ISANTI COUNTY, Minn. — Isanti County sheriff's officials say new DNA technology and old fashioned persistence have led to the identification of human remains unearthed back in 2003.
Chief Deputy Lisa Lovering met with reporters at a news conference Wednesday and identified the remains as belonging to Donald Rindahl, a New Brighton man who disappeared during the summer of 1970 after telling his family he was leaving and moving to California.
Investigators said the official cause of death for Rindahl is listed as undetermined, but they believe he was a victim of homicide. They hope the identification will jar the memory or weigh on the conscience of someone that knows what happened to Rindahl, and who is responsible.
Lovering said the remains were found in August of 2003 near the intersection of Highway 47 and County Road 5 in Bradford Township. She shared that a landowner was digging as part of a landscaping project and encountered the remains.
The discovery sent investigators on winding road that would span more than 50 years. The human remnants were examined by the Midwest Medical Examiners Office and a forensic anthropologist, who determined they belonged to a Caucasian male 20 to 28 years old, who had been buried for three to 28 years.
Agents from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension obtained a DNA profile and put that and the victim's dental records into a missing persons database, but no matches were found. A facial likeness was constructed and shared with the public but no one came forward with a potential ID.
Over several years Isanti County investigators submitted DNA samples from people they thought could be related to the person, but again, no matches.
In 2019, Lovering herself became involved in the identification effort by submitting new DNA samples, hoping technology improvements and working with noted investigative genetic genealogy consultant Barbara Rae Venter consultant would lead to an answer. They encountered another dead end, but Venter eventually steered the sheriff's department to Othram Inc., a Texas-based lab known for a proprietary technology called Forensic-Grade Genome Sequencing.
Othram built a DNA profile from the skeletal remains, and built a profile that led to a distant relative of the victim. Venter used that person to build a family tree that led to the identification of Rindahl's siblings. Lovering spoke to those siblings, who told her that Donald's Rindahl had been missing since 1970, and that the FBI had been looking for him prior to his disappearance due to involvement with drugs.
DNA samples were taken from Rindahl's siblings, and were found to be a biological match.
"There was disbelief," Lovering shared, describing her phone call with Rindahl's survivors. "It was a random phone call, someone calling about their brother they hadn't seen in 51 years. There was a a lot of shock and disbelief at first, and I think once I got the DNA match it set in a little more but there's still a lot of unanswered questions for them. We don't know who was involved, and we don't know what happened."
Based off information from the family and evidence from the crime scene, it is believed Donald Rindahl was a victim of homicide, although his cause of is currently listed as undetermined. Investigators say he was buried in Isanti County between late 1970 and early 1971 at the age of 22.
"Oftentimes, law enforcement is the voice for the vulnerable or victims that cannot speak. That is very true in this case. We are able to return a loved one home to the family who did not know his whereabouts for 51 years," said Lovering.
Deputy Chief Lovering says investigators believe there are people still alive who know what happened to Rindahl. She appealed to them to contact the sheriff's office at 763-689-2141 or the tip line at 763-691-2426, as well as Crime Stoppers of Minnesota.
Othram is also the DNA lab that earlier this year unraveled the mystery of an unidentified teen found in a ditch in Huntsville, Texas in 1980. Their technology identified her as Sherri Ann Jarvis of Stillwater, a runaway who was just 14 when she was murdered.
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