WINONA, Minn — Thirty days before she disappeared, 26-year-old Winona mother Maddi Kingsbury visited her friend Lauren DeBois, whom she met years before at Winona State University. Lauren was hospitalized at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester where Maddi worked.
In DeBois' hospital room, Maddi confided in her friend that “everything is bad with Adam at the house,” referring to Adam Fravel, Maddi’s on-again/off-again boyfriend and father of her two children. Maddi said Fravel had been “beating the hell out of her for years” and she asked Lauren for advice on how to get out of the abusive relationship.
Then, Maddi added a cryptic statement: “If anything happens to me, know that Adam did it. I would never leave my kids.”
That conversation is just one piece of information that led Winona police to suspect Fravel’s involvement in Maddi’s disappearance in the early days of the investigation, according to a trove of search warrant affidavits unsealed in recent days.
Maddi’s body was found on a remote property a few miles from Fravel’s parent’s home near Mabel, Minnesota on June 7, 68 days after she was last seen. Fravel is now charged with second-degree intentional murder in Kingsbury's death.
Cadaver dogs alerted
Friends, family, and complete strangers participated in massive ground searches for Maddi Kingsbury in Winona and Fillmore Counties from April 3 through April 8 — the first week the young mother was missing. In a press release on April 8, police announced an end to the large-scale searches and said subsequent searches would be targeted based on specific tips and evidence.
Police then learned that the next day on April 9, Easter Sunday, a neighbor of the Fravel family just north of their property near Mabel captured an image on a trail camera showing Adam Fravel driving a UTV through the property with a shovel in the bed of the Polaris Ranger. The timestamp on the image said 4:51 p.m.
“Fravel was wearing a dark-colored stocking hat, a dark-colored long-sleeved jacket, dark pants and sunglasses. It should be noted that it was warm at the time the picture was taken and the picture from the trail camera has a temperature stamp of 71 degrees,” the search warrant affidavit said.
On April 10, police stopped Fravel while he was driving the UTV and seized it along with the shovel. Investigators brought in two cadaver dogs which both alerted/indicated in the bed of the Polaris Ranger and at the spade of the shovel, according to the search warrant. The document notes that cadaver dogs are “trained to ignore live human scent and animal scent, and only indicate on human remains.”
Police then searched the reporting landowner’s 800-acre uninhabited property, and noted that they found an area of fresh dirt that appeared to be transported from elsewhere and dumped there. But investigators did not find Maddi’s body at that time.
Nearly two months later, an investigator discovered her remains four miles north of that spot.
“I’m not freaking out but everyone else is”
Text message conversations documented in search warrants show Fravel’s frustration with the concern Maddi’s friends and family showed the first day Maddi was missing. Her friend Katie Kolka filed a missing person case with Winona police at 8:20 p.m. on March 31, about 12 hours after Maddi sent her very last text message to her sister Megan and then stopped responding.
An hour after the police report, Fravel texted Kolka’s husband, Sterling Kolka, “Wow that’s a little out of bounds of Katie. It hasn’t even been 24 hrs and I saw her this morning.”
Sterling Kolka responded, “Not really when no one has heard from her most of the day. Apparently no one was able to reach you either to at least know you’ve heard from her. You can’t blame people for being worried man," according to court documents.
Kolka provided screenshots of the text message exchange to police, which included Fravel lamenting, “I’m so confused, she hasn’t been gone for a day yet so I’m not freaking out but everyone else is.”
Maddi was last seen with Fravel at 8:03 a.m. dropping off their two kids at daycare together. At 4:21 p.m., Fravel returned to the daycare alone and picked up the kids.
Daycare provider Brooke Pelowski told police she never called Fravel. He just showed up alone at the regular pickup time. Pelowski told police that a week earlier Maddi told her that she and Adam had just broken up.
When he picked up the kids that day, Pelowski heard Maddi’s daughter ask Fravel, “Where is Mommy?” and Fravel responded, “We are going to Grandma and Grandpa’s.”
Pelowski found that slightly odd because usually if Adam picked up the kids and they asked about their mom, he would say, “Mommy is on her way back from Rochester” or something to reassure them that everything is fine.
Surveillance cameras ripped off the wall
Winona police filed at least 64 search warrants and “trap and trace” tracking warrants in the first two months of the investigation. When they first gained access to the townhome Maddi shared with Fravel on Kerry Drive, police noted that the home “did not look disturbed.”
But when they searched the home more thoroughly with a warrant and began investigating Fravel’s electronic devices, they began to suspect a great deal of tampering and staging, court documents explained.
Investigators determined Fravel’s phone had been wiped and certain tracking applications and location services were disabled after March 30, the day before Maddi disappeared.
“[I] believe that Fravel went to great lengths to conceal the locations that he visited or traveled after March 30, 2023,” an investigator wrote in the search warrant affidavit.
In reviewing remnants of data on the unallocated space on Fravel’s phone, BCA agents assisting with the investigation discovered Fravel had access to a network of Wyze brand surveillance cameras at the Kerry Drive home and his family’s home near Mabel.
By the time Winona police conducted the search warrant at Kerry Drive, they noted several areas where the drywall was torn, appearing something attached to the walls had been pulled off. Upon further investigation, police determined “all cameras were ripped down and their SD cards were missing," the warrants said.
When police conducted a search warrant on Fravel’s family’s Fillmore County property on April 7, they found a computer tower and laptop in a dumpster, as well as a burned computer item in one of the fire pits.
During an interview with police at his parents' property on April 1, an officer noticed six fresh scratches on Fravel’s face and neck, all under the length of an inch, all vertical. After extracting data from Fravel’s phone, police found a web search at 6:51 p.m. on March 31 asking, “Are dog scratches on face dangerous?”
Police note throughout the search warrants that Fravel studied computer science and is very savvy with electronics and technology.
Looking for motive
Text messages between Maddi and her friends reveal that in December, Fravel told her she would “end up like Gabby Petito” if she didn’t learn to “mind.” Petito was a 22-year-old social media influencer who was killed by her fiancé Brian Laundrie while the couple was documenting their cross-country vacation in Aug. 2021. Laundrie then returned to his parents’ home in Florida before killing himself.
In an April 2 interview with police, Fravel admitted being “infatuated” with the Gabby Petito case. He acknowledged making the statement to Maddi but told police he was trying to make a joke, according to a search warrant affidavit.
In an April 1 interview, Fravel told Winona police Maddi had started a relationship with a man named Spencer Sullivan. Police and Maddi’s father David Kingsbury had already spoken to Sullivan, and police noted he “sounded upset and clearly concerned about Madeline.”
Fravel claimed even with his pending separation from Maddi and the new guy in her life, their relationship was cordial.
“I asked if he was upset when Spencer entered Madeline’s life. He said he was hurt when he found out they were hanging out together,” one officer wrote in an affidavit for a warrant to place a tracker on Fravel’s car.
Other statements in the court papers paint a picture of control and anger from Fravel concerning Maddi’s new relationship. Maddi’s mother and sister told police that Fravel would not allow Maddi to speak to Sullivan while he was around and demanded to see all text messages between them.
On March 25, six days before she disappeared, Maddi texted Sullivan, “He knows. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Did you tell him?” Sullivan asked.
“Yes he was asking what was wrong and I can’t keep lying,” Maddi responded.
Prior to that, text messages revealed Maddi and Fravel had been going through couple’s therapy since late 2022 or early 2023.
“It’s been helpful so far since Adam and I just have so much traumatic history,” Maddi wrote to one friend.
“And I committed to therapy and making it work so I’m doing my best,” Maddi wrote to her mom on March 22, nine days before she disappeared.
According to the court papers, on March 29, texts between Maddi and her mom, sister, and friend discuss not feeling well, the possibility of being pregnant and having taken a pregnancy test.
The next day - March 30, the day before the disappearance - Maddi got a new iPhone. In a text conversation documented in a search warrant affidavit, Fravel asked Maddi, “What prompted you to stop location sharing, just wondering?”
“I just switched everything to my new phone. I don’t know if it’s something that would need to be reset or not,” Maddi replied.
Search warrant affidavits also show police looking into Fravel’s finances as a potential motive for murder. Fravel was unemployed, and bank records showed that every deposit into Fravel’s account in the month of March (except for eight cents in interest) was derived from transfers from Maddi.
“The circumstances suggest that Fravel is, or was largely dependent on Kingsbury for financial support, and the prospect of their relationship ending would likely be more distressing to Fravel than if he were not financially dependent on Kingsbury,” an investigator wrote.
The search warrants were all unsealed at once in a court order as the prosecution is exchanging discovery - evidence and information about witnesses - as required before trial.
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