Start here
The murder of Mindy Morgenstern
Emma Kenny's 76-minute breakdown, the fullest single telling on file.
Watch on YouTubeWhat happened
Mindy Morgenstern was a student at Valley City State University in North Dakota. On September 13, 2006, friends found her dead just inside the door of her off-campus apartment. The state medical examiner determined that she died from a neck wound and asphyxia. Investigators found no sign of forced entry and worked from a narrow afternoon timeline based on her last computer activity and an unanswered phone call. [North Dakota Supreme Court](https://law.justia.com/cases/north-dakota/supreme-court/2009/20070378-1.html)
Moe Maurice Gibbs lived in the same apartment complex and worked as a Barnes County jailer. Testing excluded him from several items in the apartment, including DNA on the knives, gloves, and a hair. Other testing found a substantial quantity of DNA matching Gibbs beneath fingernails on Morgenstern's left hand, and he could not be excluded from a spot on her shirt. The North Dakota Supreme Court's opinion describes both the inculpatory and exclusionary results rather than presenting the forensic evidence as uniformly one-sided. [North Dakota Supreme Court](https://law.justia.com/cases/north-dakota/supreme-court/2009/20070378-1.html)
The first prosecution ended without a unanimous verdict. At a second trial in 2007, a jury deliberated for more than 20 hours across four days before finding Gibbs guilty of murder. Contemporary reporting identified the charge as a Class AA felony. The court imposed life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. [Grand Forks Herald](https://www.grandforksherald.com/newsmd/gibbs-found-guilty-of-murder)
Gibbs appealed on multiple grounds, including the resources available for defense experts, prosecutorial statements, exclusion of a recorded interview, and sufficiency of the evidence. In April 2009, the North Dakota Supreme Court rejected those arguments and affirmed the criminal judgment. InForum likewise reported that the state high court upheld the 2007 conviction. [InForum](https://www.inforum.com/newsmd/nd-supreme-court-upholds-gibbs-murder-conviction)
The final conviction and its affirmance support classifying the case as solved. Gibbs is identified only by the convicted role established in court.
