60-Year-Old Says His DNA Is in a Lot of Places After 32 Years

Minneapolis, 2015. Cold case detectives sit down with a 60-year-old man and show him a map of a north Minneapolis rail yard. His DNA has already been matched to the 1983 murder of 17-year-old Laurie Mesedahl. On April 2, 1983, a railroad crew found Laurie Mesedahl between two sets of tracks in a rail yard in north Minneapolis. She had gone to a party the night before and was last seen around 3 a.m. on Bryant Avenue. Investigators kept the evidence, and the case went cold. In 1993, DNA from a 1988 attack on another woman matched Darrell Rea, but by then it was too late to charge that case. In 2013, the state crime lab matched DNA from Laurie's case to the same man. In 2015, Sgt. Chris Karakostas of the Minneapolis police cold case unit and an FBI agent interviewed Rea for nearly five hours. He was told he would be charged by Monday at noon; he was released instead. In September 2017, Hennepin County prosecutors charged him with second-degree murder. He waived a jury, and on May 1, 2019, Judge Tamara Garcia found him guilty. Under the 1983 sentencing guidelines, the maximum was 121 months, and the judge gave him the maximum. In April 2024, FOX 9 reported he was set to be released the following month. 0:00 Cold open 0:36 April 1983 1:36 The Sample 2:35 The Room 6:47 A Lot of Places 8:59 Her Shirt 10:20 The Railroad Car 12:41 Monday by Noon 15:12 Roll the Dice 19:19 Verdict Sources: Minneapolis police interview recording (2015) as later published online; Hennepin County Attorney's Office; KARE 11 (2017, 2019); FOX 9 KMSP (2019, 2024); Star Tribune (2017, 2019); CBS/AP (2019). Some outlets spell her first name "Lorri"; this film follows the prosecutors' spelling. Location images: Wikimedia Commons (credits in the pinned comment). Narration is an AI-generated voice. No reenactments. WHAT THIS FILM DOES NOT DO: it does not show crime scene photos (photos shown in the interview room are blurred), it does not describe the assault, and names of other people mentioned on the tape are bleeped. #truecrime #coldcase #interrogation