(This post is mostly about my attempts to correspond with Steven Hagenah, retired forensic investigator from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, but there is also a short section about 2/3 of the way down (look for the red font) relating my attempt to get Joseph Couture's prison address from the Minnesota Department of Corrections. None of these boys are giving out ANY info on this case!) Thanks for reading.
Below
(indented) are two cut-and-pastes of articles that were published in the Duluth
News Tribune on October 31, 2005, and on June 16, 2012.
The
first article is “It’s All About the Evidence”, and the second is an
announcement, “Arrest made in 2000 killing of Cloquet woman”.
Both
articles contain quotes from a Mr. Steve Hagenah who at the time of the first
article, was the “senior special agent with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal
Apprehension in Bemidji” (Minnesota), and according to the second article,
“worked years on the case”.
Both
articles contain this 2005 quote from Mr. Hagenah: “We spent thousands of
man-hours over there working that. It has the air of solvability to it, but
we’re missing some key elements: witnesses or biological evidence that would be
useful to us.”
As mentioned a few weeks back in a previous blog post, I (Lloyd Wagner) didn’t always read the
Duluth newspapers – and especially not in 2005, when I was first in Laos, where
I barely had an Internet connection at all.
So,
I first read the articles mentioning Mr. Hagenah just a month and a half ago,
or so, on December 30, 2014, from the 63 pages of published articles on the
Langenbrunner case that I belatedly received from the data-bank at the Duluth
Public Library.
Naturally,
I rather excitedly came to the conclusion that Steve is the person with whom I
want to speak! Who else would know better whether all (or even any) of the
information I had repeatedly supplied to the St. Louis County Sheriff’s office
had actually been submitted for forensic testing, or had been -- as I suspected
and still suspect -- “deep-sixed” and deliberately WITHHELD from the
forensic investigators – which would CERTAINLY explain what Mr. Hagenah had
complained about in 2005, that they were “missing some key elements: witnesses
or biological evidence that would be useful to us.”
Or,
alternatively, if Mr. Hagenah’s office HAD already received the info I’d
provided, such as (1) the description of the tire that was on the
Nissan, (2) the description of the shoes I had seen, and (most
importantly, I’d think) (3) DNA samples from Thomas J. Hinze, from the
Nissan car, and from the woodstove in which Mr. Hinze had burned clothes the
week of the murder … and IF none of this info fit the actual forensic info from
the case, I expected that Mr. Hagenah could very easily just inform me:
“Yes,
Mr. Wagner, (1) we DID receive your description of the tire that was on
your car, and it was a totally different make/size of tire from the tracks that
we had, and (2) Yes, Mr. Wagner, we DID receive the description of the
shoes that you saw shortly before the murder, and we’re sorry, but tracks from
New Balance shoes size 11 or 12 actually DO tell the shoe color, and yes, as
Sally Burns told you, those shoes were white, not black as the size 11 or 12
New Balance shoes that you saw, and (3) Yes, Mr. Wagner, we DID receive
DNA information from Thomas J. Hinze, and we’re sorry, but it did NOT match the
DNA info from the Langenbrunner case. And Yes, Mr. Wagner, we DID check out the
Nissan car Mr. Hinze admitted driving the week of the murder, but no, there was
no DNA from Trina Langenbrunner in the car, and Yes, Mr. Wagner, we did check
out the ashes in the woodstove that Mr. Hinze burned clothes in before leaving
town shortly after the murder, but no, Mr. Wagner, there was nothing in the
ashes, either.”
Getting
this information from the actual forensic investigator in the case would be
like getting it straight from the proverbial horse’s mouth!
Not
that I’d necessarily believe it, either, of course, even if Mr. Hagenah would
tell me so, since that would contradict what Mr. Ron Taggart from the Public
Defender’s Office has already told me – that his office had NOT received any
such info about Tom Hinze.
I
also assumed that a forensic investigator such as Mr. Hagenah, who had spent
thousands of hours on the case, would want to read of my further research into
such things as the weird “arson fire” that the St. Louis County investigators
found out about through “breaking a jailhouse code” and had solved (!) before any of the local media had even heard about the house burning, let alone reported anything about it. The arson fire that left 2 dogs “missing and
presumed dead” (leaving no skeletons behind), and that burned a house and 2
vehicles to a total loss (while causing less than $8,600 worth of damage). That
weird “arson fire”.
I
also assumed that a forensic investigator such as Mr. Hagenah, who had spent
many years and thousands of hours on the case, would want to ensure that actual
forensic evidence he had investigated did indeed match the actual forensic
evidence used to convict Mr. Couture of murder.
What
I immediately did then, was to do a search for a “Steve Hagenah” in “Bemidji
Minnesota”, at first on Facebook. When I did find this name matched to this
location, I also checked for approximate age – Mr. Hagenah was reported to be
54 years old in 2005, so I figured that would make him around 63 or 64 years
old now.
Well,
yes, there IS a Steve Hagenah from Bemidji on Facebook, and yes, he does look
to be about the right age, and yes, he does have friends in law enforcement,
including in the MBCA, so I immediately sent him a message sending him the link
to my blog about the case and asking him if his office had or hadn’t received
any of my information.
Mr.
Hagenah’s Facebook page says there has not been any recent activity, however,
so I wasn’t too surprised to get no answer. Maybe he is one of the few Facebook
members who never ever check their messages. I sent a follow-up message a few
days later, and again I received no answer.
My
next step then, was to search on Google for Steven Hagenah of Bemidji,
Minnesota. Again, I easily found that name matching that location. I also found
definitely that the Steven Hagenah from Bemidji, Minnesota is retired from the
Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, and is now employed as an instructor in Law Enforcement at the Leech Lake Tribal College, and also in a Law
Enforcement training program in Grand Forks, North Dakota. ***(note on 8-3-2018 -- Steve Hagenah is now deceased, the info in these links has changed, but were correct at the date first published)***
Mr.
Hagenah’s email address is listed at Leech Lake Tribal College, too, and
everything certainly seems current. I would guess, at least, that the Leech
Lake Tribal College website keeps their contact information up-to-date.
So,
I have sent Mr. Hagenah 3 emails, so far, that I assume have reached him, dated
[Jan 14, Jan 27, and Jan 28]……… I would assume that any employee of a college must be required to check his
email at least once in awhile – I know that I have to, here at the University in
Thailand. However, as is par for the course in this case, evidently Mr. Hagenah
chooses not to comment on the case, not to tell me I’ve got the wrong Mr.
Hagenah, not to tell me yes, no, or any damned thing at all about whether the
MBCA forensic investigators ever received my testimony on the case.
I
even thought of emailing someone else there at the Tribal College to ask for
confirmation of Mr. Hagenah’s current status of employment, but decided that
would be unnecessary – and silly, besides. Surely if he wasn’t employed there
anymore, they’d take his name down. So I’ve dropped the idea of contacting the
college regarding any of this – for now, at least.
I have
sent Mr. Hagenah one last email dated [Feb 12]…… to which I am attaching this text as a
doc. file, for him to comment on, if he wishes. If I don’t get any answer from
him by the beginning of next week, I will proceed to post this whole thing as a
blog post which will be dated as it’s posted. Then I will decide how to proceed
from there.
Comments in red font from Lloyd Wagner on 2-18-15: I did finally receive an answer from Mr. Hagenah, which I would characterize as a "smoke screen". He refused to answer my questions, pretended to not understand why I'm interested in the case, and said I'm going "down a blind alley" because of "misinformation" which he will not detail. I will post the entire emails and further comments in my next post, coming soon, I hope.
I've also finally received an answer from the Department of Corrections as to the whereabouts of Joseph Couture, whom I considered writing to in prison regarding his obviously false confession to murder. Here, very briefly, is the very brief answer I received on that question, dated February 17.
"Couture is serving his sentence in another state. The location is not disclosed per DOC policy."
Below that non-answer was my original email requesting Couture's address, with his prisoner number (which is already right on the Internet under the DOC locator, and already posted as a screen shot on this blog post). However, I cannot seem to copy and paste my original message -- it just comes up blank when I try to "paste". Anyway, beneath my original request was the following official notice:
"This email is intended to be read only by the intended recipient. This
email may be legally privileged or protected from disclosure by law. If
you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination of this email or
any attachments is strictly prohibited, and you should refrain from
reading this email or examining any attachments. If you received this
email in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete this
email and any attachments."
So, please all, forget that you read this (wink wink), and don't even imagine that there's a coverup here. I guess the Minnesota DOC has taken lessons from Pinochet's Chile now, and is "disappearing" its prisoners to undisclosed locations.They said earlier it was by "Couture's own request" to serve his sentence out of state, so I suppose that must be true, if they said so, eh? I'm sure Couture wouldn't want anybody asking him whether his "defense team" had informed him that ANOTHER person had been seen wearing size 11 or 12 New Balance shoes less than a week before the murder.
And then forbidding people to tell anybody else that it's their policy to not tell anybody where the prisoners are, either. Un-effing real.
Well, the old News Tribune articles are posted below, if you'd like to read about a totally different Steven Hagenah than the one you will meet in the next post. In the articles below, (posted for educational purposes) it makes it sound as though Mr. Hagenah was/is as stubborn as a badger in his unrelenting quest for "evidence". Not so. Not so.
Thanks
for reading. Please stay tuned.
IT'S ALL
ABOUT THE EVIDENCE - THE MINNESOTA BUREAU OF CRIMINAL APPREHENSION USES SCIENCE
TO EXTRACT INFORMATION FROM UNLIKELY PLACES
--------------------------------------------------
Duluth News-Tribune (MN)-October 31, 2005
Readability: 10-12 grade level (Lexile: 1170L)
Author: Mark Stodghill/News Tribune Staff Writer
Steve Hagenah has worked two of the most high-profile missing person and murder
cases that turned cold in Northland history -- the June 14, 2003, disappearance
of 5-year-old Leanna Warner from Chisholm and the Sept. 3, 2000, murder of
Trina Langenbrunner of Cloquet.
Hagenah is the senior special agent with the
Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in Bemidji.
If a body is
found in rural northern Minnesota, it's likely that Hagenah and his team of
forensic scientists will be called to assist the local police agency in the
investigation.
The 32-year BCA veteran is not a member of his
agency's Cold Case unit based in St. Paul, but he knows how it operates and he
personally knows how to work a case to exhaustion.
Hagenah, 54, pointed to 23 notebooks stacked across
filing cabinets in his office. Every one of them is devoted to the Leanna Warner
case.
``I've gone through the entire Warner file three
times from cover to cover, looking for something I overlooked or maybe didn't
do,'' he said.
Hagenah said seeking a useful piece of information
sometimes can be like trying to pick a snowflake out of a blizzard.
``The most critical time in the life of a piece of
evidence is that nanosecond before a police officer reaches down and picks it
up,'' Hagenah said. ``If he does it right, it's useful. If he doesn't do it
right, it's just an interesting piece of stuff that you found because it
doesn't have any value as evidence.''
The crime lab in Bemidji has four sections:
Biology/DNA: This section allows forensic
scientists to identify blood, semen, saliva and other body fluids. DNA testing
allows the resident scientist to determine possible sources of the fluids.
Evidence from cold cases sometimes yields tiny
amounts of DNA that can be traced to a suspect. Before the late 1980s, DNA
evidence was not commonly accepted in U.S. courts.
Drug chemistry: Scientists in this section analyze
and identify suspected controlled substances.
Latent fingerprints: This section compares unknown
latent prints -- those invisible to the naked eye -- with suspect prints. The
information is entered into a fingerprint identification network that can be
accessed by other law enforcement agencies.
Ever-evolving techniques for revealing hidden
fingerprints offer hope of uncovering new evidence in cold cases.
Firearms and tool marks: Examines whether a
questioned bullet or cartridge case was fired from a suspect firearm. The
section also maintains a database to use firearms evidence to link crime
scenes.
A recovered
firearm can be test-fired, the cartridge and projectile recovered and compared
on the computerized worldwide Integrated Ballistics Identification System.
Nat Pearlson, a forensic scientist specializing in
firearms and tool-mark examinations and comparison, explained the value of the
system.
``If somebody in Cass Lake brings in cartridges
from a drive-by shooting and, say, Duluth has a drive-by and police find a gun,
I can test-fire the gun and enter the image (of the cartridges) in the system
and it can be seen if the cases are related. It's a pretty good investigative
tool to link up cases that you didn't know were related to each other.''
But as Hagenah points out, you don't always have to
be a scientist to solve a crime.
``I had one guy convinced that we had a spy
satellite hovering over him at the time of the crime and we were waiting for
NASA to enhance the photo so we could ID him,'' Hagenah said. ``I told him it
would really be better if he told me what he did and he told me. He said, `Wow.
You guys are amazing.' ''
Murder cases are never closed. Investigators are
always trying to breathe life into a cold murder case, Hagenah said.
Langenbrunner's stabbed body was discovered off a
rural road in southern St. Louis County. The 33-year-old was the mother of
three.
``Based on circumstances, I think it's highly
likely it was a stranger or somebody who interacted with Trina just in that
moment,'' Hagenah said. ``That makes it difficult. We spent thousands of
man-hours over there working that. It has the air of solvability to it, but
we're missing some key elements: witnesses or biological evidence that would be
useful to us.''
A $100,000 reward has been offered for information
leading to the arrest and conviction of Langenbrunner's killer. A $25,000
reward has been offered for the arrest and conviction of the person responsible
for Leanna Warner's disappearance.
Rewards seldom solve cases, Hagenah said. If the
reward is appealing enough, some people will make up information. Some will
call police with a list of suspects and if one of their suspects is convicted
they will call and ask for the reward.
``Every once in a while a reward will pry loose
some helpful information, but it's pretty rare,'' he said. ``The reality is
that most folks step up to the plate if they have information way before a
reward is offered.''
Hagenah is not a fan of television shows like CSI.
He thinks most of the shows that depict forensic science cases are
``schlocky.'' He said there's a nugget of truth to what they do.
``They don't follow many of the rules that we have
to follow,'' he said. ``The state doesn't give us Humvees to go out to crime
scenes.
``What I find fascinating is crime-scene
investigators will have these extremely candid conversations in front of
witnesses and the two investigators will look at each other and make some
significant hypotheses about the crime. It makes for good TV. It just makes for
horrible crime-scene work.''
MARK
STODGHILL reports on legal affairs and public safety. He can be reached
weekdays at (218) 723-5333 or by e-mail at mstodghill@duluthnews.com.
PHOTOS: Clint Austin/News Tribune and mug of Steve
Hagenah, Trina
Langenbrunner,
Leanna Warner
1. Forensic
scientist Nat Pearlson, a crime scene coordinator, demonstrates the use of a
comparison microscope to compare spent shell casings from a firearm at the
Bemidji office of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
2. A
microscope used to compare spent shell casings to a specific firearm reveals on
this split screen that they are a match, with identical markings.
Edition: FINALSection: FRONTPage: 01A
Dateline: BEMIDJIRecord
Number: 0510310058Copyright (c) 2005 Duluth News-Tribune
Arrest made in 2000 killing of
Cloquet woman - A convicted sex offender from Cloquet has been arrested for a
murder 12 years ago considered one of the most high-profile cold cases in the Northland,
the St. Louis County Sheriff’s office said late Friday night.
--------------------------------------------------
Duluth News Tribune (MN)-June 16, 2012
Readability: 9-12 grade level (Lexile: 1130L)
Author: Mike Creger, Duluth News Tribune
A convicted sex offender from Cloquet has
been arrested for a murder 12 years ago considered one of the most high-profile
cold cases in the Northland, the St. Louis County Sheriff’s office said late
Friday night.
Joseph John Couture was arrested in the Sept. 3,
2000, stabbing death of Trina Langenbrunner of Cloquet. Her body was discovered
off a rural road in southern St. Louis County. The 33-year-old was the mother
of three.
Couture, 41, is a Level 3 sex offender and is being
held in St. Louis County Jail on charges of second-degree murder and
second-degree criminal sexual conduct, authorities said.
Couture was arrested in 1993 on felony burglary
charges and faced various misdemeanor charges before a conviction for
second-degree sexual conduct in 2006. He had been charged with 11 counts of
first-degree sexual conduct with a person younger than 13 before pleading to
the final charge.
The sheriff’s office provided no other information
on Friday afternoon’s arrest.
Steve Hagenah, a retired senior special agent with
the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in Bemidji, worked for years on
the case and was thrilled to hear about an arrest Friday night.
“I know some people who busted their chops on that
case,” he said. “It just goes to show that you never give up.”
He said that while many of the people who worked on
the case early on are now retired, investigators wear a cold case “like an
albatross around your neck,” he said.
“You never stop thinking about it.”
In a 2005 interview, Hagenah talked about how
difficult cold cases can be to close.
“Based on circumstances, I think it’s highly likely
it was a stranger or somebody who interacted with Trina just in that moment,”
Hagenah said at the time. “That makes it difficult. We spent thousands of
man-hours over there working that. It has the air of solvability to it, but
we’re missing some key elements: witnesses or biological evidence that would be
useful to us.”
There was a $100,000 reward offered for information
leading to the arrest and conviction of Langenbrunner’s killer.
Langenbrunner’s family asked for privacy Friday
night after receiving news of the arrest.
Authorities said Langenbrunner was hitchhiking to
Grand Rapids to see her estranged husband the night of her death. Sex or
robbery was believed to be the killer’s initial motivation.
Trina
Langenbrunner
Joseph John Couture
Section: News
Record Number: 7bbd26babd74dc0599ef8f659ad55c2623fbdceCopyright (c) 2012 Duluth
News Tribune
