MN MN - Mary, 15, & Susan Reker, 12, St Cloud, 2 Sept 1974

[Betty P]

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In the past, Steve Notch was 11 years old at the time of the murders and Jeff Baillon's emmy-winning reporting is a rehash of Kupchella's "Mr. X".
Sheriff Soyka said the investigators have never stopped working on those crimes. He said back in 2018 he might reach out to outside agencies for new eyes, And Ramapo College is just that.

IMO, This case may never be solved because If there's No rape, (or sperm) that small degraded submitted sample may not yield results for the IGG team. I believe there is STILL a chance for a confession.

Who would confess? Are their witnesses still living? IIRC, Notch is deceased.

 

[wts1414x5]

The MN Reker Sisters Case of 1974 is mentioned recently- see following link.
Minnesota unsolved cases revisited following arrest in 50-year-old cold case

"While Schlais’ body was discovered in Wisconsin, Miller, a Minnesota resident at the time, confessed he picked Schlais up in Minnesota before stabbing her 15 times and throwing her body in a rural Wisconsin ditch. That qualifies his entry into Minnesota’s DNA database, in addition to Wisconsin’s.""The 1970s was a significant decade for serial killers
— and, therefore, unsolved murders and missing persons cases. "

"Yet Stearns County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Zach Sorenson told Forum News Service Miller is not considered a suspect, largely because he was not known to frequent the St. Cloud area."

“Jon Miller is not a suspect in our homicide investigations currently,” Sorenson said. “We are aware of the Dunn County case and information that has been released. Currently we don’t have any information that puts Miller in our area in 1974, but that could change as information is learned.

The Stearns County Sheriff’s Office does have limited DNA related to the case and, like Dunn County investigators, are working with Ramapo College on unsolved cases."
(IMO, I do not think Miller committed this horrific MN double murder in 1974 of the Reker Sisters. but it is interesting to learn SCSO is working with Ramapo College on unsolved cases.)

Jon Miller was most certainly in the area, or nearby, the weekend of the Reker sisters murder. First, his address in 1974 was in Pine City. Second, the week before his daughter was born in Kanabec hospital (Mora). Miller also worked for the carnival during this time. The one thing that confuses me is if Welch, Miller, and Notch are all in the CODIS database by now, no genealogy is necessary and if there is DNA, it should have matched if it was any of them by now. Either that, or there isn’t any DNA.

 

[Shot tower17]

"One startling confession during Raguse’s interview of Miller was when Miller said that after stabbing Schlais to death and attempting to hide her body, he then traveled to Pine City and threw away the murder weapon (a filet knife)" The news article also says
he (Miller) told Raguse he never did anything like that before or after . . So what's true and what's false from Miller's statements ? See link below.

Ramapo College IGG, as far as its approach to DNA, uses an expanded database to build family trees and narrow down potential suspects, providing leads that traditional CODIS searches cannot, sometimes for culprit(s) not even on the radar.
Link:
https://www.pinecountynews.com/communities/pinecity/news/murder-case-shows-connections-to-pine-city/article_a8e2e6ec-f95b-11ef-8973-73a2b213069b.html