Unsolved on the Iron Range: A murder, a lone suspect, and four decades without closure
For the first time in nearly four decades, investigators are taking a second look at the 1979 death of Theresa Holappa
Danny Spewak Published: 4:37 PM CDT August 20, 2019
TOWER, Minn. — It was Theresa Holappa’s last night in town.
Just days removed from graduation at Tower-Soudan High School in northeastern Minnesota, the 18-year-old middle child of five siblings had decided to trade a life of drama club and school band performances for military duty.
The date was Sunday, June 3, 1979, and in a matter of hours, the sun would rise on Monday morning and it would be time for Theresa’s family to drop her off at the bus station in nearby Virginia so she could leave for the Army. Before getting one last night of sleep at home, though, Theresa had one event left to attend. Her older sister, Kathy Holappa Black, and brother-in-law, Paul, were hosting a baptism at their house for their three-month-old daughter. Theresa was the godmother.
The exact details of the baptism have faded with time, but this much is certain: Theresa left early, both to finish packing her belongings and also to visit her best friend.
She never made it to the friend’s house.
And she never made it home that night, either.
By morning, Theresa’s family knew something was wrong. Then came the Missing Persons report, the waiting, the all-out canvassing and the frantic newspaper headlines. “As each day passes,” the Tower News reported that month, “the family becomes more desperate and discouraged.”
After an excruciating 10-day search, police finally knocked on Kathy and Paul’s front door on June 13, 1979 with the worst possible news: They had found Theresa’s body in the woods, with multiple stab wounds, about a mile south of Tower. It seemed senseless, unfathomable and beyond comprehension, and over the course of 40 years, no plausible motive has ever emerged publicly.
“There is always the question of how, or why,” sister Kathy said, “and nobody has seemed to be able to come up with a reason.”
But there was never, at least in the minds of St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office investigators, a question of who. A year after Theresa’s murder, in 1980, law enforcement informed her family that they had identified a prime suspect — and that this suspect was no longer alive. The investigation, for their purposes, was over. There were no other suspects.
“All the sudden, we’re like: ‘Oh, this is it?’ You know?” Kathy said. “Nothing was solved.”
The Sheriff’s Office classified the investigation as suspended, though not officially closed. It sat idle for the next four decades.
Until some people in town started asking questions again.
Tower is the oldest community on Minnesota’s Iron Range, which in 1979 was booming with an all-time high of 16,000 mining jobs. Theresa Holappa’s death stunned the region as far as Duluth, where the story made the front page of the newspaper. The prime suspect, described by the family as a high school classmate and neighbor, was never identified in press reports at the time and is not being named by KARE 11. The family, to this day, has no idea why he would have wanted to harm Theresa; Kathy sometimes wonders whether the suspect maybe had a “thing” for her sister, or maybe it had something to do with the fact she was leaving for the Army the next day.
“You don’t know,” Kathy said, “what goes through people’s minds.”
Whatever the motivation, the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office quickly began to focus on this prime suspect, which investigators said was the last person to be seen with Theresa alive. Then, a year later, the Sheriff’s Office identified him as the perpetrator in a rape of a 14-year-old girl in 1980; about a half-hour later, police said, the suspect took his own life.
Even in his death and the absence of a trial, family members seem to agree this person committed the crime, though they believe it’s possible others may have been involved in helping. John Holappa, Theresa’s younger brother, wonders aloud all these years later how the suspect managed to escape arrest for months following the murder.
“Was he the prime suspect? If he was, then why the hell wasn’t he in jail?” he said. “That’s a question.”
There is not a single investigator from the Holappa case still on staff at the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office, but Sgt. Steve Borchers said original records from the case indicate the department was close to presenting evidence to a grand jury. That means a potential murder charge was just one step away. The suspect had been interviewed already, Borchers said, but he killed himself before an arrest could be made.
“We don’t have any other information about any other suspects in the investigation,” Borchers said. “We’ve never received any other tips or leads that has led us to deviate from that trail of that being the person involved in this homicide.”
For that reason, the case essentially remained dormant for four decades — all the way until 2019. Several months ago, Theresa’s case began to gain steam again on social media as her old Tower-Soudan High School classmates prepared for a 40-year reunion. Theresa remained on the forefront of their minds, and it prompted the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office to take notice.
That’s when Borchers said the department realized the case had been suspended all that time ago — not closed. Theresa’s murder case was technically the second-oldest unsolved homicide in the county, even though investigators believed without a doubt they knew who did it.
Now, the Sheriff’s Office is determined to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that this prime suspect is indeed the man responsible.
“We have it, in our minds, solved,” Borchers said, “but it would be nice to get the final evidence to finally close this out.”
Investigators are now combing through the original evidence again to see if there’s any DNA that can be submitted, using technology that wasn’t available 40 years ago. There are mountains of case files — Borchers said it could take some time for investigators to go through everything — but the investigation appears to be back on the active docket.
And, just like that, Theresa’s siblings are right back to the year 1979.
Kathy and Paul Black were scrolling through Facebook a few months ago in their living room when they were suddenly startled. There it was, Theresa’s old picture, plastered on social media for all the world to see. They were both speechless.
“It’d been 40 years since we’d heard anything about anything,” Paul said, “and we just thought it was done.”
Apparently not.
Classmates were actively discussing Theresa’s death, in a public forum, for the first time in decades. They were pleading with law enforcement to close the case and solve the murder, and there was chatter that the case had been reopened.
The family had mixed feelings upon learning investigators would be taking a second look at the original evidence.
“It’s just stirring up a lot of stuff and hurt and things in the past that we now have to relive,” Paul said, adding that he’s thankful the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office has decided to take a second look. “I think the feeling is there were others involved even though they didn’t have the evidence to pursue that. So, maybe, things will happen that way to bring people to be accountable for their actions.”
Sgt. Borchers, in a follow-up email to KARE 11, said that the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office would like to “positively confirm that our prime suspect did indeed murder Theresa Holappa. If evidence is confirmed to show this,” he said, “we will then officially close this case.”
So the family will wait — again — to learn the result of the second round of investigation into their sister’s death. Whatever the result, Theresa’s siblings know it won’t bring back the budding Army recruit, the carefree 18-year-old that lost her life before she ever had a chance to really live it.
“I could use some closure, but is the pain gonna go away? No,” John Holappa said. “Of course not.”
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