Apartment 9

Mindy Morgenstern was born in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1984 and adopted by Larry and Eunice Morgenstern, who raised her on a farm near New Salem, North Dakota. By 2006 she was 22 and in her last semester at Valley City State University, majoring in physical education. She coached basketball and worked as a lifeguard, even after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis as a freshman.

On September 13, 2006, two friends found Mindy dead just inside the door of her off-campus apartment in Valley City. She had been strangled with a belt and stabbed in the neck, and Pine-Sol had been poured over her face and upper body. DNA scraped from under her fingernails matched Moe Gibbs, a Barnes County jailer who lived in the same building. Gibbs had scratches consistent with fingernail marks, and his DNA also matched an unsolved 2004 rape in Fargo.

Gibbs’s first murder trial, held in Minot, ended when the jury split six to six. A second jury, in Bismarck, deliberated for more than 27 hours and convicted him in the fall of 2007. He also entered guilty pleas in the Fargo rape and in sexual assaults on female inmates at the Barnes County jail. On December 17, 2007, he was sentenced to life without parole, and the North Dakota Supreme Court upheld the conviction in April 2009.