Original subtitles

The mind is a crazy thing.

Hello. Step over here, please.

All I know is it happened.

Stand right here. Dizzy?

Go this way.

I wish I could change it.

But I can't.

We're gonna walk this way

towards the elevator.

I wasn't getting any praise, or love, or attention.

I was giving it all out.

I was in and out of real life, you know?

It was a puzzle I still don't know

how to put together yet.

Look what happened to me.

Never have I been a criminal or anything.

Follow me.

- This door. - It breaks you down

and you think you don't have any value.

This way, ma'am.

But you do.

Go into that room over there.

Can have a whole life ahead of you.

But you have to pay for what you did.

I've never given an interview.

I hope this is the right thing to do.

Say it again?

I hope this is the right thing to do.

The murder of David Riess

in this town

could be likened to people remembering

where they were when the shuttle disaster occurred.

This is a lifetime memory for these people.

I think the last murder was maybe 30 years before.

It had been a lifetime ago,

and certainly wasn't this nationwide,

event that this became.

It is a wide-reaching story for Blooming Prairie.

It was, even if it had been the murder of David.

I can't tell you the first time I met Dave.

I don't recall.

He turned up probably sitting at the local bar,

having a beer, got to talking, and that was that, you know?

I liked him.

Everybody liked Dave.

Dave was fun.

Lois was great too, they were a fun couple.

Rod and I met Lois and Dave

the year they came to town, I believe that was 2004,

maybe 2005, at the Servicemen's Club.

They sat down at the bar near us,

and we started chatting, got introduced

as they were the new people in town.

Got to know them well enough that we invited them

to our lake home for a weekend.

We had a great time that weekend.

Lois was very gracious.

She brought steaks for everyone.

She was one to jump up and help do dishes and clean up.

We went pontooning and fishing.

He was all business when it came to fishing.

We did a couple, three tournaments together.

We're at Big Stone Lake in Ortonville, Minnesota

for the Cabela's Masters Walleye Circuit.

We started doing a little trolling here,

pitched the area here all day,

or all morning till right

which is 1:00.

We decided to do some trolling

and we caught our first fish.

Dave fished for fun.

Dave fished for social life,

Dave fished to create bonds with his grandkids,

his kids.

Fishing and his kids and grandkids were his world.

When Dave and Lois lived in Rochester,

he had a bait shop.

And then his dream was to open this worm farm.

And so they moved to Blooming Prairie in 2005.

And he opened this worm farm about 50 paces from the house.

And they would harvest these worms

that they sold as bait, and anglers loved them.

I've bought wax worms.

I've fished with wax worms.

They help you catch what you're looking for.

They're easy to put on a fish hook.

Three quarters of an inch long.

Nice and fat and juicy.

And that's what Dave was into and it was a good gig for him.

They had a thriving business,

breeding these worms and selling them

to fishermen and women.

The wax worm farm was very successful.

They seemed to be sitting fine money-wise.

Loving family, mother, grandma.

I know that everybody loved her.

Lois always gave the biggest hugs, kisses.

Dave had the biggest squeeze.

The most contagious smile and laughter.

You know how it is if I start laughing,

and it makes you laugh,

and that makes me laugh harder,

and now you're laughing harder.

And soon, you got those giggles that you can't stop.

And all I gotta do is look at you

and now we're both frigging laughing again.

That's the way it was with Dave.

He got on a roll and...

Bingo. It was over.

Lois and Dave had the same routine.

They both went down to the bar to drink.

They both went to the bowling.

They were who I wanted to be when I found my husband,

and get married, I wanted that relationship.

My buddies sent me some pictures of Dave.

Let's see, this first one...

- There's Dave. - What are you guys holding?

That's a stinking ashtray.

It's full of beer cans.

That's why we were showing it off.

How many beers we had that afternoon.

We were having a good time.

Next one. That was a good game. That was...

a picture of me and Dave

and I think that was the Minneapolis Miracle.

When we beat the Saints.

Let's see. The last picture is,

we call it the stadium,

and we got all our friends, somebody made a metal sign and...

Some of them aren't around anymore.

I don't pay a lot of attention to that sign,

but now that I took the time...

It gets to me a little bit.

You strike me as somebody that doesn't get

very emotional a lot.

I'm a man. I'm not supposed to be emotional, you know?

Monday the 12th was payroll day,

and Dave handled the payroll,

but Lois came down

and told one of the head workers there,

"You take care of it, Dave's sick."

Also, Lois did not seem her usual chipper self.

Didn't ask people how their weekends were,

like she often did, or give hugs to them

as she frequently did. She seemed more

standoffish and distracted.

And then, Thursday she came back.

And she kept up the story that Dave was sick,

said she was gonna take him to the doctor on Friday.

We were getting little rumors about,

"Something weird is going on.

Dave's not showing up to work."

So everybody starts talking.

People said they'd been texting him,

and he'd been responding to their texts,

but they were different.

The texts were different than usual.

Dave wouldn't type, he would talk-text.

So when you got his messages,

they were a bit scrambly.

His text messages weren't matching up

to what he normally talk-text.

There were emojis and different things in his text messages.

What's going on?

The next week came around

and Dave was supposed to go to a fishing tournament

on that Tuesday.

And then on Thursday,

two workers at the worm farm

saw Dave's Cadillac Escalade

pull out of the driveway with Lois in it.

And that's the car that Dave would've taken

to the fishing tournament because it's the car he used

to tow his boat.

That's when they knew...

Dave's not

Dave's not at the fishing tournament.

Lois is leaving in the Escalade. What's going on?

And that's when the business partner

reported to the Dodge County sheriff.

Two officers rang the bell, nobody came.

And they walked around the house.

What stood out right away was the bathroom window was open

when it was so cold outside.

One of them hoisted the other up

so he could look in the window, and he saw

what looked like it might be a body under a blanket or towel.

So my wife Pam and I were on our way home from Austin.

And as I drove by, I noticed a cop car sitting there.

Something ain't right here, you know?

Deputies went into the house.

The PD went into the house.

They found Dave in the bathroom.

Dead. His body had already started to decompose.

It was bloated.

He'd been there for some time.

Turns out he'd been there 12 days.

The door was shut, window was open,

and the vent fan was on.

What happens then is

the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension,

or BCA, is called in

to assist the agencies with their investigations.

I first heard that something happened to David

by a phone call I got from my mom,

and the phone call came early in the morning.

Me and my mom don't communicate early in the morning.

We hardly talk on the phone,

so I knew something was going on.

And my mom told me David was found

deceased at home.

He'd been shot two times,

once in the chest, at the heart, and once in the back.

He also had a wound in his wrist.

I'm imagining that he saw that first shot coming

and tried to protect himself.

There was a shell casing from a .22 handgun

that they found underneath him.

But otherwise, there were no shell casings.

Whoever shot him had picked up that casing

and cleaned up, and covered him with a blanket, perhaps,

to keep the smell from drafting out and

opened the window so that it wouldn't smell as bad.

There wasn't much there in the way of disorganization

that would indicate someone left

in an extreme hurry.

Big news.

Big news, you know?

Everybody's talking about it.

At that point, I wasn't gonna point fingers quite yet,

but easy case here to solve, you know.

Lois is nowhere to be found.

This woman has shot her husband

is the conclusion and gossip.

It's all people can talk about. It's foremost in their minds.

What's going on? What happened, and why?

There was no history with this family at all

from a law enforcement standpoint,

I don't think anybody saw this coming at all.

Thank you for calling Steele County Times. This is Sharon.

People looked to us

for clarity on what happened, what are the facts,

and in this case,

we didn't have a lot of facts that we could give them.

Dodge County Sheriff's Office is led by

Sheriff Scott Rose,

who was our contact throughout the whole investigation.

And it was very limited

as far as the information that we were getting.

Dodge County Sheriff Scott Rose

has made a practice out of making things difficult

for media, other people.

Dave's body was found

on March 23rd, and there was no doubt

that Dave had been killed by someone else's hand.

It was three days after his body was found

before Dodge County put out any information.

I don't think he needed to run,

screaming with his hair on fire that there'd been a murder

and everybody look for Lois Riess.

I don't think that was the answer either,

but to say nothing?

What did that accomplish?

Nothing.

Lois came into the picture,

I believe, the following week

when the BCA had put out a crime alert

looking for her and her vehicle

as a person of interest in this murder.

I'd worked at the bar that night.

I had gotten home,

the ten o'clock news had come on,

and the news had said something about

a Blooming Prairie woman,

and I nonchalantly joked that,

"Wouldn't that be crazy if it was Lois?"

And I looked up and it was her driver's license picture on TV.

...presence at Prairie Wax Worm Farm.

I immediately burst into tears, shaking.

I was mad.

I was pissed off.

So Lois is on the run,

she's at large, no one knows where she is,

and at this point, she's not wanted for murder.

She's simply wanted for theft.

The investigation took a dramatic turn

after Lois was charged with felony theft

for cashing around $10,000 in checks

from David's personal and business accounts.

What had happened, one of the workers has gone

and made the rounds, and collected payment,

and so he had this stack of checks,

and he noticed a couple were missing.

Lois had taken those,

went to deposit them at the bank,

and then she withdrew funds

from the business account and then left.

When I learned that she was writing herself checks

from David's business account,

that right there told me that

she's not doing that to go shopping at the grocery store.

So she had become suspect number one at that point.

We knew she'd be looking for either a family member

or a friend for a place to stay.

Where is she gonna go for that?

How I got involved with the Lois Riess case

was I saw it on the news and my wife's

"Hey, that's down in Dodge County."

So I kind of volunteered to assist them

and help them with the case, and that's how I got involved.

The first thing we'll always get is a copy of the warrant.

Come to find out there was no warrant in place

for the homicide, but there were warrants

in place for the felony

fraud charges for Lois.

A lot of times, jurisdictions won't

seek a warrant right away in homicide cases because

once a warrant comes out and somebody's apprehended,

there's a speedy trial clock that starts.

And prosecutors,

and-and agencies are afraid of these warrants

and these charges being dismissed

for lack of prosecution because the evidence

and the crime scene and everything

hasn't been fully processed.

People in Blooming Prairie are thinking back and saying,

"I guess they weren't getting along very well.

I remember a time when they were fighting," or,

"When Dave came up to the bar and said

he was mad at Lois."

So there was a lot of things going on

that people now are thinking back, remembering.

I think everybody knew she was a click-off.

What does a click-off mean?

I don't know...

You knew something was there.

You couldn't put your finger on it.

We were sitting at a buddy's place one afternoon

and she comes... I forget what it was.

Maybe she had to go help the Cub Scouts or something.

She came in dressed like a mermaid, like...

like a mermaid with big starflowers on her,

this weird dress.

That's the kind of stuff Lois would do.

That wasn't thought of as...

being crazy, it was Lois doing her thing.

What would Dave have to say about it?

He'd roll his eyes

play right along with it.

I think there was a lot that went on in that household.

Let's say not as serious of stuff.

I think she crowned him with a frying pan one time

when they were young, and things like that, but...

not... never going this far,

never this far, you know?

She shot her husband, he's lying dead in the house,

and she's there going about her daily business.

She's eating, she's sleeping.

For eleven days, she's there

with this decomposing body of her husband.

That to me seems beyond the angry spouse.

There's something else wrong, I think.

What happened?

Because these things don't happen in a vacuum.

Something happened to her.

That's not a forgiveness of what she did,

or a condoning of what she did,

but there has to be an answer to that.

She did not wake up on day and say,

"Feels like a good day to kill my husband."

There's no way.

At that point, I realized that

there had to be more to the story.

Lois?

- This is me. - How's it going today?

I think we might be able to see each other next week.

You're going to head over to that chair right there.

I was the strong one of my family. I think,

if you look in society, the youngest of the children

generally end up being the caregivers.

And that's true to form with me.

With nothing but time on my hands,

I think about that.

How my childhood affected

how I handle myself, my thoughts.

And in my marriage, my mother...

It wasn't a normal household.

My mother had mental health issues.

I'm the youngest of five children,

so by the time I was in school,

it got real bad in the house.

That's when I started leaving, running away.

And I hung out with my girlfriend Kari.

How are you feeling today?

- Good. - I feel a little anxious

about what I'm going to say about Lois.

But, I feel good.

Let's go back to the beginning.

How did the two of you become friends, you and Lois?

We were both equally troublemakers,

but I didn't get in trouble as much as she did.

I got out of a lot of trouble because I was very studious

and I was also studying piano all the time,

so people much left me alone.

I first met Lois, Witte was her maiden name,

in Rochester, Minnesota

in seventh grade in junior high at Kellogg Junior High.

Okay, so here's Kellogg Junior High, 1974-75.

Here's Lois right here.

She looks like a baby.

And then in ninth grade, which was 1977,

this is Lois right here.

And then I'm here.

Somebody defaced my picture.

Bobby Rice.

He was trying to make me laugh, I think.

Her oldest brother is named Butch,

then Kim, then Cindee,

Bob and Lois. There were five.

She had to kind of survive.

She was kind of the survivor.

She had to rely on her own wits.

My mother, she was professionally diagnosed

as being bipolar and schizophrenic behavior.

It was a hoarding house.

Never had a room of my own.

I never had any birthday parties or friends.

No one came to the house

because it was like you see on those programs.

It was a path through everywhere.

Lois gave me a tour of their house once.

To get up to the stairs, you had to kind of crawl

on top of all kinds of clothes.

Brand-new clothes still on the hangers,

and still with their tags on.

And there'd be the same item, multiple colors.

My father was a very successful engineer with IBM,

but to avoid the real-life issues with his wife,

he was rarely home.

It was so bad that, in his own bed,

my parents didn't sleep together the whole time I grew up.

I never had seen them be intimate, or kiss, or anything.

He would sleep in a very small space,

piled with my mother's belongings,

so he was in denial of it.

Her father was an engineer at IBM,

which in addition to the Mayo Clinic,

is the big employer in Rochester, Minnesota.

People who worked at IBM were big shots.

Mother Mayo is queen now but IBM was...

was king.

Her dad was an IBM-er,

so he always had a lot of money,

but he was stingy with it.

They grew up kind of without money.

I think that kind of affected her or shaped her,

because a bunch of doctors' kids

went to that school,

and she seemed to want to be higher class.

I think she wanted to be famous somehow.

I don't know that she wanted this kind of fame.

I'm sure she didn't, but...

She didn't have a home life.

She would stay with different people.

My sister and Lois and I hung out a lot at our house.

I tagged along and that should've never happened.

I got in trouble because of it.

I remember we listened to Heart, Dreamboat Annie all the time,

and that was brand-new then.

One time we were on the phone with her

and I was playing that album, and she wanted to hear it,

so she told us to turn the stereo up,

and I left the phone on the living room floor,

so she could listen.

I thought, "This has got to sound horrible."

Then my brother got home and got mad at us.

- Do you remember that? - No.

Then I started running away, skipping school.

It was hard for me. You can't study in that environment

that I lived in anyway,

so I blew it off and I started...

by the time I was eleven, I started drinking,

and smoking marijuana,

and trying to avoid my real-life issues.

And trying to get out of that environment,

because she was a little bit abusive.

This is March 20th, 1978.

"Dear Kari, guess what happened this last weekend.

Cindee got into a little spat with my mom Sunday afternoon.

Mom slapped her across the face

and Cindee got pissed off.

So she goes into her bizarre, wild, maniac state, right.

And she grits her teeth,

flares her nasty little nostrils

and starts blurting out every gross word she knows.

Cindee looking meanly at my mom goes,

'What ya gonna do to me now? I'm pregnant.'"

Then it says, "Too late for an abortion,

she's already three and a half months along."

"I wonder what's going to happen to our family now."

I always had a real self-confidence about myself.

I think it's because I worked so hard at it to hide

what was going on in my life.

So I always was an extrovert, funny.

I had a big genre of friends, I hung out with everybody.

But I did end up quitting school,

and becoming a worker bee when I was 16.

She had a lot of different jobs,

but she worked at Dayton's out at Apache Mall

in Rochester.

She met Dave at Dayton's.

And he worked there too, as a custodian,

and she said he would come and empty my garbage

like 17 times.

We only dated for two months and then I moved to San Diego.

He was in the Navy.

Three months later, we eloped,

and then three months after that,

I was pregnant with our first child.

And then, after that,

baby was three months old,

I got pregnant with our second child.

If you didn't go to college,

then you got married.

Seems like a rough trade-off.

Isn't it?

"Here you go. Here's your option."

speaking from my own experience,

all of my high school friends were married before I was.

I didn't get married till I was 25, and that was old.

I know. Good Lord.

These are some letters from 1983

when Lois was living out in California.

She says, "I can feel the baby kicking and rolling around

every minute of the day, it seems."

She was pregnant with her daughter Briana.

"He and I are having a wonderful time together.

We have gotten some new furniture

and picking things out for the baby is great.

It makes two people so much closer,

having a baby, I mean.

So life is great with me.

Take care. I love you! Lois."

It's at that point I realized he wasn't

ready to settle down.

I always had to handle the money,

and the chores, and the kids.

And he went to work and would come home.

He was a big thrower.

In the beginning, he didn't touch me physically,

or hurt me physically. He would throw things,

and break things that were important to me like pictures.

I never liked Dave from the get-go.

When I went out to visit her in Oxnard,

she'd asked me to come out to help her with the babies

while he was in Guam, because he was in the Navy,

but then the trip got canceled.

Then it was Lois, me, Dave,

a baby, all packed into this little,

one-bedroom townhome.

It was Thanksgiving.

He said I needed to leave,

because his relatives were coming over.

And Lois didn't want to kick me out.

She would never have done that.

But she would protest up to a point,

and then she would stop.

She wasn't like a brawler type. She would give in.

He was a hothead,

kind of a bully. He was a bully, he took over.

But he insisted that I leave, so I did.

And it was pouring rain, it wasn't lightly raining.

It was pouring rain.

So they gave me a bike and I rode my bike

looking for shelter.

That was one of the worst days of my life.

So I only lasted about two weeks there and then I left.

Divorce didn't ever seem to be an option.

My parents were miserable

my whole life growing up, but yet they never...

never changed anything.

I was scared. I was alone.

I didn't have a support system in California.

But when I got to Minnesota,

it got worse.

Dave and the family moved back to Rochester.

That's when they moved into that house

where she had the day care.

He had a good job with benefits,

and after nursing school,

I opened up a licensed day care and we bought our first house.

It was very lucrative and I found my niche.

We're going to the house that Dave and Lois

lived in here in Rochester.

This home to me is very sentimental

because I was in Lois's day care

since probably even six weeks of age.

She was my aunt, so there was never a hesitation as to

who my childcare provider was going to be and where.

It was my starting point

and actually allowed my mom to feel a lot more comfortable

going to work knowing that she was sending me to Lois's house.

A lot of good memories made at this house.

When I first went to day care,

I was about six weeks old.

Lois took care of me Monday through Friday, 7 to 5.

My mom did hair,

even if I had to stay until 6 or 7, Lois accepted it.

She didn't care.

She wanted to make sure that

everybody was taken care of and felt like family.

And Dave, he worked a lot.

But he was there.

Dave was a phenomenal man.

And he cared about everybody.

He had the most contagious smile

and you could see the happiness.

You could.

We are in front of Lois and Dave's.

This is where I personally was born and raised

outside of my home.

The house looks absolutely nothing like it did in the past.

It looked as if there was a day care,

a day care here.

She always had the meals planned.

The second you walked in the door,

you knew what we were having for lunch.

You smelled the blueberry muffins.

She hand-cooked and hand-made everything.

So we had goulash for lunch, we had hot dish.

We had, not chicken nuggets

and French fries, like a lot of places.

She wasn't a typical day care lady.

She was a day care mom to everybody.

- It was wonderful. - I got a lot out of it.

I loved it. I was good at it.

It was so great. Plus, I was raising my own kids.

Lois had three children,

Bill being the oldest,

Bria being the middle,

and Braden being the youngest.

Those were her pride and joy. They were her everything.

She loved having all those kids around,

babysitting and running a day care.

Pack everybody up

in that vehicle and take them camping, and...

it's the kind of thing that...

You try to squeeze it in

between work and everything else.

And to her, I see her as...

"let's go. That sounds like fun."

I'd get all hung up on,

"Do I have the house clean? Do I have the laundry done?"

Knowing her as such a kind, loving person,

I mean...

So out of character.

Norma, why do you think that she killed her husband?

I'd rather bake cookies...

...than try to figure it out.

By the early '90s,

David got to the point where he couldn't hide

his temperaments anymore.

And then he started doing it in front of the kids,

and then soon it got to be pushing.

And...

hitting.

I have never heard

of physical abuse happening in the home.

Nobody was ever told anything about

domestic violence as far as

hands-on physical abuse in the home.

Lois and Dave came to Blooming Prairie from Rochester

in 2005.

It was about 20 years they spent in Rochester,

which is a long enough time

to feel like you're home

and that's probably where you're gonna stay.

We had the opportunity to buy a farm

in Blooming Prairie and grow wax worms.

There was only two growers in the United States at that point,

so it was very lucrative.

We moved to Blooming Prairie.

I knew it would be hard, and I told all my friends,

"It's a beautiful big house, come on out,"

but nobody wants to drive that 50 minutes

to come out and see it because you have to drive

that 50 minutes back, and that's what happened.

It was very isolating being out there.

She restarted doing day care in Blooming Prairie.

And I know that she did day care out there

for a while, as long as she could.

She had then stopped doing day care

and then became financially dependent upon Dave,

and David was the breadwinner.

He made the money.

Having her own finances for so long,

and then going to being under the control of David

I'm sure caused some issues.

I think taking day care away from her was a big thing.

That made Lois happy.

I was very intimidated by him.

I didn't think I had a way out or could defy him,

because he was a big man,

and he was very, very aggressive.

Lots of verbal abuse,

which I feel is worse than the physical abuse.

Dave, he wouldn't hold back on things.

If you took his barstool, he'd say something.

"Get the fuck out of my barstool."

He wasn't afraid.

He'd say stuff to Lois. He wasn't...

In my eyes, he wasn't mean or anything,

but he wasn't afraid to stand up for himself.

I've heard Dave's control was more,

not about where she went or what she did per se,

but about what she spent, or what,

what she was bringing home, things like that.

"How much did that cost? Where did that come from?"

She told me recently she spent

$3,000 on Christmas one year.

She's so big on holidays and the lights,

and I can see that being something that

they would fight over, you know.

Whereas, in her mind, it would be totally justified.

What did you love about the holidays

and what did it mean to you?

There's obviously a strong strain

of mental illness in this family.

I don't know what it is, I can't diagnose it.

I'm not a psychologist, but there's something amiss

in this family, clearly.

Donna, the mother, was committed in 1998

to the state psychiatric hospital.

The second sister, Cindee, had a history of violence,

getting into fights in public where police had to be called.

Kim, Lois's older sister,

she also was diagnosed with schizophrenia

and bipolar.

Kimberly didn't start to show her illness until

late thirties,

she was having a hard time with it.

And she had needed her second kidney transplant.

And my sister Cindee, bless her soul,

she gave Kim her kidney.

And she stayed with me

and I took care of her for two months

after her transplant,

but then when she healed from that,

her marriage started to stress out.

And she wanted to get a divorce.

And then to do the divorce,

they found and they realized

that she wasn't competent mentally.

How was she not competent mentally?

She was losing train of thought, um...

having problems with her motor skills, even.

So I became her legal guardian.

She was my big sister.

She used to protect me and Cindee

from our mother when she would be,

we were slapped around quite a bit,

and Kimberly was our hero then.

She protected us from our mother.

And this was my turn to give back to her.

What was Lois's relationship like with Kim?

When we were young,

we would party together and go to concerts together.

It was very friendly and fun.

Kim was older and she could buy beer.

Kim had to have a couple kidney transplants over the years,

and Lois would get involved in the care.

And then, I don't know, Kim started going downhill,

and so then Lois had her living at her house with her.

- Kimberly lived with us. - She had her own room.

And I was able to pay myself

to be her guardian.

Lois told me she was

spending $1,200 a month of Kim's money.

She was giving it to herself to cover her expenses,

because she was driving up to the cities a lot

for doctor's appointments and she was using a lot of gas.

And whatever else.

It was a lot to have someone under

your feet every single day.

I remember, in our brand-new house,

I'd let her take a bath, and I was downstairs,

because they were remodeling and doing our basement.

And water was leaking through the ceiling.

She was sitting in the bathtub with the water running

all over the main level, seeping through.

That's how out of it she was.

And it was like having a child,

because I'd have to prepare her meals,

and help her with her hygiene, even.

I don't think she liked it that much.

It was-it was okay, but it was a burden.

Lois told me that Kim wasn't very nice,

and she doesn't feel like she got much credit for it.

Kim would call David out here and there,

on his mood or his attitude, or his demeanor towards Lois.

And I don't think he was very happy about that.

Lois told me that he wanted Lois to cater to him,

so she was spending time taking care of Kim.

That took away from the time she was

taking care of him, so...

Kimberly had things fly right in front of her face

that he was throwing at me.

And she-she said "You ...You should leave.

This is not like you to put up with that crap."

But you know what? You look strong for everybody,

because it's what I was taught to do.

David put his foot down one day.

We were in our bedroom getting ready for bed,

and he had been out, and he was giggling, laughing,

and it was... we were talking loudly,

and she had, she was mad

that we were laughing loudly.

And he said that's... "Enough's enough."

So I found a nice assisted living place for her,

and helped get her put into that.

She had a lot on her plate.

She was taking care of Kim,

she cared for her dad, and she checked up on him,

and made sure he was in a proper home.

Her brother Bob had had a bad motorcycle accident

and broke his back, and Lois had to help take care of him.

Bobby, one of my older brothers,

he's been paralyzed since he was a young man.

He also was having mental health issues

and a lot of depression,

and so I helped sell his house,

and moved him into an assisted living very close to Kimberly's.

And it was both in a town called Owatonna, close to me,

so I could take care of him.

Lois definitely forgot what it was like

to take care of herself.

She didn't think about herself in anything.

She was the most selfless person.

I think I was going into my own depression

at that point.

Menopause was hitting.

I had all these people I was taking care of,

and I wasn't getting any support,

and the only thing that made me feel good was...

gambling.

She played a lot of slot machines, from what I heard.

I don't gamble, wasn't involved in any of that.

I think their casino of choice was Diamond Jo's

right across the Iowa border.

I've only driven by it.

They've got a silo there

and it kind of looks like a barn.

Inside, I hear it's very nice.

Never been in there myself, but...

Did you ever go to Diamond Jo's with them?

What was it like?

Normal.

Dave wasn't a big gambler.

Lois was.

What do you think Lois loved about gambling?

Kind of the high you got from it.

The high you got when you won and you were successful.

That self-security of being able to know that...

"If I win, I have my own money."

And so all of this was,

I don't know if in her eyes, her self-care.

"This is what I do for me. This is what I like."

I once heard a gambler describe it like this.

Walking into that casino and hearing those sounds

is very much like watching your child

on Christmas Day morning being so excited,

and everything around them is wonderful.

And there are no problems,

and all of my cares go away.

And that's what hooks them.

The unhappy marriage, the financial problems.

Everything else kind of disappears,

all the stress and worry of the world

because you're in this trance-like state.

Some people turn to alcohol, some people turn to other drugs.

Some people turn to sex,

some people go to play the slots

to find that escape.

She would be in the high stakes room.

That was her thing.

We're playing for pennies,

and nickels and dollars out here,

but they'll have kind of a special room where

there are higher currency machines.

$10, $20, $50, $100.

I think Lois spent a lot of time there.

Real easy to get in trouble in those rooms.

When a gambler gets into action,

it is very much like

a heroin addict shooting up heroin.

It's that initial dopamine drive.

And they will continue to chase that win

until there's no more left.

My dad had got sick.

And so I was taking care of Kim, Bob, and then my dad,

and became his healthcare directive,

and his power of attorney, and I was by his bedside when

he said, "Loie, do your job.

Enough's enough. I don't want any more surgeries."

And he died shortly after that.

Then I had to go to the bank

and talk with his trust officers.

And my father had

set up everything by percentages.

Each child got a different percentage,

in his eyes, how he valued them.

This is the Last Will and Testament

of William Witte, who was Lois's dad.

And it outlines

everything that he is hoping to give to them.

There are some handwritten notes here

for Kim to get 25% of his estate.

Bob gets 25% as well.

Cindee gets 25%, plus a house.

And then 15% to Lois.

Lois often talked about her upcoming inheritance

in the last ten or 20 years when I would talk to her

on the phone, she would talk about it.

That it was coming and she didn't know

how much she was gonna get, but I think it was

she's "I'm gonna be rich."

Or, "I'm gonna finally have

what I deserved for all the work I did for my family."

And then, in the end, she found out she got 15%.

I know she was stunned.

It hurts to say someone got,

a couple of houses and I got a garage.

It hurts when you're doing all the caring and the nurturing,

and it kind of hurt, it hurt.

How much was it?

It was a few hundred thousand.

It wasn't,

that's a lot to some people, but...

I bought David a car with that,

I bought a skid loader. I bought...

I gifted my children some money and...

got lots of fancy things for my fancy house.

Lois got some money from her father, whatever.

I remember one time

Dave wanted to buy a trailer or something I had,

and I said," here's what you owe me."

He said, "I gotta go to the bank."

"How long is that gonna be?" He says, " the bank of Lois."

Dave got one of those big, fancy fishing boats.

Dave had a nice boat.

It was like metal flake,

red and white.

It was a beautiful boat.

It was, I don't know, $40,000 or something like that.

And then all the toys that they had.

The snowmobiles and the four-wheelers.

She was very proud

of the Cadillac Escalade that they had.

Dad never gave us much money

when we were young,

which gave us a good work ethic.

I have a very good work ethic, thanks to my father.

But it was...

I wanted to get rid of it. It felt like dirty money.

I don't know whether that was because I was angry or...

or what, but,

it's that it was held over our heads our entire life.

If you're giving somebody who is severely

addicted to methamphetamine

or heroin thousands of dollars,

chances are they're not gonna put it in the bank and save it.

They're gonna spend it on what feeds their high.

And that's what Lois did.

When a gambler sits down at a slot machine,

their focus is 100%

on "Will I win?"

"Can I win?" "How can I win?"

They don't feel, they don't see anything around them.

They are 100% focused

to the degree, that at some point,

they may not even get up to go to the bathroom.

Do you have any idea

how much you think she gambled away?

I have no idea.

But let's say thousands.

Let's say more than tens of thousands.

Lois went through all of her inheritance

through spending and mostly through gambling.

When she eliminated all of hers,

she needed to look around,

and once again, develop that plan.

And now she's got access

to all of Kim's inheritance

and anything else she might have.

I think she may have resented Kim.

She knew how much Kim got. I think Kim got,

way more money than Lois did.

Kim had about $200,000

from their father when he passed away.

There was social security.

There was alimony from her divorce.

And it took about a year and a half to two years

for them to say, "Wait a minute,

there's something going on here."

And then for them to find out that she was actually

stealing funds from her sister.

What was it like when the court told you

that they were investigating missing funds

from Kim's account?

That was difficult because

Kim started to complain a lot,

and the doctor said "That's natural, it's normal.

And with this illness,

you're her only person, and she's going to defy you."

And I was investigated constantly,

and they were all null and void.

The state doesn't mess around. They check you out thoroughly.

This is an affidavit of

an adult protection social worker,

and these were the folks who,

when there are concerns or thoughts

about vulnerable adult financial exploitation,

they step in and start the case.

This woman is looking at Lois's activity

in regards to her sister Kim's account,

and it talks about a withdrawal of $20,000

from her sister Kim's account into Lois's own account.

And then Lois wrote a check

for $20,000 to someone who is "thought to be her son."

Kim got to be too much,

but, like I said, I got paid for doing that.

So I started paying myself not correctly.

Like if I was going to the casino,

instead of sitting down

and going to the bank and taking it out,

I'd take it out there,

but I would turn it all in

to the lawyer, and the lawyer said,

"You probably shouldn't be paying yourself

at the casino with the cash card."

And it was still legitimate.

This part of the affidavit says,

"Kimberly Sanchez reports

that she did not give permission

for her money to be spent

at the Diamond Jo Casino

on April 13th, 2015,

in the amount of $3,087.99."

She also stated that on June 22nd, 2015,

there was a check written for $8,000 that was moved.

Kimberly Sanchez did not approve of that.

I did gift each child, I gifted money

because you're able to disperse $15,000 legally.

- But it was Kim's. - But it was Kim's money.

But she always used to do that, though.

Kim was a giver. She never could have children.

My children were her surrogate children

and she always gifted very nice, very generously.

But I do know that was brought to my attention

and that was wrong.

A check that written to Lois's daughter for $5,000,

Kimberly Sanchez did not give permission for.

Another check in the amount of $5,000

to her son Braden,

Kimberly Sanchez did not give permission for.

So all these were all...

they went right down the line. There was not...

there was not a way that Lois was gonna say,

"she told me I could do some things."

"She maybe didn't tell me these but..."

But they asked her every one of them and Kim said no.

I don't think that Lois would have done it

intentionally in a way

that she knew she was putting Kim in harm's way.

I think she did it with intentions of,

"It's here, I have a lot of money."

"I can spend some and try to make it back and...

fill the voids and nobody's gonna know."

She clearly didn't present any sort of documentation

that said what she was doing was legal

despite her claim.

And Lois is on the hook.

The town of Blooming Prairie starting hearing about

Lois embezzling money from her sister, Kim.

It's unbelievable

that somebody from town would do that.

When Lois got caught,

she had to face reality

of all of her friends and family

knowing that she would actually steal

from her sister who was unable to take care of herself.

And that was more than Lois could take.

For the first and only time I've ever thought

about taking my life, I had a suicide attempt.

And it was successful because apparently I had died.

The way I understood it,

Lois, I think she took a bunch of pills.

Dave came home and there she was

sitting on the couch,

either blue or green, or about done for.

Apparently she had overdosed on some medication she'd taken,

and she'd left a suicide note.

And he called 911 and the paramedics came.

He performed CPR on me until they came.

And the helicopter came,

and I woke up on life support.

The Mayo One medevac helicopter

came and landed right next to Lois and Dave's house.

Of course, in Blooming Prairie, that's a big thing.

Mayo One came to Blooming Prairie.

It was wildfire around town.

Everybody's talking about Lois had tried to commit suicide

and what was going on out there.

I know that she spent some time at Generose,

the mental health hospital here in Mayo Clinic.

I tried to create a care package

to bring up to her when she was still in the hospital.

But it wasn't...

- It was hushed. - Why?

I don't know if it was something that

Lois herself was ashamed of it

and didn't want people to know.

Gambling is by far the highest rate

of suicide in any addiction there is.

Why do you think that is?

Because of the severe guilt and shame

that's associated with it.

When someone ingests alcohol or drugs,

we as the outsider

still can use that as an excuse.

When you're not ingesting anything,

what do you use as the excuse?

There isn't anything.

She was treated for almost two weeks

and then came home shortly before Christmas.

I don't know for sure what mental illness

she struggled from.

I would definitely guess some depression,

maybe some bipolar.

But I don't know 100%. I never dug deep into it.

There's a tremendous stigma

with suicide and mental health

in smaller communities.

I think it's been such a taboo subject

for so many years that people don't want to talk about it

and deal with it.

She didn't give any

true indications to anybody,

around her that,

she was battling these demons.

In early 2016, she was removed

as guardian, and her conservatorship

was ended by the courts.

According to the court documents,

during her time as a caregiver to Kim,

she took about $50,000 that didn't belong to her

that was Kim's money.

Kim had inherited

from her father about $200,000.

So when you think about Lois helping herself

to a quarter of that,

that's not a little number.

I was found to

probably mishandle about thirty-some thousand dollars.

$37,000, so they said,

"We see that you've been doing it. We kind of understand

why it was mishandled, so pay it back."

The court ordered that she repay Kim $58,000.

So to offset $20,000 of that,

Lois was going to give Kim

two lots in the cemetery

that were expected to total $20,000.

Then she was to write a check, reimburse her

the remaining $38,000.

And she did that, transferred the property,

or the cemetery lots,

wrote a check for $38,000,

which promptly bounced.

After the check bounced,

and I have to believe that Lois knew it would bounce,

she disappeared and was...

I guess for lack of a better term, missing.

And it was, I guess, dramatic,

or important enough

that Dave reported her missing to law enforcement.

She had taken with her her medications,

and food and water.

Dave was worried that she might be a suicide risk

because she'd attempted suicide before.

But that time, she'd left a note.

This time, she didn't.

She told me she was trying to get away from Dave.

I'm sure she told me that one way or the other.

And she needed somewhere to go for a week,

and the cabin happened to be open,

and Stacia, my daughter, had been wanting

to go to the cabin.

And I... and I have a hard time getting away

to go to the cabin, so I thought, "Oh, perfect."

And so the two of them decided to go.

Watch. Stare at it.

Can I plug my ears?

- Did you see it? - No.

It was beautiful!

Too fucking busy ducking. Jesus.

- Oh - It was beautiful.

As it turned out, she called a few days later,

and all was well. She was visiting a friend.

There was nothing nefarious going on, but that was

sort of a little precursor of the drama

that is I think, beginning to develop.

After the $38,000 check bounced,

that is a good indication

that she was not going to uphold

her end of the plea agreement.

And so they set up another hearing

for Lois to come back in.

She did not attend.

I had gotten sick.

And I didn't go to court that day

to write the check.

Did you have the money to cover it?

No. I had to talk with David about it.

And I did not. I was so scared.

So I didn't go to court that day.

- That's an issue. - You have to go to court.

And the court said,"

You took all this and you have to pay it all back.

And now we are adding on top of that

some other things that you have to pay for,

including the people who are now going to be caring

for your sister, because you didn't do that right.

And we need to get somebody in there

who will take care of her and not steal her money."

The new amount of judgment

was $100,533.93.

And her life got immediately much worse.

I think there was some mad money stuff there.

Dave was, ticked off about that.

They could come in and say,

"you're part of these assets.

Let's take this wax worm farm

that is kind of your husband's baby,

and that he has worked hard at to build up

and to make a name for himself."

And now not only is Lois

kind of embarrassing him,

she's sort of endangering their livelihood as well.

Not Dave's, but her own.

Dave told a friend,

"The worst thing I ever did in my life

was going back that afternoon to the house."

in other words, he regretted showing up

before his wife died from her suicide attempt,

and saving her life.

What was it like then?

"How am I going to pay $100,000 back that...

my husband won't give me?"

And I think that's also when

she started working at Target and stuff,

trying to figure out how she was gonna

pay that back but still feed

the gambling addiction that she created.

She called me one day

and asked me if I could give her some money.

I knew she had to be desperate, because...

I never had money. She was the one with money.

I was surprised she was asking me for money

and I-I didn't have any, and she's

she had something to say about that. Like...

"I can't even count on you to give me some..." You know.

But...

I don't think she told me what it was for,

but I felt bad. I...

I think she... I don't think she wanted $20.

I think she wanted like...

thousands.

Two things here that are so sad

about gambling addiction, I think, is one,

that the person believes the disease

is the only cure available.

They're in debt because they've gambled too much,

and they believe that if they gamble more,

they'll be able to win back the money they've lost

and repay money they've stolen.

And then they feel such guilt and shame that that...

turns inward, the anger turns inward,

and so the gambling addict is much more likely

to harm themselves than others.

It's very unusual for gambling addicts

to go out and harm others.

There's a handful of instances in the last 20 years

of people doing that,

and Lois Riess, I think, is one of those.

It was the perfect storm.

It was years and years of abuse

and years and years of giving and giving,

and neglecting my own mental health.

And my own needs, and it...

I don't know, I think the word psychotic break, I snapped.

Once the police discovered Dave's body

on March 23rd,

they went looking for Lois.

They'd gotten this report that Lois had left the day before.

So they didn't know where she was.

They didn't know where to look, where she might be.

After Lois disappeared,

I reached out to casinos all over the area,

from Iowa to Minnesota, and surrounding.

I wrote them and I was

"Look, my aunt is Lois Riess. She's wanted."

I kind of pleaded with them, "If you see her,

please tell me. Let me know."

And then one actually responded to me,

Diamond Jo's did.

It was a gentleman that worked there.

And he told me,

"Holy shit, I think I talked to her."

He said that she didn't act as if anything was wrong.

Very normal.

But by the time the police showed up,

Lois was gone. There was no sign of her.

She hadn't been returning phone calls from her children,

or opening her son's Snapchats.

Hello.

The police then discovered surveillance video

from the convenience store next door to the casino

where Lois is buying a sandwich.

She changed her voice. Her voice didn't sound the same.

She didn't sound like Lois.

I think so.

She sounds like such a child.

This little girl voice.

And to me, that speaks to her not knowing what to do.

Yup.

For crying out loud, Lois.

It's 35W.

How far south do you want to go?

Get on that road.

Lois was not good with directions.

She wasn't good with maps.

She was not good with finding her way around.

Why she wanted to go south, we didn't know.

We didn't know what the exact connection was.

Was it some vague question

that popped into her mind at the time to throw us off,

or was she actually heading south?

When we were trying to look for family, friends,

people that she would turn to,

she didn't know many people outside of Minnesota,

which we found odd why she would want to head south.

We figured all the people that she could turn to

would be in Minnesota.

I was worried.

Where is she?

Where is she going?

It was sad when I found out

she was on the run.

I thought of all that Heart music,

and played a lot of it, because it...

it was a nostalgic music,

and time.

I'm from Blooming Prairie, Minnesota originally.

Now I reside in Fort Myers Beach, Florida

most of the time.

My husband, Rod, and I are retiring out of our business

from Blooming Prairie, Minnesota,

which is Koster's Car Korner.

Down here, in Fort Myers Beach,

we have a rental business.

We now are up to eight rentals that we rent out.

That's also one of my rental houses there.

And then this is the house we live in

but rent when we're, um...

out for summers visiting the grandkids.

On the morning of April 2nd,

I decided I was going to finish cleaning the garage,

which I had been at for a few days.

Put on my work clothes,

went down, started cleaning, sweeping...

and a car pulled in.

It was a pearl-colored Cadillac Escalade.

And a woman got out.

And she had this long, platinum hair.

She was writing something down

and I stepped forward and said, "Can I help you?"

And she looked up from her paper,

and eye to eye, it was Lois.

So she immediately said,

"Wrong house, wrong house," and looked flustered,

and quick got in her vehicle and drove away.

I ran up the stairs so fast,

my heart pounding,

said to my husband, who was on the phone at the time,

he puts the phone down,

and left the person on that was on,

which I found out was my daughter, and he's...

he's "What is going on with you?"

I said, "Lois! Lois Riess was in our driveway.

Quick, Rod, let's follow her.

I'll dial 911 and you drive, and we'll follow her."

He says, "Honey, she has a gun. We are not following her.

No way! She murdered somebody."

My husband picks up the phone and he says

to my daughter Breauna,

"Breauna, call the local sheriff's department

or police and let them know

that Lois was in our driveway."

So then we decided to dial 911 ourself.

And the 911 operator said,

"ma'am, you're gonna have to call the place

where this all took place,

in Blooming Prairie, Minnesota."

In the end, I finally got the sheriff's department

and got somebody here about a half an hour later.

In the meantime,

I remember we had invited Dave and Lois

in about 2015, maybe,

and had said, "Come on down, you guys,

if you want to come to Florida, you can come stay with us."

So I wonder if she isn't trying to squat

in one of my houses to move in.

She was no brain surgeon, okay?

For the life of me, I don't know how she figured out

how to get to Florida in that Cadillac,

but she did somehow, you know?

So when the police pulled into the driveway,

they pulled it up on their computer screen and said,

"There's not enough here for us to be looking for her,

because it says theft and forgery,

and to extradite her all the way back to Minnesota

for theft and forgery seems like a frivolous thing to do."

Rod and I kept saying, " she murdered her husband."

But they kept saying she's only a person of interest

in her husband's murder.

"It doesn't say here she's wanted for murder."

So we couldn't convince them.

I had the feeling that Lois was still in our area.

So I packed my purse with all my jewelry

and any money that we had,

our checkbooks, anything of value,

and took 'em with, and said to my husband,

"We are not staying in our house tonight.

We're staying at the Lighthouse Resort.

I am scared for my life."

And he kept saying, "honey, she left.

As soon as you made eye contact, she was pointed at the bridge.

She's not here anymore."

Well then, one of the deputies

who was also a friend, met us at Lighthouse Resort,

and he kept saying the same thing.

"You guys made eye contact,

she left, went over the bridge."

I kept saying, "I don't think so."

I didn't find out about the phone call

until the next day when I came into work

that Lois showed up at the Kosters' residence

in Florida.

And no one took action on it. We were wondering,

"What happened? Why wasn't this acted upon?

What information was actually relayed?"

I presume Dodge County Sheriff's Office

knew it was likely Lois Riess

who had already committed a murder.

I presume they figured that out

by the scene at the Riess home.

Why you wouldn't then alert

about anybody you could...

You don't know where she is.

How about you have all of the other millions of eyes

in this country helping you?

Lois kind of vanishes again.

She goes off the grid.

We don't know what she's doing in Florida.

We don't know who she's with, where she's staying.

Friday, we got a knock on the door,

and it was the sheriff's department

saying they had found that '05 Cadillac Escalade

that was Lois's parked down at Bowditch Park,

which is at the end of the island,

maybe a mile away from our house or so.

I received a phone call from a sergeant in our K-9 unit

who located a white-colored Cadillac SUV.

I believe it was an Escalade.

And it was in the parking lot, abandoned,

at Bowditch Point, which is on Fort Myers Beach.

He called me, told me that this was a vehicle

that was possibly used

in a homicide investigation up in Minnesota.

Nice vehicle, actually.

And it belonged to a Lois Riess and her husband.

Why did she leave her car?

What's in her mind?

What's in her head?

Lois seemed to blend into Fort Myers Beach very easily.

A lot of Midwest people here

from Iowa, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota.

Was she desperate for money at that point?

Is she gonna pound on our door in the middle of the night

and hold us at gunpoint?

I was very, very afraid for my husband and my life.

She's obviously capable of doing it again.