[slams door]
[woman] The mind is a crazy thing.
[clattering]
[officer] Hello. Step over here, please.
[woman] All I know is it happened.
[officer] Stand right here. Dizzy?
Okay.
[woman]
[officer] Okay. Go this way.
[woman] I wish I could change it.
But I can't.
[officer] We're gonna walk this way
towards the elevator.
[woman] I wasn't getting any praise, or love, or attention.
I was just giving it all out.
I was just in and out of real life, you know?
It was a puzzle I still don't know
how to put together yet.
[elevator bell beeps]
You know, look what happened to me.
Never have I been a criminal or anything.
[officer] Follow me.
- [officer] This door. - [woman] It breaks you down
and you think you don't have any value.
[officer] This way, ma'am.
[woman] But you do.
[officer] Go into that room over there.
[woman] Can have a whole life ahead of you.
[sniffles] But you have to pay for what you did.
I've never given an interview.
[choked up] I hope this is the right thing to do.
[interviewer] Say it again?
I hope this is the right thing to do.
[sniffles]
[dramatic theme music plays]
[dark, dramatic music plays]
[woman 2] The murder of David Riess
in this town
could be likened to people remembering
where they were when the shuttle disaster occurred.
I mean, this is a lifetime memory for these people.
I think the last murder was maybe 30 years before.
I mean, it had been a lifetime ago,
and certainly wasn't this nationwide, um,
event that this became.
It is a wide-reaching story for Blooming Prairie.
It really was, even if it had just been the murder of David.
[dark, dramatic music continues]
[motor rumbling]
[man] I can't tell you the first time I met Dave.
I really don't recall.
He just turned up probably sitting at the local bar,
having a beer, got to talking, and that was that, you know?
I liked him.
Everybody liked Dave.
Dave was fun.
Lois was great too, I mean, they were a fun couple.
[woman 3] Rod and I met Lois and Dave
the year they came to town, I believe that was 2004,
maybe 2005, at the Servicemen's Club.
They just sat down at the bar near us,
and we started chatting, got introduced
as they were the new people in town.
Got to know them well enough that we invited them
to our lake home for a weekend.
We had a great time that weekend.
Lois was very gracious.
She brought steaks for everyone.
She was one to jump up and help do dishes and clean up.
We went pontooning and fishing.
He was all business when it came to fishing.
[upbeat rock music plays]
We did a couple, three tournaments together.
[announcer] We're at Big Stone Lake in Ortonville, Minnesota
for the Cabela's Masters Walleye Circuit.
Well, we just started doing a little trolling here,
uh, pitched the area here all day,
or all morning till right now,
which is 1:00.
So, we just decided to do some trolling
and we just caught our first fish.
[woman 4] Dave fished for fun.
Dave fished for social life,
Dave fished to create bonds with his grandkids,
his kids.
Fishing and his kids and grandkids were his world.
[man 2] When Dave and Lois lived in Rochester,
he had a bait shop.
And then his dream was to open this worm farm.
And so they moved to Blooming Prairie in 2005.
And he opened this worm farm about 50 paces from the house.
And they would harvest these worms
that they sold as bait, and anglers loved them.
[woman 5] I've bought wax worms.
I've fished with wax worms.
They help you catch what you're looking for.
[Scott] They're easy to put on a fish hook.
Three quarters of an inch long.
Nice and fat and juicy.
And that's what Dave was into and it was a good gig for him.
[John] They had a thriving business,
breeding these worms and selling them
to fishermen and women.
The wax worm farm was very successful.
Yeah, they seemed to be sitting just fine money-wise.
Loving family, mother, grandma.
I just know that everybody loved her.
[Samantha] Lois always gave the biggest hugs, kisses.
Dave had the biggest squeeze.
The most contagious smile and laughter.
You know how it is if I start laughing,
and it makes you laugh,
and that makes me laugh harder,
and now you're laughing harder.
And pretty soon, you got those giggles that you can't stop.
And all I gotta do is look at you
and now we're both frigging laughing again.
Yup, that's the way it was with Dave.
I mean, he got on a roll and... [snaps fingers]
Bingo. It was over.
[woman 6] Lois and Dave had the same routine.
They both went down to the bar to drink.
They both went to the bowling.
They were who I wanted to be when I found my husband,
and get married, I wanted that relationship.
[creaking]
[Scott] My buddies sent me some pictures of Dave.
Uh, let's see, this first one-- Oh!
- There's Dave. - What are you guys holding?
[Scott] That's just a stinking ashtray.
Oh, it's full of beer cans.
That's why we were showing it off.
How many beers we had that afternoon.
We were having a good time.
Next one. Oh, that was a good game. That was...
a picture of me and Dave
and I think that was the Minneapolis Miracle.
When we beat the Saints.
And, let's see. The last picture is,
well, we call it the stadium,
and we just got all our friends, somebody made a metal sign and--
[sighs, sniffles]
[choked up] Some of them aren't around anymore.
[mumbles]
I don't pay a lot of attention to that sign,
but now that I took the time...
[sighs] It just gets to me a little bit.
[interviewer] You strike me as somebody that doesn't get
very emotional a lot.
I'm a man. I'm not supposed to be emotional, you know?
[intriguing music plays]
Monday the 12th was payroll day,
and Dave handled the payroll,
but Lois came down
and told one of the head workers there,
"You take care of it, Dave's sick."
Also, Lois did not seem her usual chipper self.
Didn't really ask people how their weekends were,
like she often did, or give hugs to them
as she frequently did. She seemed more
standoffish and distracted.
And so, then, Thursday she came back.
And she kept up the story that Dave was sick,
said she was gonna take him to the doctor on Friday.
[Tess] We were getting little rumors about,
"Something weird is going on.
Dave's not showing up to work."
So everybody starts talking.
People said they'd been texting him,
and he'd been responding to their texts,
but they were different.
The texts were different than usual.
[tense music plays]
Dave wouldn't type, he would talk-text.
So when you got his messages,
they were a bit scrambly.
His text messages weren't matching up
to what he normally talk-text.
There were emojis and different things in his text messages.
Like, what's going on?
[John] The next week came around
and Dave was supposed to go to a fishing tournament
on that Tuesday.
And then on Thursday,
two workers at the worm farm
saw Dave's Cadillac Escalade
pull out of the driveway with Lois in it.
And that's the car that Dave would've taken
to the fishing tournament 'cause it's the car he used
to tow his boat.
That's when they knew...
Dave's not okay.
Dave's not at the fishing tournament.
Lois is leaving in the Escalade. What's going on?
And that's when the business partner
reported to the Dodge County sheriff.
- [suspenseful music plays] - [camera shutter clicks]
Two officers rang the bell, nobody came.
And so, they walked around the house.
What stood out right away was the bathroom window was open
when it was so cold outside.
[John] One of them hoisted the other up
so he could look in the window, and he saw
what looked like it might be a body under a blanket or towel.
[ominous music plays]
So my wife Pam and I were on our way home from Austin.
And as I drove by, I noticed a cop car sitting there.
Something ain't right here, you know?
[Brian] Deputies went into the house.
The PD went into the house.
- [ominous music intensifies] - [camera shutter clicks]
They found Dave in the bathroom.
[John] Dead. His body had already started to decompose.
It was bloated.
So, he'd been there for some time.
Turns out he'd been there 12 days.
[Brian] The door was shut, window was open,
and the vent fan was on.
What happens then is
the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension,
or BCA, is called in
to assist the agencies with their investigations.
[Lindsey] I first heard that something happened to David
by a phone call I got from my mom,
and the phone call came really early in the morning.
Me and my mom don't communicate early in the morning.
We hardly talk on the phone,
so I knew something was going on.
And my mom told me David was found
deceased at home.
[John] He'd been shot two times,
once in the chest, at the heart, and once in the back.
He also had a wound in his wrist.
I'm imagining that he saw that first shot coming
and tried to protect himself.
There was a shell casing from a .22 handgun
that they found underneath him.
But otherwise, there were no shell casings.
Whoever shot him had picked up that casing
and cleaned up, and covered him with a blanket, perhaps,
to keep the smell from drafting out and
opened the window so that it wouldn't smell as bad.
[Brian] There wasn't much there in the way of disorganization
that would indicate someone left
in an extreme hurry.
[camera shutter clicks]
Big news.
Big news, you know?
Everybody's talking about it.
[eerie music plays]
At that point, I wasn't gonna point fingers quite yet,
but pretty easy case here to solve, you know.
Lois is nowhere to be found.
[John] My God. This woman has shot her husband
is the conclusion and gossip.
It's all people can talk about. It's foremost in their minds.
What's going on? What happened, and why?
There was no history with this family at all
from a law enforcement standpoint,
so, no, I don't think anybody saw this coming at all.
[phone ringing]
Thank you for calling Steele County Times. This is Sharon.
[Rick] People really looked to us
for clarity on what happened, what are the facts,
and in this case,
we didn't have a lot of facts that we could give them.
[intriguing music plays]
Dodge County Sheriff's Office is led by
Sheriff Scott Rose,
who was our contact throughout the whole investigation.
And it was very limited
as far as the information that we were getting.
[dramatic music plays]
[Kay] Dodge County Sheriff Scott Rose
has made a practice out of making things difficult
for media, other people.
Dave's body was found
on March 23rd, and there was no doubt
that Dave had been killed by someone else's hand.
It was three days after his body was found
before Dodge County put out any information.
I don't think he needed to run,
screaming with his hair on fire that there'd been a murder
and everybody look for Lois Riess.
I don't think that was the answer either,
but to say nothing?
What did that accomplish?
Nothing.
[music fades]
Lois came into the picture,
I believe, the following week
when the BCA had put out a crime alert
looking for her and her vehicle
as a person of interest in this murder.
[Samantha] I'd worked at the bar that night.
I had just gotten home,
the ten o'clock news had come on,
and the news had said something about
a Blooming Prairie woman,
and I nonchalantly joked that,
"Wouldn't that be crazy if it was Lois?"
And I looked up and it was her driver's license picture on TV.
[news anchor] ...presence at Prairie Wax Worm Farm.
[Samantha] I immediately burst into tears, shaking.
I was-- I was mad.
I was-- I was pissed off.
[dark, dramatic music plays]
So Lois is on the run,
she's at large, no one knows where she is,
and at this point, she's not wanted for murder.
She's simply wanted for theft.
The investigation took a dramatic turn
after Lois was charged with felony theft
for cashing around $10,000 in checks
from David's personal and business accounts.
What had happened, one of the workers has just gone
and made the rounds, and collected payment,
and so he had this stack of checks,
and he noticed a couple were missing.
Lois had taken those,
went to deposit them at the bank,
and then she withdrew funds
from the business account and then left.
[Lindsey] When I learned that she was writing herself checks
from David's business account,
I mean, that right there told me that
she's not doing that to go shopping at the grocery store.
So she had become suspect number one at that point.
[Brian] We knew she'd be looking for either a family member
or a friend for a place to stay.
Where is she gonna go for that?
How I got involved with the Lois Riess case
was I saw it on the news and my wife's like,
"Hey, that's down in Dodge County."
So I kind of volunteered to assist them
and help them with the case, and that's how I got involved.
So, the first thing we'll always get is a copy of the warrant.
Come to find out there was no warrant in place
for the homicide, but there were warrants
in place for the felony
fraud charges for Lois.
[intriguing music plays]
A lot of times, jurisdictions won't
seek a warrant right away in homicide cases 'cause
once a warrant comes out and somebody's apprehended,
there's a speedy trial clock that starts.
And prosecutors,
and-and agencies are afraid of these warrants
and these charges being dismissed
for lack of prosecution because the evidence
and the crime scene and everything
hasn't been fully processed.
People in Blooming Prairie are thinking back and saying,
"I guess they weren't getting along very well.
I remember a time when they were fighting," or,
"When Dave came up to the bar and said
he was mad at Lois."
So there was a lot of things going on
that people now are thinking back, remembering.
I think everybody knew she was a click-off.
[interviewer] What does a click-off mean?
I don't know, just, uh...
[chuckles lightly]
I just-- You knew something was there.
You know, you couldn't put your finger on it.
Yeah, we were sitting at a buddy's place one afternoon
and she comes, I think-- I forget what it was.
Maybe she had to go help the Cub Scouts or something.
She came in dressed like a mermaid, I mean, like...
like a mermaid with big starflowers on her,
and, you know, this weird dress.
That's the kind of stuff Lois would do.
That wasn't-- that wasn't thought of as...
being really crazy, it was just Lois doing her thing.
[interviewer] What would Dave have to say about it?
[laughs] He'd just roll his eyes and just, you know,
play right along with it.
I think there was a lot that went on in that household.
Let's say not as serious of stuff.
I think she crowned him with a frying pan one time
when they were young, and things like that, but...
not-- never going this far,
never this far, you know?
[John] She shot her husband, he's lying dead in the house,
and she's there going about her daily business.
[camera shutter clicks]
She's eating, she's sleeping.
For eleven days, she's there
with this decomposing body of her husband.
That to me seems beyond the angry spouse.
There's something else wrong, I think.
[Kay] What happened?
Because these things don't happen in a vacuum.
Something happened to her.
That's not a forgiveness of what she did,
or a condoning of what she did,
but there has to be an answer to that.
[Lindsey] She did not just wake up on day and say,
"Feels like a good day to kill my husband."
There's no way.
At that point, I realized that
there had to be more to the story.
[automated voice over phone]
[Lois]
[automated voice over phone]
[interviewer] Lois?
[Lois]
[Erin] Yes, this is me. How's it going today?
[Lois]
[Erin] I think we might be able to see each other next week.
[Lois]
[Erin] You're going to head over to that chair right there.
All right.
[Lois] I was the strong one of my family. I think,
if you look in society, the youngest of the children
generally end up being the caregivers.
And that's true to form with me.
Now, with nothing but time on my hands,
um,
I think about that.
How my childhood really affected
how I handle myself, my thoughts.
And in my marriage, I mean, my mother...
It wasn't a normal household.
My mother had mental health issues.
I'm the youngest of five children,
so by the time I was in school,
it got real bad in the house.
That's when I started leaving, running away.
And so, I hung out with my girlfriend Kari.
[piano plays softly]
[piano playing intensifies]
[Erin] How are you feeling today?
[Kari] Pretty good. I feel a little anxious
about what I'm going to say about Lois.
But, yeah, I feel pretty good.
[Erin] Let's go back to the beginning.
How did the two of you become friends, you and Lois?
[Kari] We were both equally troublemakers,
but I didn't get in trouble as much as she did.
I got out of a lot of trouble because I was very studious
and I was also studying piano all the time,
so people pretty much left me alone.
I first met Lois, Witte was her maiden name,
in Rochester, Minnesota
in seventh grade in junior high at Kellogg Junior High.
Okay, so here's Kellogg Junior High, 1974-75.
Here's Lois right here.
She looks like a baby.
And then in ninth grade, which was 1977,
this is Lois right here.
And then I'm here.
Somebody defaced my picture.
[laughs]
Bobby Rice.
He was trying to make me laugh, I think.
[dramatic music plays]
Her oldest brother is named Butch,
then Kim, then Cindee,
Bob and Lois. There were five.
She had to kind of survive.
She was kind of the survivor.
And, you know, she had to rely on her own wits.
[Lois] My mother, she was professionally diagnosed
as being bipolar and schizophrenic behavior.
It was a hoarding house.
Never had a room of my own.
I never had any birthday parties or friends.
No one came to the house
because it was just like you see on those programs.
It was a path through everywhere.
Lois gave me a tour of their house once.
To get up to the stairs, you had to kind of crawl
on top of all kinds of clothes.
Brand-new clothes still on the hangers,
and still with their tags on.
And there'd be like, the same item, multiple colors.
[Lois] My father was a very successful engineer with IBM,
but to avoid the real-life issues with his wife,
he was rarely home.
I mean, it was so bad that, in his own bed,
my parents didn't sleep together the whole time I grew up.
I never had seen them be intimate, or kiss, or anything.
He would sleep in a very small space,
piled with my mother's belongings,
so he was in denial of it.
[John] Her father was an engineer at IBM,
which in addition to the Mayo Clinic,
is the big employer in Rochester, Minnesota.
People who worked at IBM were big shots.
Mother Mayo is queen now but IBM was...
was king.
[Kari] Her dad was an IBM-er,
so he always had a lot of money,
but he was stingy with it.
They grew up kind of without money.
I think that kind of affected her or shaped her,
'cause a bunch of doctors' kids
went to that school,
and she seemed to want to be higher class.
Like, I think she wanted to be famous somehow.
I don't know that she wanted this kind of fame.
I'm sure she didn't, but...
She didn't really have a home life.
She would stay with different people.
My sister and Lois and I hung out a lot at our house.
[woman] I tagged along and that should've never happened.
I got-- I got in trouble because of it.
[Kari laughs]
I remember we listened to Heart, Dreamboat Annie all the time,
and that was brand-new then.
One time we were on the phone with her
and I was playing that album, and she wanted to hear it,
so she told us to turn the stereo up,
and I left the phone on the living room floor,
so she could listen.
I thought, "This has got to sound horrible."
♪ No one knows the lonely one ♪
♪ Whose head's in the clouds ♪
Then my brother got home and got really mad at us.
- Do you remember that? - [Kari] No. [laughs]
Yeah.
[Lois] Then I started running away, skipping school.
It was hard for me. You can't study in that environment
that I lived in anyway,
so I just blew it off and I started--
by the time I was eleven, I started drinking,
and smoking marijuana,
and trying to avoid my real-life issues.
And trying to get out of that environment,
'cause she was a little bit abusive.
This is March 20th, 1978.
"Dear Kari, guess what happened this last weekend.
Cindee got into a little spat with my mom Sunday afternoon.
Mom slapped her across the face
and Cindee got really pissed off.
So she goes into her bizarre, wild, maniac state, right.
And she grits her teeth,
flares her nasty little nostrils
and starts blurting out every gross word she knows.
Cindee looking meanly at my mom goes,
'What ya gonna do to me now? I'm pregnant.'"
Then it says, "Too late for an abortion,
she's already three and a half months along."
Oh, God.
"I wonder what's going to happen to our family now."
I always had a real self-confidence about myself.
I think it's because I worked so hard at it to hide
what was really going on in my life.
So I always was an extrovert, funny.
I had a big genre of friends, I hung out with everybody.
But I did end up quitting school,
and just becoming a worker bee when I was 16.
[Kari] She had a lot of different jobs,
but she worked at Dayton's out at Apache Mall
in Rochester.
She met Dave at Dayton's.
And he worked there too, as a custodian,
and she said he would come and empty my garbage
like 17 times.
We only dated for two months and then I moved to San Diego.
He was in the Navy.
Three months later, we eloped,
and then three months after that,
I was pregnant with our first child.
And then, after that,
baby was three months old,
I got pregnant with our second child.
[Kay] If you didn't go to college,
then yeah, you got married.
[Erin] Seems like a rough trade-off.
Right? [chuckles]
Yeah, "Here you go. Here's your option."
And, just speaking from my own experience,
all of my high school friends were married before I was.
I didn't get married till I was 25, and that was old.
I know. Good Lord.
[Kari] These are some letters from 1983
when Lois was living out in California.
She says, "I can feel the baby kicking and rolling around
every minute of the day, it seems."
She was pregnant with her daughter Briana.
"He and I are having a wonderful time together.
We have gotten some new furniture
and picking things out for the baby is great.
It really makes two people so much closer,
having a baby, I mean.
So life is great with me.
Take care. I love you! Lois."
It's at that point I realized he wasn't really
ready to settle down.
I always had to handle the money,
and the chores, and the kids.
And he just went to work and would come home.
He was a big thrower.
In the beginning, he didn't touch me physically,
or hurt me physically. He would throw things,
and break things that were important to me like pictures.
I never really liked Dave from the get-go.
When I went out to visit her in Oxnard,
she'd asked me to come out to help her with the babies
while he was in Guam, 'cause he was in the Navy,
but then the trip got canceled.
Then it was Lois, me, Dave,
a baby, all packed into this little, like,
one-bedroom townhome.
It was Thanksgiving.
He said I needed to leave,
'cause his relatives were coming over.
And Lois didn't want to kick me out.
She would never have done that.
But she would protest up to a point,
and then she would just stop.
She wasn't like a brawler type. She would just give in.
He was just a hothead,
kind of a bully. He was a bully, he took over.
But he insisted that I leave, so I did.
And it was pouring rain, it wasn't just lightly raining.
It was pouring rain.
So they gave me a bike and I just rode my bike
looking for shelter.
That was one of the worst days of my life.
So I only lasted about two weeks there and then I left.
Divorce just didn't ever seem to be an option.
I mean, my parents were miserable
my whole life growing up, but yet they never...
never changed anything.
I was scared. I was alone.
I didn't have a support system in California.
But when I got to Minnesota,
it just got worse.
[Kari] Dave and the family moved back to Rochester.
That's when they moved into that house
where she had the day care.
[Lois] He had a good job with benefits,
and after nursing school,
I opened up a licensed day care and we bought our first house.
It was very lucrative and I found my niche.
[Lindsey] We're going to the house that Dave and Lois
lived in here in Rochester.
This home to me is very sentimental
because I was in Lois's day care
since probably even six weeks of age.
She was my aunt, so there was never a hesitation as to
who my childcare provider was going to be and where.
It was my starting point
and actually allowed my mom to feel a lot more comfortable
going to work knowing that she was sending me to Lois's house.
Just a lot of good memories made at this house.
[gentle music plays]
[Samantha] When I first went to day care,
I was about six weeks old.
Lois took care of me Monday through Friday, 7 to 5.
My mom did hair, so,
even if I had to stay until 6 or 7, Lois accepted it.
She didn't care.
She just wanted to make sure that
everybody was taken care of and felt like family.
And Dave, he worked a lot.
But he was there.
Dave was a pretty phenomenal man.
And he cared about everybody.
He had the most contagious smile
and you could just see the happiness.
You could.
[Lindsey] So, we are in front of Lois and Dave's.
This is where I personally was born and raised
outside of my home.
The house looks absolutely nothing like it did in the past.
It looked as if there was a day care,
you know, a day care here.
She always had the meals planned.
The second you walked in the door,
you knew what we were having for lunch.
You smelled the blueberry muffins.
She hand-cooked and hand-made everything.
So we had goulash for lunch, we had hot dish.
We had, you know, not chicken nuggets
and French fries, like a lot of places.
She wasn't just a typical day care lady.
She was a day care mom to everybody.
[Lois] It was wonderful. I got a lot out of it.
I loved it. I was good at it.
It was so great. Plus, I was raising my own kids.
[Lindsey] Lois had three children,
Bill being the oldest,
Bria being the middle,
and Braden being the youngest.
Those were her pride and joy. They were her everything.
She loved having all those kids around,
babysitting and running a day care.
- [Kari] Yeah. - Pack everybody up
in that vehicle and take them camping, and...
[sighs] You know, it's the kind of thing that I--
[laughs] It's-- you try to squeeze it in
between work and everything else.
And to her, I see her just as--
"Well, yeah, let's go. That sounds like fun."
I'd get all hung up on,
"Do I have the house clean? Do I have the laundry done?"
[chuckles]
Knowing her as such a really kind, loving person,
- I mean... - Yeah.
- So out of character. - Yeah.
[Erin] Norma, why do you think that she killed her husband?
Oh.
Yeah.
I'd rather bake cookies...
[laughs] ...than try to figure it out.
[Lois] By the early '90s,
David got to the point where he couldn't hide
his temperaments anymore.
And then he started doing it in front of the kids,
and then pretty soon it got to be pushing.
And...
hitting.
I have never heard
of physical abuse happening in the home.
Nobody was ever told anything about
domestic violence as far as
hands-on physical abuse in the home.
[Kay] Lois and Dave came to Blooming Prairie from Rochester
in 2005.
It was about 20 years they spent in Rochester,
which is a long enough time
to feel like you're home
and that's probably where you're gonna stay.
[Lois] Well, we had the opportunity to buy a farm
in Blooming Prairie and grow wax worms.
There was only two growers in the United States at that point,
so it was very lucrative.
And, um, we moved to Blooming Prairie.
I knew it would be hard, and I told all my friends,
"It's a beautiful big house, come on out,"
but nobody wants to drive that 50 minutes
to come out and see it because you have to drive
that 50 minutes back, and that's what happened.
You know, it was very isolating being out there.
[Lindsey] She restarted doing day care in Blooming Prairie.
And I know that she did day care out there
for a while, as long as she could.
[automated voice over phone]
[Lois]
She had then stopped doing day care
and then became financially dependent upon Dave,
and David was the breadwinner.
He made the money.
Having her own finances for so long,
and then going to being under the control of David
I'm sure caused some issues.
I think taking day care away from her was a big thing.
That really made Lois happy.
I was very intimidated by him.
I didn't think I had a way out or could defy him,
because he was a big man,
and he was very, very aggressive.
Lots of verbal abuse,
which I feel is worse than the physical abuse.
[Scott] Dave, he wouldn't hold back on things.
You know, if you took his barstool, he'd say something.
"Get the fuck out of my barstool."
He wasn't afraid.
He'd say stuff to Lois. He wasn't--
In my eyes, he wasn't really mean or anything,
but he wasn't afraid to stand up for himself.
I've just heard Dave's control was more,
not about where she went or what she did per se,
but about what she spent, or what, um,
what she was bringing home, things like that.
"How much did that cost? Where did that come from?"
She told me recently she spent
$3,000 on Christmas one year.
She's so big on holidays and the lights,
and I can see that being something that
they would fight over, you know.
Whereas, in her mind, it would be totally justified.
[Erin] What did you love about the holidays
and what did it mean to you?
[Lois over phone]
[dramatic string music plays]
[John] There's obviously a strong strain
of mental illness in this family.
I don't know what it is, I can't diagnose it.
I'm not a psychologist, but there's something amiss
in this family, clearly.
Donna, the mother, was committed in 1998
to the state psychiatric hospital.
The second sister, Cindee, had a history of violence,
getting into fights in public where police had to be called.
Kim, Lois's older sister,
she also was diagnosed with schizophrenia
and bipolar.
[Lois] Kimberly didn't start to show her illness until
late thirties,
and, um, she was having a hard time with it.
And she had needed her second kidney transplant.
And my sister Cindee, bless her soul,
she gave Kim her kidney.
And she stayed with me
and I took care of her for two months
after her transplant,
but then when she healed from that,
her marriage really started to stress out.
And she wanted to get a divorce.
And then to do the divorce,
they found and they realized
that she wasn't competent mentally.
[Erin] How was she not competent mentally?
She was losing train of thought, um...
having problems with her motor skills, even.
So I became her legal guardian.
She was my big sister.
She used to protect me and Cindee
from our mother when she would be,
um, we were slapped around quite a bit,
and Kimberly was our hero then.
She protected us from our mother.
And this was my turn to give back to her.
[Erin] What was Lois's relationship like with Kim?
Uh, well, when we were young,
we would party together and go to concerts together.
It was very friendly and fun.
Kim was older and she could buy beer.
[laughs]
Kim had to have a couple kidney transplants over the years,
and Lois would get involved in the care.
And then, I don't know, Kim just started going downhill,
and so then Lois had her living at her house with her.
[Lois] Kimberly lived with us. She had her own room.
And I was able to pay myself
to be her guardian.
Lois told me she was
spending $1,200 a month of Kim's money.
She was giving it to herself to cover her expenses,
because she was driving up to the cities a lot
for doctor's appointments and she was using a lot of gas.
And whatever else.
It was a lot to have someone under
your feet every single day.
I remember, in our brand-new house,
I'd let her take a bath, and I was downstairs,
'cause they were remodeling and doing our basement.
And water was leaking through the ceiling.
She was sitting in the bathtub with the water running
all over the main level, seeping through.
That's how out of it she was.
And it was just like having a child,
because I'd have to prepare her meals,
and help her with her hygiene, even.
[Kari] I don't think she liked it that much.
It was-it was okay, but it was a burden.
Lois told me that Kim wasn't very nice,
and she doesn't feel like she got much credit for it.
[Lindsey] Kim would call David out here and there,
on his mood or his attitude, or his demeanor towards Lois.
And I don't think he was very happy about that.
Lois told me that he wanted Lois to cater to him,
so she was spending time taking care of Kim.
That took away from the time she was
taking care of him, so...
Kimberly had things fly right in front of her face
that he was throwing at me.
And she-she just said "You just-- You should leave.
This is just not like you to put up with that crap."
But you know what? You look strong for everybody,
because it's what I was taught to do.
David put his foot down one day.
We were in our bedroom getting ready for bed,
and he had been out, and he was giggling, laughing,
and it was-- we were just talking loudly,
and she had, like, she was really mad
that we were laughing loudly.
And he said that's... "Enough's enough."
So I found a really nice assisted living place for her,
and helped get her put into that.
[Lindsey] She had a lot on her plate.
She was taking care of Kim,
she cared for her dad, and she checked up on him,
and made sure he was in a proper home.
[Kari] Her brother Bob had had a bad motorcycle accident
and broke his back, and Lois had to help take care of him.
[Lois] Bobby, one of my older brothers,
he's been paralyzed since he was a young man.
He also was having mental health issues
and a lot of depression,
and so I helped sell his house,
and moved him into an assisted living very close to Kimberly's.
And it was both in a town called Owatonna, close to me,
so I could take care of him.
Lois definitely forgot what it was like
to take care of herself.
She didn't think about herself in anything.
She was the most selfless person.
[Lois] I think I was going into my own depression
at that point.
Menopause was hitting.
I had all these people I was taking care of,
and I wasn't getting any support,
and the only thing that made me feel good was...
gambling.
[upbeat, gentle music plays]
[slot machines crank and whir]
[Tess] She played a lot of slot machines, from what I heard.
I don't gamble, so, wasn't involved in any of that.
I think their casino of choice was Diamond Jo's
right across the Iowa border.
I've only driven by it.
They've got a silo there
and it kind of looks like a barn.
Inside, I hear it's very nice.
Never been in there myself, but...
[Erin] Did you ever go to Diamond Jo's with them?
- Yeah. Mm-hmm. - [Erin] What was it like?
Normal.
Uh, Dave wasn't a big gambler.
Uh, Lois was.
[Erin] What do you think Lois loved about gambling?
Kind of the high you got from it.
The high you got when you won and you were successful.
That self-security of being able to know that...
"If I win, I have my own money."
And so all of this was just,
I don't know if in her eyes, her self-care.
"This is what I do for me. This is what I like."
[dramatic music plays]
[woman] I once heard a gambler describe it like this.
Walking into that casino and hearing those sounds
is very much like watching your child
on Christmas Day morning being so excited,
and everything around them is wonderful.
And there are no problems,
and all of my cares go away.
And that's what hooks them.
[John] The unhappy marriage, the financial problems.
Everything else kind of disappears,
all the stress and worry of the world
because you're in this trance-like state.
Some people turn to alcohol, some people turn to other drugs.
Some people turn to sex,
some people go to play the slots
to find that escape.
[Scott] She would be in the high stakes room.
That was her thing.
We're playing for pennies,
and nickels and dollars out here,
but they'll have kind of a special room where
there are higher currency machines.
$10, $20, $50, $100.
I think Lois spent a lot of time there.
Yeah, real easy to get in trouble in those rooms.
[Marti] When a gambler gets into action,
it is very much like
a heroin addict shooting up heroin.
It's that initial dopamine drive.
And they will continue to chase that win
until there's no more left.
[music fades]
[Lois] My dad had got sick.
And so I was taking care of Kim, Bob, and then my dad,
and became his healthcare directive,
and his power of attorney, and I was by his bedside when
he said, "Loie, do your job.
Enough's enough. I don't want any more surgeries."
And he died shortly after that.
Then I had to go to the bank
and talk with his trust officers.
And my father had
set up everything by percentages.
Each child got a different percentage,
in his eyes, how he valued them.
[soft, dramatic music plays]
This is the Last Will and Testament
of William Witte, who was Lois's dad.
And it outlines
everything that he is hoping to give to them.
There are some handwritten notes here
for Kim to get 25% of his estate.
Bob gets 25% as well.
Cindee gets 25%, plus a house.
And then 15% to Lois.
Lois often talked about her upcoming inheritance
in the last ten or 20 years when I would talk to her
on the phone, she would talk about it.
That it was coming and she didn't know
how much she was gonna get, but I think it was like,
she's like, "I'm gonna be rich."
Or, like, "I'm gonna finally have
what I deserved for all the work I did for my family."
And then, in the end, she found out she got 15%.
I know she was stunned.
[Lois] It hurts to say someone got, you know,
a couple of houses and I got a garage. [laughs]
It hurts when you're doing all the caring and the nurturing,
and it kind of hurt, it hurt.
[Erin] How much was it?
Oh, it was a few hundred thousand.
It wasn't, you know,
that's a lot to some people, but...
I bought David a car with that,
I bought a skid loader. I bought...
I gifted my children some money and...
got lots of fancy things for my fancy house.
[Scott] Lois got some money from her father, whatever.
I remember one time
Dave wanted to buy a trailer or something I had,
and I said, "Yeah, here's what you owe me."
He said, "I gotta go to the bank."
"How long is that gonna be?" He says, "No, the bank of Lois."
[dramatic music plays]
[Kari] Dave got one of those big, fancy fishing boats.
[Scott] Dave had a really nice boat.
It was like metal flake,
red and white.
It was a beautiful boat.
You know, it was, I don't know, $40,000 or something like that.
And then all the toys that they had.
You know, the snowmobiles and the four-wheelers.
She was very proud
of the Cadillac Escalade that they had.
[Lois] Dad never gave us much money
when we were young,
which gave us a good work ethic.
I have a very good work ethic, thanks to my father.
But it was...
I wanted to get rid of it. It felt like dirty money.
I don't know whether that was because I was angry or...
or what, but,
it's just that it was held over our heads our entire life.
[Lindsey] If you're giving somebody who is severely
addicted to methamphetamine
or heroin thousands of dollars,
chances are they're not gonna put it in the bank and save it.
They're gonna spend it on what feeds their high.
And that's what Lois did.
When a gambler sits down at a slot machine,
their focus is 100%
on "Will I win?"
"Can I win?" "How can I win?"
They don't feel, they don't see anything around them.
They are 100% focused
to the degree, that at some point,
they may not even get up to go to the bathroom.
[Lois]
[Erin] Do you have any idea
how much you think she gambled away?
I have no idea.
But let's just say thousands.
Let's say more than tens of thousands.
Lois went through all of her inheritance
through spending and mostly through gambling.
When she eliminated all of hers,
she needed to look around,
and once again, develop that plan.
And now she's got access
to all of Kim's inheritance
and anything else she might have.
[Kari] I think she may have resented Kim.
She knew how much Kim got. I think Kim got, like,
way more money than Lois did.
[John] Kim had about $200,000
from their father when he passed away.
There was social security.
There was alimony from her divorce.
[Marti] And it took about a year and a half to two years
for them to say, "Wait a minute,
there's something going on here."
And then for them to find out that she was actually
stealing funds from her sister.
[Erin] What was it like when the court told you
that they were investigating missing funds
from Kim's account?
Well, that was difficult because
Kim started to complain a lot,
and the doctor said "That's natural, it's normal.
And with this illness,
you're her only person, and she's going to defy you."
And so, I was investigated constantly,
and they were all null and void.
The state doesn't mess around. They check you out thoroughly.
This is an affidavit of
an adult protection social worker,
and these were the folks who,
when there are concerns or thoughts
about vulnerable adult financial exploitation,
they step in and start the case.
[tense music plays]
This woman is looking at Lois's activity
in regards to her sister Kim's account,
and it talks about a withdrawal of $20,000
from her sister Kim's account into Lois's own account.
And then Lois wrote a check
for $20,000 to someone who is "thought to be her son."
Kim got to be too much,
but, like I said, I got paid for doing that.
So I started paying myself not correctly.
Like if I was going to the casino,
instead of sitting down
and going to the bank and taking it out,
I'd just take it out there,
but I would turn it all in
to the lawyer, and the lawyer said,
"You probably shouldn't be paying yourself
at the casino with the cash card."
And so, it was still legitimate.
[Kay] This part of the affidavit says,
"Kimberly Sanchez reports
that she did not give permission
for her money to be spent
at the Diamond Jo Casino
on April 13th, 2015,
in the amount of $3,087.99."
She also stated that on June 22nd, 2015,
there was a check written for $8,000 that was moved.
Kimberly Sanchez did not approve of that.
I did gift each child, I gifted money
because you're able to disperse $15,000 legally.
- [Erin] But it was Kim's. - But it was Kim's money.
But she always used to do that, though.
Kim was a giver. She never could have children.
My children were her surrogate children
and she always gifted very nice, very generously.
But I do know that was brought to my attention
and that was wrong.
[Kay] A check that written to Lois's daughter for $5,000,
Kimberly Sanchez did not give permission for.
Another check in the amount of $5,000
to her son Braden,
Kimberly Sanchez did not give permission for.
So all these were all--
they went right down the line. There was not--
there was not a way that Lois was gonna say,
"Yeah, she told me I could do some things."
"She maybe didn't tell me these but..."
But they asked her every one of them and Kim said no.
[Lindsey] I don't think that Lois would have done it
intentionally in a way
that she knew she was putting Kim in harm's way.
I think she did it with intentions of,
"It's here, I have a lot of money."
"I can spend some and try to make it back and...
fill the voids and nobody's gonna know."
[Kay] She clearly didn't present any sort of documentation
that said what she was doing was legal
despite her claim.
And so, Lois is on the hook.
[dark, dramatic music plays]
[Tess] The town of Blooming Prairie starting hearing about
Lois embezzling money from her sister, Kim.
It's just unbelievable
that somebody from town would do that.
[Marti] When Lois got caught,
she had to face reality
of all of her friends and family
knowing that she would actually steal
from her sister who was unable to take care of herself.
And that was more than Lois could take.
For the first and only time I've ever thought
about taking my life, I had a suicide attempt.
And it was successful because apparently I had died.
[Scott] The way I understood it,
Lois, I think she took a bunch of pills.
Dave came home and there she was
sitting on the couch,
either blue or green, or about done for.
Apparently she had overdosed on some medication she'd taken,
and she'd left a suicide note.
And he called 911 and the paramedics came.
He performed CPR on me until they came.
And the helicopter came,
and I woke up on life support.
[helicopter whirring]
[Tess] The Mayo One medevac helicopter
came and landed right next to Lois and Dave's house.
Of course, in Blooming Prairie, that's a big thing.
Mayo One came to Blooming Prairie.
It was wildfire around town.
Everybody's talking about Lois had tried to commit suicide
and what was going on out there.
[Lindsey] I know that she spent some time at Generose,
the mental health hospital here in Mayo Clinic.
I tried to create a care package
to bring up to her when she was still in the hospital.
But no, it wasn't really...
- It was hushed. - [Erin] Why?
I don't know if it was something that
Lois herself was ashamed of it
and didn't want people to know.
[Lois]
Gambling is by far the highest rate
of suicide in any addiction there is.
[Erin] Why do you think that is?
Because of the severe guilt and shame
that's associated with it.
When someone ingests alcohol or drugs,
we as the outsider
still can use that as an excuse.
When you're not ingesting anything,
what do you use as the excuse?
There isn't anything.
[John] She was treated for almost two weeks
and then came home shortly before Christmas.
I don't know for sure what mental illness
she struggled from.
I would definitely guess some depression,
maybe some bipolar.
But I don't know 100%. I never dug deep into it.
[Rick] There's a tremendous stigma
with suicide and mental health
in smaller communities.
You know, I think it's been such a taboo subject
for so many years that people don't want to talk about it
and deal with it.
She didn't really give any
true indications to anybody,
you know, around her that,
you know, she was battling these demons.
[dark, dramatic music plays]
[John] In early 2016, she was removed
as guardian, and her conservatorship
was ended by the courts.
[Kay] According to the court documents,
during her time as a caregiver to Kim,
she took about $50,000 that didn't belong to her
that was Kim's money.
Kim had inherited
from her father about $200,000.
So when you think about Lois helping herself
to a quarter of that,
that's not a little number.
[Lois] I was found to
probably mishandle about thirty-some thousand dollars.
$37,000, so they said,
"We see that you've been doing it. We kind of understand
why it was mishandled, so just pay it back."
The court ordered that she repay Kim $58,000.
So to offset $20,000 of that,
Lois was going to give Kim
two lots in the cemetery
that were expected to total $20,000.
Then she was to write a check, reimburse her
the remaining $38,000.
And so, she did that, transferred the property,
or the cemetery lots,
wrote a check for $38,000,
which promptly bounced.
After the check bounced,
and I have to believe that Lois knew it would bounce,
she disappeared and was...
I guess for lack of a better term, missing.
And it was, I guess, dramatic,
or important enough
that Dave reported her missing to law enforcement.
[John] She had taken with her her medications,
and food and water.
Dave was worried that she might be a suicide risk
because she'd attempted suicide before.
But that time, she'd left a note.
This time, she didn't.
She told me she was trying to get away from Dave.
I'm pretty sure she told me that one way or the other.
And she needed somewhere to go for a week,
and the cabin happened to be open,
and Stacia, my daughter, had been wanting
to go to the cabin.
And I-- and I have a hard time getting away
to go to the cabin, so I thought, "Oh, perfect."
And so the two of them decided to go.
[Lois] Okay.
Watch. Stare at it.
- [Stacia] Can I plug my ears? - [fireworks booming]
- [Lois] Did you see it? - [Stacia] No.
[Lois] It was beautiful!
[Stacia] Too fucking busy ducking. Jesus. [laughs]
[Lois] Oh my God. It was beautiful.
[Kay] As it turned out, she called a few days later,
and all was well. She was just visiting a friend.
There was nothing nefarious going on, but that was
just sort of a little precursor of the drama
that is now, I think, beginning to develop.
After the $38,000 check bounced,
that is a pretty good indication
that she was not going to uphold
her end of the plea agreement.
And so they set up another hearing
for Lois to come back in.
She did not attend.
[Lois] I had gotten sick.
And I didn't go to court that day
to write the check.
[Erin] Did you have the money to cover it?
No. I had to talk with David about it.
And I did not. I was so scared.
So I didn't go to court that day.
[Kay] That's an issue. You have to go to court.
And so, the court said, "Well, yeah.
You took all this and you have to pay it all back.
And now we are adding on top of that
some other things that you have to pay for,
including the people who are now going to be caring
for your sister, because you didn't do that right.
And we need to get somebody in there
who will take care of her and not steal her money."
The new amount of judgment
was $100,533.93.
And her life just got immediately much worse.
[somber music plays]
[Scott] I think there was some mad money stuff there.
Dave was really, really ticked off about that.
[Kay] They could come in and say,
"Well, you're part of these assets.
Let's take this wax worm farm
that is kind of your husband's baby,
and that he has worked pretty hard at to build up
and to make a name for himself."
And so, now not only is Lois
kind of embarrassing him,
she's sort of endangering their livelihood as well.
Not just Dave's, but her own.
[John] Dave told a friend,
"The worst thing I ever did in my life
was going back that afternoon to the house."
So, in other words, he regretted showing up
before his wife died from her suicide attempt,
and saving her life.
[Lois]
[Erin] What was it like then?
[Lois]
[Lindsey] "How am I going to pay $100,000 back that...
my husband won't give me?"
And I think that's also when
she started working at Target and stuff,
trying to figure out how she was gonna
pay that back but still feed
the gambling addiction that she created.
[Kari] She called me one day
and asked me if I could give her some money.
I knew she had to be desperate, because... [laughs]
I never had money. She was the one with money.
I was surprised she was asking me for money
and I-I didn't have any, and she's like,
she had something to say about that. You know, like...
"Oh, I can't even count on you to give me some--" You know.
But, uh...
I don't think she told me what it was for,
but I felt bad. I...
I think she-- I don't think she wanted $20.
I think she wanted like...
thousands.
[John] Two things here that are so sad
about gambling addiction, I think, is one,
that the person believes the disease
is the only cure available.
They're in debt because they've gambled too much,
and they believe that if they gamble more,
they'll be able to win back the money they've lost
and repay money they've stolen.
And then they feel such guilt and shame that that...
turns inward, you know, the anger turns inward,
and so the gambling addict is much more likely
to harm themselves than others.
It's very unusual for gambling addicts
to go out and harm others.
There's a handful of instances in the last 20 years
of people doing that,
and Lois Riess, I think, is one of those.
[dark, dramatic music plays]
[Lois]
It was just the perfect storm.
It was just years and years of abuse
and years and years of giving and giving,
and neglecting my own mental health.
And my own needs, and it just...
I don't know, I think the word psychotic break, I just snapped.
[ominous music plays]
[John] Once the police discovered Dave's body
on March 23rd,
they went looking for Lois.
They'd gotten this report that Lois had left the day before.
So they didn't know where she was.
They didn't know where to look, where she might be.
[Lindsey] After Lois disappeared,
I reached out to casinos all over the area,
from Iowa to Minnesota, and surrounding.
I wrote them and I was like,
"Look, my aunt is Lois Riess. She's wanted."
I kind of pleaded with them, "If you see her,
please tell me. Let me know."
And then one actually responded to me,
Diamond Jo's did.
It was a gentleman that worked there.
And he told me,
"Holy shit, I think I just talked to her."
He said that she didn't act as if anything was wrong.
Very normal.
[John] But by the time the police showed up,
Lois was gone. There was no sign of her.
She hadn't been returning phone calls from her children,
or opening her son's Snapchats.
[man] Hello.
[indistinct chatter]
[John] The police then discovered surveillance video
from the convenience store next door to the casino
where Lois is buying a sandwich.
She changed her voice. Her voice didn't sound the same.
She didn't sound like Lois.
[man] I think so.
[John] She sounds like such a child.
This little girl voice.
And to me, that speaks to her just not knowing what to do.
[Lois]
[man] Yup.
For crying out loud, Lois.
It's 35W.
How far south do you want to go?
You know, yeah, get on that road.
[Brian] Lois was not good with directions.
She wasn't good with maps.
She was not good with finding her way around.
Why she wanted to go south, we didn't know.
We didn't know what the exact connection was.
Was it some vague question
that popped into her mind at the time to throw us off,
or was she actually heading south?
[suspenseful music plays]
When we were trying to look for family, friends,
people that she would turn to,
she really didn't know many people outside of Minnesota,
which we found odd why she would want to head south.
We figured all the people that she could turn to
would be in Minnesota.
[Kari] I was worried.
Where is she?
Where is she going?
[Dawn] It was really sad when I found out
she was on the run.
I thought of all that Heart music,
and played a lot of it, 'cause it...
you know, it was a nostalgic music,
and time.
["Dreamboat Annie" by Heart plays]
♪ Heading out this morning ♪
♪ Into the sun ♪
♪ Riding on the diamond waves ♪
♪ Little darlin' one ♪
♪ Oh, Annie, dreamboat Annie ♪
♪ Little ship of dreams ♪
♪ Going down the city sidewalk ♪
♪ Alone... ♪
[Tess] I'm from Blooming Prairie, Minnesota originally.
Now I reside in Fort Myers Beach, Florida
most of the time.
["Dreamboat Annie" by Heart continues]
My husband, Rod, and I are retiring out of our business
from Blooming Prairie, Minnesota,
which is Koster's Car Korner.
Down here, in Fort Myers Beach,
we have a rental business.
So, we now are up to eight rentals that we rent out.
So, that's also one of my rental houses there.
And then this is the house we live in
but rent when we're, um...
out for summers visiting the grandkids.
[tense music plays]
On the morning of April 2nd,
I decided I was going to finish cleaning the garage,
which I had been at for a few days.
Put on my work clothes,
went down, started cleaning, sweeping...
and a car pulled in.
It was a pearl-colored Cadillac Escalade.
And a woman got out.
And she had this long, platinum hair.
She was writing something down
and I stepped forward and said, "Can I help you?"
And she looked up from her paper,
and eye to eye, it was Lois.
So she immediately said,
"Wrong house, wrong house," and looked flustered,
and quick got in her vehicle and drove away.
I ran up the stairs so fast,
my heart just pounding,
said to my husband, who was on the phone at the time,
he puts the phone down,
and left the person on that was on,
which I found out was my daughter, and he's--
he's like, "What is going on with you?"
I said, "Lois! Lois Riess was just in our driveway.
Quick, Rod, let's follow her.
I'll dial 911 and you drive, and we'll follow her."
He says, "Honey, she has a gun. We are not following her.
No way! She murdered somebody."
[suspenseful music plays]
My husband picks up the phone and he says
to my daughter Breauna,
"Breauna, call the local sheriff's department
or police and let them know
that Lois was just in our driveway."
[Tess] So then we decided to just dial 911 ourself.
And the 911 operator said,
"Well, ma'am, you're gonna have to call the place
where this all took place,
in Blooming Prairie, Minnesota."
In the end, I finally got the sheriff's department
and got somebody here about a half an hour later.
In the meantime,
I remember we had invited Dave and Lois
in about 2015, maybe,
and had said, "Come on down, you guys,
if you want to come to Florida, you can come stay with us."
So I wonder if she isn't trying to squat
in one of my houses to move in.
[Scott] She was no brain surgeon, okay?
For the life of me, I don't know how she figured out
how to get to Florida in that Cadillac,
but she did somehow, you know?
[suspenseful music plays]
[Tess] So when the police pulled into the driveway,
they pulled it up on their computer screen and said,
"There's not really enough here for us to be looking for her,
because it says theft and forgery,
and to extradite her all the way back to Minnesota
for theft and forgery seems like a frivolous thing to do."
Rod and I kept saying, "No, she murdered her husband."
But they kept saying she's only a person of interest
in her husband's murder.
"It doesn't say here she's wanted for murder."
So we just couldn't convince them.
I just had the feeling that Lois was still in our area.
And, so I packed my purse with all my jewelry
and any money that we had,
our checkbooks, anything of value,
and took 'em with, and said to my husband,
"We are not staying in our house tonight.
We're staying at the Lighthouse Resort.
I am scared for my life."
And he kept saying, "Oh, honey, she left.
As soon as you made eye contact, she was pointed at the bridge.
She's not here anymore."
Well then, one of the deputies
who was also a friend, met us at Lighthouse Resort,
and he kept saying the same thing.
"You guys made eye contact,
she left, went over the bridge."
I kept saying, "I don't think so."
[Brian] I didn't find out about the phone call
until the next day when I came into work
that Lois showed up at the Kosters' residence
in Florida.
And no one took action on it. We were wondering, like,
"What happened? Why wasn't this acted upon?
What information was actually relayed?"
[Kay] I presume Dodge County Sheriff's Office
knew it was likely Lois Riess
who had already committed a murder.
I presume they figured that out
by the scene at the Riess home.
Why you wouldn't then alert
about anybody you could...
You don't know where she is.
How about you have all of the other millions of eyes
in this country helping you?
[Brian] Lois kind of vanishes again.
She goes off the grid.
We don't know what she's doing in Florida.
We don't know who she's with, where she's staying.
[suspenseful music plays]
[camera shutter clicks]
[Tess] Friday, we got a knock on the door,
and it was the sheriff's department
saying they had found that '05 Cadillac Escalade
that was Lois's parked down at Bowditch Park,
which is at the end of the island,
maybe a mile away from our house or so.
I received a phone call from a sergeant in our K-9 unit
who located a white-colored Cadillac SUV.
I believe it was an Escalade.
And it was in the parking lot, abandoned,
at Bowditch Point, which is on Fort Myers Beach.
He called me, told me that this was a vehicle
that was possibly used
in a homicide investigation up in Minnesota.
Pretty nice vehicle, actually.
And it belonged to a Lois Riess and her husband.
[dark, dramatic music plays]
[Tess] Why did she leave her car?
What's in her mind?
What's in her head?
Lois seemed to blend into Fort Myers Beach very easily.
A lot of Midwest people here
from Iowa, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota.
Was she desperate for money at that point?
Is she gonna pound on our door in the middle of the night
and hold us at gunpoint?
I was very, very afraid for my husband and my life.
She's obviously capable of doing it again.
[dramatic music crescendo]
[soft, dramatic music plays]