December 24, 2024
The murder of a twenty-five year old hitchhiker who was stabbed to death in 1974 has been solved.
On February 15, 1974, the body of a woman was found along a rural road in southeastern Dunn County, Minnesota.
The victim was female, Caucasian, with hazel eyes and light brown hair. She was approximately 5' 10 and 130lbs.
She was clad in a maroon coloured turtleneck sweater and blue denim trousers.
A motorist driving along Elk Creek Lake told police he witnessed what he believed was an altercation between the driver of a gold/orange compact car and a passenger along a dead-end road between county highways E and EE.
The witness said they watched, to see the driver toss a body into a nearby ditch around 408th Avenue and 990th Street, and haphazardly cover it with snow, before getting back into his vehicle and fleeing the scene.
The witness told police he left the scene and returned to confirm what he had seen, before contacting them.
A description and composite sketch of the suspect was printed in local newspapers at the time, describing the killer as a white male, between 23 - 25 years old, approximately six foot tall, and 180lbs, with a moustache and medium length brown hair.
Autopsy revealed that the victim had been stabbed multiple times in her neck, abdomen, and back, by a thin knife. Her nose was broken, and her face and body were bruised.
She fought hard against her killer.
The time of death was estimated to be around noon on the day the body was found. The witness watched the suspect dispose of the body at approximately 1:25pm.
Police at the time believed she had been killed elsewhere and was later driven to the rural road and disposed of.
Tire impressions left behind by the suspects’ vehicle were partially covered up by fresh snowfall. An orange and black winter hat containing hair, was found near the scene.
The victim had blood under her fingernails, as well as on her clothing. Samples and evidence were preserved but did not aid officers in identifying a suspect at the time.
The victim had a phone number on her person belonging to a restaurant in Minneapolis. Police contacted the restaurant and learned the identity of the victim: Mary Kathleen Schlais.
She was later officially identified by her brother, Don Schlais, who viewed her body.
Mary L. Schlais was born November 11, 1949. She was 25 at the time of her murder.
She had two siblings and was raised in Champlin, Minnesota.
She had been hitchhiking from Minneapolis to Madison and Chicago for an art show.
They discovered that she had left her shared apartment in the Kenwood area of Minneapolis at around 10:30am on the day of her murder. Her roommate, Judith, said Mary had been carrying a cardboard sign that said “Madison” on it.
The long tan winter coat and purse she had been wearing that day were never recovered.
Schlais had graduated cum laude from, the University of Minesota and had received several scholarships.
For a period of time, she had also studied overseas, and was fluent in German and Danish. She had also been learning Japanese.
Before she was brutally murdered, Schlais had an art exhibit at the Women's Institute for Social Change at the YMCA, featuring drawings, paintings, and sculptures of women.
Following Schlais’ murder, the May 08, 1974 edition of The Minneapolis Star newspaper printed a short piece on an Arts Masquerade Ball that was being held at the Firehouse on 1501 4th Street South to raise funds for a student art gallery in Johnson Hall University, Minnesota. The Gallery was named in memory of Mary K. Schlais.
Although police had several leads to go on, the case went cold.
Over the next five decades, tips and leads trickled in, and police conducted interviews with persons of interest, but it wasn't until the investigators with Dunn County Sheriff’s Office teamed up with a team of Genetic Genealogists, based at Ramapo College in Mahwah, New Jersey, that the case was finally solved, leading to the arrest of an elderly man named Jon K. Miller in Owatonna, MN. Miller, now 84, had walked free for fifty years after violently murdering Mary K. Schlais in the spring of 1974. Over the years, many of the investigators who worked on the case have since passed away and did not get to see the murder resolved.
Miller, who is currently in custody in Steele County, Minnesota, is awaiting extradition to Wisconsin.
Dunn County Sheriff, Kevin Bygd, said at a conference pertaining to the arrest that it was the first time the Dunn County Sheriff’s Office had used genetic genealogy to solve a cold case. He added: “This is a huge victory for our agency."
Sheriff Bygd praised the college,
Emphasising that agencies can spend thousands of dollars sending DNA samples from evidence to private labs around the county in an attempt to solve cold cases.
He added: “we had a college very willing to step up and help us with this process,”
Although they had the killers DNA, the investigation was not straight forward as it could have been, as Miller was adopted.
Bygd stated that Miller had admitted to his “involvement” in Schlais death, and was described as “fairly calm” when questioned by detectives.
According to probable cause documents, Miller initially denied knowledge of the crime, however, when he was presented with DNA evidence, finally admitted that he had picked Schlais up.
Miller told the interviewing officer that he had "asked for sexual contact," which Schlais denied, and said that when the victim leaned forward, he snatched a knife that he kept stored in the visor above the passenger seat, and stabbed the victim in the back.
He explained that he pulled off the highway in order to dispose of the body, and as he was covering the victim with snow, another car approached in the vicinity, and he drove off, spooked.
He also confirmed that the hat found at the crime scene was his and that he must have lost it.
Don Schlais, who identified his sister's body, said of the arrest: "They've (the investigators) kept the faith over virtually generations of law enforcement people."
In late November, Miller made his first appearance in the Mary Schlais murder trial. He was brought into the courtroom in a wheel chair and was clad in an orange prison jumpsuit and white undershirt, sporting a grey receding hair and a long white beard. He has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of Mary Schlais.
A $1,000,000 cash bond has been set.
January 14, 2025
