store back in March 1986. A couple of guys smashed the glass and took a ton of beer, cigarettes, and about 24 pair of sunglasses. But Anita wasn't working there at the time, so that seems unlikely to have been the cause for her concern. Plus, that doesn't seem like what happened the night she went missing. There was no

evidence of a messy smash and grab. There were a few people that noticed that the store just didn't look like it normally did, but not enough to where they were wanting to go and investigate it. You know, and just when somebody questioned them about it, like, well, maybe, you know what, I did kind of notice something like that that was different. What was different, or what stood out, mostly had to do with the neon beer lights kept on the window of Pete's place. But for the handful of people who were in the store that night, everything seemed normal.

It's a smaller community, so you might talk to one person that was in the store, but they might identify two or three people that they saw coming and going. Other people that came to Pete's place and had purchased items and had seen vehicles coming and going. They were able to identify almost everybody that had been inside and outside of that gas station leading up to that time except for that final till register. The first person they identified was a guy named Steve Burnham. He was there at the gas station right around 10.30 p.m.

He bought a half gallon of milk and some candy bars. He told investigators he was a frequent customer but didn't know the cashier. And even though he didn't see anyone inside the store as he was leaving, he did remember a green Chevy van with Minnesota Place in pretty good condition pulling into. the parking lot. That would have been Angela Stately and Dennis Stout, who bought gas and beer at 1036 p.m. Investigators talked to Angela and she said that she remembered Anita looked like she was in a hurry to go home. But she would have more customers to attend to before the night was up. Because at 1057, Anita sold groceries to a guy named Jeff Schmidt, who was there with his two buddies, James

Platt and Corey James Crumery. And then after them, there was one last last. transaction. Investigators don't know what for, only that whatever it was cost $43.17. What we know from the tilt tape is at 1108, which would have been after closing, there was a purchase and that purchase would have been the last one on the register. Whoever took the cash did it while the register was open. We would think that that would have been maybe part of it. Maybe that would have been what got the till open so that they didn't have to force it open. Is that for sure what happened?

We don't know. But as soon as that till had been opened up, that that would be an opportunity to get into there without having to break into it or do anything else. But if this was just about the cash, why take Anita? And more importantly, where did they take her? In the back of everybody's mind, they probably had an idea what they were looking for too, which is difficult. Instead of firing up the barbecue and lighting fireworks, Bimiji community members and Anita's family spent the days leading up to the 4th of July weekend doing grid searches of the region. But they quickly ran into a problem.

The biggest challenge in late June, early July, is the foliage on the trees, especially from above. It's almost impossible to see down through the canopies. So that's difficult. And even on the ground, too, you know, obviously that's mid-season. The trees are going to be, you know, in full bloom. And so anything could be literally five feet from you, but it could be completely covered in grass or foliage.

So that's always a difficult part of it. which made investigators think that if Anita was out there, the perpetrator may have known the Bimigi area well. And while Pete's place may have been relatively exposed, everything around it was dense and rural. Still remember driving around up in the woods areas there. You're driving down all these logging roads that you look up and there's just trees all over and how you feel real small at that point. It's a weird and isolating experience being the family of a missing loved one. Even in a small town where so many people come to your aid and help you, there are so many more who have no idea what you're going through.

They keep going on about their life completely unaware that for you, the world has stopped. Fireworks still let up the night sky on July 4th. Probably illuminated the very woods where Anita's body. would be found by a searcher the very next day. Anita's partially clothed body had been found about two miles up the road through the woods from Pete's place, and an autopsy later revealed that she had been sexually assaulted and shot twice in the head, likely on the very same night that she went missing. But because of the time that had lapsed,

they couldn't tell if she was killed in the woods or if she had just been taken there after. The news of the development spread quickly. Many in the Carlson family had still been out there searching for Anita. And Lisa and Dale cannot forget the moment that the family's optimism turned to grief. I remember the heart, at least for me, the hardest part was watching your mom. She really wanted to be able to see Anita, and she couldn't. Because of, you know, all the stuff, you know, law enforcement were very kind. and say, we cannot.

You cannot do that. And that was hard. The man who found Anita was a local named Robert Sampson, a good Samaritan, as Sergeant Billings described him, just offering to help out. Part of you wants to go out and help. You don't think that that's what you're going to find. You're probably like, I want to do my part,

and I want to get out there, and I want to help find this person. But I'm probably not going to, but I'm doing my part. And so I actually walk up. I mean, I can only imagine it's the only time in his life that he'd ever located a person that was deceased. And so I'm sure that stuck with him forever. Robert had taken his four-wheel drive truck down a heavily wooded road. That wasn't really much of a road at all,

more like a path that was secluded and unmarked. But that specific spot stood out to him because the grass was matted like someone else had driven their research. If it took a local to find Anita, police believed it might have been a local who put her there. So they went back to Anita's inner circle to question them again. And perhaps the questions that they asked in a homicide investigation were much different than the ones they asked when Anita was just a missing person. Because they got some new information that I cannot believe didn't come out the first time. Anita's roommate Tina said that there was this one guy, someone that.

that Anita used to call The Good Doctor. She remembered Anita bringing home his business card and saying that he showed up at Pete's place every other day, sometimes more, and he would offer to take Anita for a ride in his car. Investigators had asked if that business card was still around, and lo and behold, it was, in Anita's bedroom, in her trash, specifically. The man she called the Good Doctor had his real name spelled out in ink, Dr. Stephen M. Burnham.

Sound familiar? Stephen Burnham was one of Anita's final customers. He was the 10.30 patron who bought candy bars and milk. Now, when investigators talked to Anita's fiancé Jeff, the good doctor rang a bell for him, too. He remembered Anita saying that the 30 or 40-something-year-old man with the receding hairline went to her church, too. He gave her the creeps because it seemed like he always wanted to touch her.

According to a report we got in the case file from Beltrami County, Steve even came back to Pete's Place the morning after Anita went missing. That's how they'd been able to figure out who he was and that he was a customer so quickly. Steve, his wife, and their two kids all lived with Steve's parents. And apparently, his dad had gone to Pete's Place on the morning of July 1st to grab the newspaper. He heard about the robbery, related to Steve, and so Steve went to police to provide whatever helpful information he could. It did seem helpful at the time.

But a week later, in the shadow of a homicide investigation, when they go talk to him, they're slightly more skeptical. Here's a voice actor reading part of a written report prepared by the investigators at the time about their interview with Steve. Burnham stated that the girl at the store usually closed the store at 11 to 1115 to 1130 p.m. That once in a while when he came in, she'd be mopping the floor. He stated that he did not know her name, and never dated her or asked her about a date.

Stephen Burnham also stated that he thought that this was a very bad situation and that it shouldn't happen in Bemidji, that he felt that whoever done this should be brought to some type of justice. Sergeant Cross also continued the interview on type of firearms that Steve Burnham owned. And at one particular point in time, Burnham said that the only guns that he had was a new 357 and another firearm. But in the past, he had had shotguns, rifles, some handguns, but he didn't really care too much about them and some 22 caliber pistols.

Now, it's important to note, I don't know what they were fishing for here. Because investigators won't say what kind of gun the murder weapon was, or if they ever recovered a murder weapon. But guns aside, Steve said that he had an alibi. After he made that purchase at Pete's Place at 1030, he went home where he said his whole family could account for him. Authorities actually interviewed Steve's dad, Walter, to try and validate. that, and dad backed him up.

Also said, yeah, Steve had previously, had guns, but not for several years, and maybe didn't have any guns anymore. And then, at the end of the interview, something weird happened. Steve's mom entered the interview room. Here's a voice actor again. While interviewing Mr. Burnham, his wife, Mrs. Walter Burnham, came into the area where the interview was being conducted. Mrs. Burnham seems quite distraught and told interviewers of her health

problems. Mrs. Burnham also stated that if something like this happened and she was a witness, she would never come forward. Mrs. Burnham implied to officers that she did not like the officers asking any questions about her son or his activities in relation to this investigation. So just to be clear, Mommy Dearest just said that even if she had witnessed something, she would never tell them, which is, you know, totally a normal response when you think that your son's done nothing wrong. Also, any red flags for anyone else that the good doctor is still, living with mom and dad. I mean, it could be that he was also a good son and taking care of them, but it seems from the files that they were more taking care of him. I mean, even if he had a wife and kids of

his own. And I say this because through a polygraph and investigation into the good doctor's background, investigators found that he was nothing that he pretended to be. Not a good doctor, not even a doctor at all. In September, after Steve had already failed a polygraph, investigators brought him into the sheriff's office to ask him about the results. Here's the voice actor again. It should be noted throughout the entire interview

that Stephen Burnham voluntarily stayed and answered questions, that he was told on at least four occasions that he could leave. He was free to go at any particular time that he wanted to go. Burnham stated that he wanted to go. to stay and get it cleared up so this incident was not hanging over his head. Steve told officers that from the jump, he had been hiding things. Like, he'd played down that he knew Anita. And he said, just because he hands out business cards and flirted with girls,

is that really a reason to make him a suspect? Well, no, not alone. But let's talk about those business cards. Investigators went through his resume. It said that he had a PhD in mechanical engineering from Arizona State University. Well, Steve confessed he never got that degree. He said he'd gone to Bumigi's state instead.

But when investigators checked, there was no record of Steve even going to that college there. He'd also claimed to have been honorably discharged from the U.S. Army. Not true. He said he had a Purple Heart and did two Vietnam tours. Also a lie. Said he had Department of Defense security clearance. That one was a partial lie. He did have security clearance there for,

eight days only. Now he also said he had central intelligence agency, top secret clearance. He had that one for zero days, total fabrication. And when asked by investigating officers, why he basically invented an entire life that he presented to the world, Steve told those officers that he just wanted to impress other people and that his motivation in seeking out Anita was to, quote, hustle her. He admitted to having approximately $12,000 in debts and 15 affairs since 1983. And then he admitted to having a lying problem, which like, yeah, we got that bud. Burnham again asked if he was a suspect in the situation, and the reply to him was yes,

that his deceptions and his lies about Anita Carlson has placed him in that situation. Burnham understood that he is the one, not the sheriff's department, that has put him in the situation that he is in with being a suspect because of his lies. Then he offered to take another test or sit down for more questions any time to clear his name. Burnham then was done with the questioning and left for his home to try to explain

the situation about his lies to his wife and his family. End of report. It's unclear how much he actually had to explain to his wife. I mean, surely she knew that he wasn't a doctor, right? Did she think that he went to college? I wonder if she ever knew he was interviewed and polygraphed in relation to a murder investigation. Did she know that that polygraph indicated deception?

I do know that she was interviewed and took a polygraph and hers indicated deception as well. Now, I don't know what investigators made of all of this back then, but if I were them, I'd be scratching my head. I know, though, that at this point, they just started to look at other potential people of interest. Now, Steve is in his early 70s, still living in Minnesota. And over the years, he's had a handful of other run-ins with the law like harassment and a restraining order violation in 2004, one traffic violation in 2011.

In 2022, he actually petitioned the county for his firearm and ammunition rights, referring to himself as a churchgoing, retired engineer and excellent gunsmith who doesn't drink or do drugs and wants to target shoot with his wife. We reached out to him for comment, but he did not get back to us by the time of this recording. When we asked current investigators about how they view Steve now, they said everyone is still on the table. And that includes dozens of people who were investigated at the time. It also includes people who ended up on their radar through random tips. And two other names who were rumored to have had something to do with Anita back in 1987. Guys named Billy Thunder and John Jordane. The Jordane name was familiar.

He had been convicted in the 1986 burglary at Pete's place. But both appeared to have alibis. John was at his sister's home with his girlfriend and Billy was in jail. But even so, their names kept coming up. And then there was a tip investigators got from someone in Minnesota Correctional Facility, Stillwater, back in March 1990. They heard a guy named Ken Hawkins said that he assaulted and killed a girl in a convenience store. When investigators backgrounded Hawkins, they found that he had been convicted of a sexual assault that happened in September 1984 and then got out in 1986, only about nine months before Anita was killed. They interviewed him in 1991 and he said that he wasn't interested in abducting women.

There's a document in the case file, not from Beltrami County, but a teletype from Madison, Wisconsin to Polk County, Minnesota, asking about Hawkins. Here's the voice actor again. Our department has info that Hawkins is a suspect and a homicide. I would like to have details of your case on Hawkins. Please advise a phone number and name of person for me to contact. Like every other person of interest in these thousands of pages, Hawkins stayed on the list and was never officially ruled out. For almost 40 years, investigators have collected notes like these,

binders of teletypes, interviewed transcripts, and police reports. These 4,000 pages tell a winding story that spans almost 40 years of leads that came and went, and some that never went away. And scouring these documents, it's clear that detectives have pounded the pavement, leaving memos and notes that would help detectives down the line. But still, they haven't solved the case. Statistics tell us that oftentimes in these cold cases when they're solved, that those people have been interviewed early on in the case.

And so I think that it's likely that we've already talked to the person or person's responsible. It's possible that somewhere in that stack of binders, investigators have already written the killer's name. So I adopted the case because it's assigned to me. It's binders and binders of cases. I just started reading it, you know, because that's the only thing you can do. And, you know, as you go through it, you start figuring it out.

And the only way to do it is read it and take notes and then reread it and take notes. Now, Agent Hodap and Sergeant Billings are reviewing the case and all of the names in it. And they have something that their 1980s counterparts didn't. Access to DNA testing. Things are different now, and these two investigators are taking a close look at the evidence they collected. in 1987, which HODAP and Billings tell us that they do not want to discuss. And the reason why, and the reason I don't want to get into some of that stuff, is that it's some what we call hold back information, and the reason why we hold back information

like that is so that if there ever is a time when we interview a suspect, we want to be able to know whether or not that person's telling the truth or not. And some of that information, if it's all out there and they know it, And in this case, in particular, we have had people lie about information particular to the crime. But they will confirm that they have collected evidence, including Anita's clothes and items from the scene where she was found. They said they routinely analyzed these things. But that's all they'll say. They confirm that the crime lab has run ballistics, but they can't tell us what the results were.

In every case we have, there's always a lot of evidence. And, you know, making that evidence meaningful is what an investigation does, right? And so I think that, you know, it's just one of those things where, yeah, we've got evidence. We've got a lot of reports, a lot of statements, you know, people that have come forward and talked about what they did know. And what we really need is a couple of key people to come forward and tell us what they know to make that evidence make sense. They get tips all the time. Even the week before our reporting team was in Bemidji talking to investigators. Agent Hodap has a theory about why.

We continue to receive tips from people because that was so impactful to them at the time that it's still in the back of their minds as they've grown up, moved on in different parts of their lives. And I think a lot of that came from people who could see themselves being a college kid who is working at a convenience store and so it affected them. greatly at that time and that they've always kind of pondered what happened. I think that any cold case like this, or a case that's unsolved, really leaves kind of a hole in people's hearts where it's just, you know, you want to know what happened. We want answers.

Anita's case fits all the hallmarks of a cold case. But there's a part of Agent Hodap that doesn't see it that way. We don't look at any cases of a cold case. I've put a lot of work into this case. The guys that came before me put way more in. Everybody's put in just a ton of effort on this case, and I want to see it solved. They want to see it through.

And so it's not like it's sitting gain in dust on a shelf somewhere. It's been active, and it's been looked at and re-looked at, and we've had conversations with our lab, all these things. It's not been solved in 39 years, so it is by pretty much every definition, a cold case in that way. but I still like to think of it as an active case. Anita's homicide left ripples through Minnesota. After she died, some store owners in Bimidgee changed their policy

on letting women work alone at night. She had an impact. So much so, she had two funerals when she died, one in Bimigi, where she went to school and built her own community, and one over an hour north in her hometown. Anita wanted to spend her life sharing the things that she loved. including her faith. This is a little tough,

but she accomplished that with having to go through this. Because lots of people heard the story. Heard the story all over the state and beyond. And there were a lot of people that got moved by that, that they got to change some things. If there's any good that came out of it, I guess that's the one thing I hold on to. Dale and his wife Lisa remember Anita as someone with unbounding promise, about to get her start in the world.

She was fun and she loved to make people laugh and could play piano by ear. She wanted to be in TV production. She wanted to be behind the camera. Yeah. She would be doing what you're doing. Yeah, yeah. Quite honestly. For years, the grief was unbearable.

Now it's something that they live with. even without resolution. Dale said that it messed him up for over a decade, until the grief became expansive, stretching him to his brink. It reminded me of, you know, how you've got a rubber band, you just start stretching it too far.

And the day that, when all that happened, there was a stake in the ground, and I had this stretchy rope on me, and it just kept going and going and going, and finally it snapped loose, and you can feel the weight of the thing off of you, but you'd been messed up for so long that,

okay, now what do I do? That's the nature of grief. It's always there with you, but it changes. And anger eventually goes away and things like that. But it would be really nice to have closure. And we don't have that. If you have any information about this case, called the Bureau of Criminal Apprehensions tip line at 1-877-996-622,

or you can email bca.tips at state.m.m.us. The deck is an audio chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the deck and our advocacy work, visit the deckpodcast.com. I think Chuck would approve. Thank you.