Belinda VanLith (Queen of Hearts, Minnesota) Part 2

And there were some people close to the cabin she was last known to be at that were looking like promising suspects. But police never had enough evidence to move forward, and her case went cold for almost three decades. When we left off last time, investigators were 28 years into their investigation, with little to show for it. When suddenly, in 2002, a relative came forward to police with a story that they hadn't heard before. And that's where we're picking up. I'm Ashley Flowers and this is the deck.

The relative coming forward was Belinda's second cousin. And she said, one or two years prior, so that would have been like 2000 2001. She was hanging out with her sister talking about their old high school days when her sister brought up an incident that she had never heard before. This sister claimed that she was in the car with their mom and their aunt Carol when suddenly, Aunt Carol started talking about a time. When another relative, a guy named Rodney Minesma, was at her house and very drunkenly appeared to confess to something, he told Carol he'd given Belinda a ride.

He talked about his brother, Ronald, and said it got out of hand and it happened near a cemetery. And I'm going to give you this one more time because I know it's a little hard to follow in audio, basically. Belinda's second cousin was recounting to police what her sister told her one or two years prior, and she is recounting what she overheard her aunt discussing. However, many years before that, Who was recalling an incident from who knows how long ago, where a drunk relative said something sketchy? So what, that's like fourth-hand drunk information?

But investigators were still intrigued, at least enough to start, following this long game of telephone back to the source. And eventually, they did track down the tipster's aunt, Carol, who was willing to talk. She told police that this disturbing conversation in question occurred decades ago, like sometime in the 80s. And it was actually with Ronald, not his brother Rodney, and for context, Rodney and Ronald would have been Belinda's first cousins once removed.

Belinda's grandmother's, sister's kids, anyway. Carol told investigators that Ronald would regularly come over to their house, oftentimes drunk, and that's precisely what happened on this particular evening. Ronald came over, wasted as usual, and told her a tale about him and his friends. Taking a ride on the back roads by a cemetery and seeing Belinda, he said they offered her a ride, she declined, so instead they sat there for about a half hour, just talking to her. When Belinda started to walk away, Ronald implied that they forced her into the car.

Next thing he knew, they were at a cemetery near the Van Lith residence, sitting on gravestones, drinking beer when the girl fell in an open grave. Carol said Ronald just kept rambling and she was trying to get answers from him. But he was too drunk to make any real sense with his answers if he tried giving them at all. He continued ranting, saying things got out of hand and that he remembered waking up the next morning all dirty and bloody. Now it'd be one thing if he just brought this up once.

I mean, it'd be enough for this crime junkie to sound some alarm bells. But say his family thought those were the ravings of a madman, well, they started to think twice when he brought it up again. The second time was shortly after the first, and again, he came over to Carol's place drunk as a skunk and recounted the same story as before. But this time he added a disturbing detail. He said that he took her onto the ground and she, quote-unquote, wanted it. Carol couldn't recall any more details from their conversation. Understandably, so, I mean, this is years later at this point, but it didn't matter.

Investigators had heard enough they knew they had to follow this thread until the end. Police looked into cemeteries in the area to see if there were any open graves at the time of Belinda's disappearance. But nothing was matching up exactly, though. Who knows what those records were like? So they weren't giving up on this tip without a fight. And who better to talk to than the suspect's brother, Rodney? As a reminder? Because we couldn't get an interview with law enforcement, but we were able to get the reports. We have voice actors reading directly from the case file.

Investigators also told Minesma that they had information that his brother, Ronald Minesma, may be involved in Van Lith's disappearance. Rodney Minesma again denied that he had any such knowledge that he and his brother Ronald were involved in her disappearance. Rodney also made the comment that he does not have the best relationship with his brother. And that he would tell investigators if he had any such knowledge of the disappearance.

So investigators knew it was time to go right to the end of their thread. Ronald was willing to be interviewed, but he was hardly an open book, instead, he was all over the place. He talked about his time in the service and mentioned that Belinda was a distant cousin and he heard that she was in a local lake. But that's about all.

Police were able to get out of him. Here's what the investigator wrote in his report. This was a very difficult interview. Every time we would bring up anything to do with the Van Liff case, he would quickly change the subject. He was very adamant.

He didn't know what happened to her. He didn't make any incriminating statements to his sisters and other relatives, but not once did he deny killing, meeting or harming her. He had an excuse or story for everything, but just didn't want to talk about Van Liff. Not long after that unproductive conversation with Ronald, police got a call from a guy who re-solidified their suspicions.

This guy, Dan, reached out to discuss, quote-unquote, some deep s from back in the day. Dan had been arrested on a probation violation and was looking for a reduced sentence in exchange for information, particularly information he had on his girlfriend's uncle, Ronald Meinsma. Dan said that he and his girlfriend were hanging out with Ronald in June of 2003, around the time that police had interviewed Ronald. When all of a sudden, Ronald started talking about places to hide a body in a nearby lake, and how a swamp was the perfect place to dispose of a body because it'd be hidden at the bottom. Ronald then brought up the Jacob Wetterling case, an infamous missing person case from 1989. Jacob was an 11-year-old boy who vanished from his small Minnesota town, about 30 miles away from where Belinda went missing. Which, incidentally, Ronald was also being investigated for, though Dan didn't know about that or the Van Lith case when Ronald was saying all of this to him.

Dan only found out a few days later when other relatives filled him in, and that's when he decided to bring this information to investigators.

Police gave Dan two tape recorders to use in case Ronald came over to his house again, talking about either the Wetterling case or the Van Lith case. But as far as I know, no recordings were ever made, or at least none that resulted in any meaningful movement for Belinda's case. So it just sat there again until 2008, when, for some unknown reason, investigators decided it was time to pick things back up again. And this time, they wanted to start with one of the closest people to the investigation, none other than the man Belinda was house sitting for when she vanished. Duane Cornwell. But in detectives research to find what Duane was up to, they learned that they were far too late. Duane had passed away in 2004..

Because of this, investigator's sights turned to a man who was still living and who seemed to be an even more likely suspect Tim Crosby.

This time around, police weren't just going to do a cute little interview with Tim and call it a day, they weren't messing around. He was out of prison by this point, so from May to November of 2008, police leaned into him hard. They were conducting surveillance of his place, following him to work and doing regular trash pulls at his residence. Now, if you're a detective, you probably know that Tim Crosby is not the type of person typically when police do trash pulls. It's because they're either looking for something incriminating or they want to find usable suspect DNA to test a sample against something that they already have.

Are you curious what that something is, where they got it and when? Same, I'll give you what I've got. According to the reports, during these trash pulls, they did find a shirt with DNA on it, so they sent that off to the BCA lab to be tested against some male DNA that they recovered from.

Redacted That part of the report is redacted. And because our multiple requests for an interview were ignored by the Wright County Sheriff's Office, I truly don't have answers on what that redacted item might be. Our best guess is that it's DNA from potentially another case that Tim is a suspect in. Because we know that he was on the radar for another murder at the time, the murder of Martha Ann Bacon. She was a 31-year-old woman from Minneapolis who went missing in 1993 and whose remains were later found in Wright County.

But the thing is, if that's the case, I don't know why it'd be documented in Belinda's case file, and for Belinda's case. I don't see how they could have suspect DNA. Unless somehow they were able to tie those women's clothes that they found in the park back in 74 to Belinda, the ones that were found at the same park. Tim took his kidnapped sexual assault victim to in December of that year.

But you'd think that if they were able to get anything DNA-wise off of it or connect it to Belinda, definitively, that there would be something about that. In the case file, and maybe there is there's more redacted information in the file, and maybe it's under those black boxes. I don't know. I know both are a stretch, but if not one of those two things, I'm truly not sure what the goal was here.

Because Belinda's a missing person. It's not like they're able to take fingernail scrapings or collect DNA in the manner that they normally do for homicide cases. And since it was the 70s when she disappeared, I find it a little unlikely that investigators collected any DNA from Duane's place, especially since they initially classified her as a runaway. So unfortunately, this is a piece that I can't tie up in a neat little bow for you. All I know is they collected DNA and they compare it to something, and then I don't know what happened after that.

I do know that. Based on newspaper reports we've gathered, Martha's case is still unsolved to this day. And there is no public mention of Tim ever officially being tied to it. We only know that he was a suspect because that is listed in Belinda's case file. Now I do want to take a moment to mention something else. Police found in their trash pulls at Tim's place and brace yourself, they found a whole long brown ponytail.

Like it looked like it had been chopped off someone's head. Investigators weren't sure whose hair it was. I'm not sure if they ever tried to test it for DNA to see if they could pinpoint its owner or not. But as far as I know, they've never solved that mystery of where or who that ponytail came from. Again, I don't know if it has anything to do with Belinda's case.

I know that it's just very, very weird. And it left me with a lot of questions, like, did any victim of Tim's have their hair chopped off? It's a question that I'm almost posing to you, our listeners, in case anyone out there was a victim of Tim's or knew Tim Crosby. So while police were conducting all this surveillance and rifling through Tim's garbage, they were cooking up an idea. They wanted to conduct a search of Tim's parents old cabin, the one right across the street from Duane's property.

You know, not initially when it happened, but now, you know, however many years later, whatever. So, in May of 2009, they reached out to the current homeowner to ask for permission. And that guy was like, Yeah, go for it. He said he'd bought the place from Tim's family back in 2006 and that most of the items in the residence stayed with the place when he bought it. It was kind of part of their agreement.

Sounds like it was a as-is situation. But he said that after he purchased the house, he allowed Tim to come collect some personal family belongings. However, at some point, he caught Tim trying to remove a bunch of property that was supposed to stay with the house, like a handsaw and a couple of fishing poles. When the new owner confronted Tim about this, he claimed that he didn't know the rules. Even though the new owner knew that he knew their purchase agreement, still, Tim took off with the items in question.

As far as I know, the owner never got them back. After that interaction. This guy was sketched out by Tim. So he welcomed investigators to come take a look around, and with the help of the F.BI, investigators did just that. They scoured the cabin inside and out using ALS alternate light source, which is a fancy tool law enforcement uses to find potential evidence, like body fluids, fibers, trace material, etc.

Basically, whatever illuminates with this substance, they swab that area and get it tested. It's really super cool. I'll put some links about it in the blog post for this episode. So, using this method, police found a surprising amount of potential evidence, particularly in the shed on the property. And that's where they also found an old sickle, which is a farm tool, like a curved blade with a short handle.

And they found a broken metal angle post, both of which illuminated with the ALS. Also collected as evidence were strands of rope that were tied in different knot styles and a 2x4 piece of wood with screws. Police asked the homeowner if any of these items were his, and he said no. They must have been left behind by the Crosby family, so investigators sent those items off for testing. While waiting for those results to come back, investigators decided to search another property of potential importance to the investigation.

That farm where Tim got stuck in the manure pile again, with the help of the FBI. Detectives attempted to search the area where the manure pile would have been, but they didn't have much luck finding anything useful. Largely due to the overgrown grass and trees covering the area that made it impossible to dig or search for shallow graves. Investigators discussed at the time having cadaver dogs come in and search the area. And maybe the dogs could search the Crosby cabin and even Duane's old place while they were at it. But the wait list for using cadaver dogs was about a mile long. And that's if you could get it approved. But their dismay didn't last for long because soon enough they got word from the BCA lab.

The presence of blood was found on the sickle, also on the metal angle post and the two-by-four from the Crosby family's old shed. So they collected samples from each of those to be tested for DNA. And I can only imagine the excitement police must have felt when they got that letter from the BCA. I mean, the potential of finding DNA that could be connected to at that point a 35-year-old case is absolutely wild. So no doubt police were hopeful that this was the beginning of the end for them.

If Belinda's DNA was on any of those items, that would be tough for Tim to explain away. For months, investigators waited with bated breath to hear what kind of DNA profile they were working with from these items. But when news finally came, all their hopes were dashed. The lab said that there was no profile, no DNA was obtained from the test.

And it seems like this news must have knocked the wind out of investigators sails. Because after that everything just kind of stops and it doesn't get picked up again for another few years. Not until 2013, when police randomly got a bee in their bonnet about Dwayne again. And since they couldn't interview him, they began reaching out to those closest to him, including Dottie, who would have been Dwayne's third ex-wife, who was surprised to hear from law enforcement, but willing to talk, she laid out for detectives the reality of who Dwayne was an abusive, violent P.O..s with a short temper.

She married him eight years after Belinda went missing, but Dwayne still talked about it. Often he would explain to her what he thought happened. He theorized that Belinda was sitting on the porch and an unsavory character showed up, causing Belinda to run into the house. He figured she must have run into the bedroom and been assaulted there. Dwayne also made comments about Belinda being pretty on different occasions, but Dottie didn't have anything concrete to offer, like a confession or anything like that.

Just some comments that you could view as sketchy or just weird, depending on how you want to look at it. She told police that Dwayne told her he'd been cleared as a suspect because of a call with his mom. Like, somehow he was able to prove that he had been on the phone with his mother somewhere else at the time of Belinda's disappearance. So maybe that is what led to him being eliminated from the suspect list back in the day. But is that true? I don't actually know, because shortly after that interview with her, police learned that perhaps Dottie hadn't told the entire truth.

Remember the Jacob Wetterling case I mentioned earlier? Well? Dwayne was also looked at as a suspect in that case, and Dottie, along with Dwayne's other ex-wives, were interviewed back in 1989 and 1990 by that investigative agency, the Stearns County Sheriff's Office. And for some reason, investigators in Wright County were just now seeing the supplementary reports from those interviews, which were pretty damning. In an interview with Dwayne's second wife, Marjorie, she said she'd spoken with Dottie and that Dottie claimed Dwayne had been going on about a shallow grave in a shed.

Dottie supposedly said that might have been where Dwayne buried the body of the girl. Now, obviously, Dottie hadn't mentioned anything about that in her previous interview with Wright County investigators. So they decided to pay her another visit. When confronted with what Marjorie had said all those years ago, Dottie seemed surprised. She said she vaguely remembered a comment about a shallow grave, but didn't recall who said it or what they meant by it. Now, given this was a nearly 40-year-old case, by this point, police weren't exactly in a position to turn away potential new developments.

So they immediately reached out to the current owners of Dwayne's old property and asked permission to dig up the dirt floor of their shed. Which was more of like this one-stall garage. And, believe it or not, the current owners said, Sure, knock yourselves out. Police got to work digging out the dirt floor of the shed, but before even breaking ground, they found something ominous.

There, on the ground, atop the dirt, was a small bone and a small, multicolored beaded necklace. They knew they had to be so, so careful here. They would dig out a scoop of dirt, put it on a tarp and sift through it one scoop at a time. Tedious work, especially with the multiple feet of dirt that they were digging through. But they ended up finding one more item to collect as evidence an old piece of cloth with a string attached to it.

I'll put a picture of it in the blog post for this episode now. Of all of these items they collected as evidence, I can't find anything in the source material saying that they sent anything off for testing or what happened after. Was the bone human? Was there anything found on the necklace or the rope? I want to assume no, but I've seen more egregious oversights before, where everyone assumes something's been done or documented when, really, it's just fallen through the cracks.

I think a lot of answers to a lot of cold cases can be found in the cracks of an investigation if the right person looks hard enough. So ultimately, they didn't find Belinda in that shed or garage, and things were quiet after that. Until the following spring, when investigators got word that their application to the FBI for cadaver dogs was approved. Which meant that they could finally complete that thorough search of the farm where Tim's vehicle had gotten stuck in that manure pile. The search was completed that May with two certified FBI victim recovery dogs. And, to everyone's disappointment, nothing. No hits for possible human remains, but investigators didn't end their search for remains there at the farm.

Like I mentioned earlier, investigators also wanted to take the dogs to the Crosby Cabin and Dwayne's old place to see if they'd hit anywhere. Problem was when police reached out to the current owner of Dwayne's property. They didn't hear back. They tried calling, going in person knocking, but they never got through to the owner. They eventually learned that he was off the grid, like out of the country, so they couldn't get his consent to go through with a canine search. And it doesn't appear that investigators were interested in drafting up a search warrant. So instead, they turned their focus to the Crosby family's old cabin, which they were able to get permission to search.

They walked the cadaver dogs all around the property and right by the back deck, one of the dogs alerted. It appeared she was interested in the area right below the deck, like the basement storage area. So investigators took the dog down there and it alerted again, this time to a specific corner. Police collected a core sample from that area and had the other canine walk by it to see what that dog would do. And wouldn't you know it? that dog alerted, too.

Two independent alerts for human remains. This was huge. Investigators wasted no time. They got their search warrant and started digging. for two whole days. They dug and dug around this deck and storage area.

They even had to remove the entire deck at one point. But in all that digging, they found no evidence of human remains. Investigators could not understand why their dogs, both of them independently, would alert to this particular area and then they find nothing. So police wanted to try one more technique before calling it quits. GPR ground penetrating radar.

They got a GPR technician out their stat to scan the floor of the basement and the storage area, but it was more of the same. He couldn't find any disturbances in the soil beneath the basement floor, indicating that there was no grave there. After that disappointing search, things went cold again, but Belinda's case would heat back up.

When Jacob Wetterling's case got solved in 2016, a man named Danny Heinrich confessed to the kidnap and murder of Jacob Wetterling. Forever putting to bed the theory that Ronald or Dwayne had anything to do with his murder. It made people in the community hopeful for the first time in a long time, hopeful not just that Jacob would get justice, but that maybe it was never too late for other cold cases, too. And it was Belinda's name that people in Monticello brought up most.

Then I got a lot of questions from people, Hey, are they looking into your nieces? Is anything happening with that? Things were happening slowly but surely. Police went back to the drawing board with Belinda's case and determined that there was one man. Perhaps their most promising suspect, who they hadn't spoken to in far too long. Tim Crosby. Police tracked him down and though he was hesitant to talk, he eventually agreed to answer some questions.

At this point, he was 63 years old and he told investigators that he didn't remember much. He recalled Belinda coming to his cabin and asking about his sister Sue, but he said she left after that. He said he didn't see her at all after their short conversation, and he didn't recall anything fishy happening in the neighborhood. But admittedly, he didn't have much on his mind, aside from, as he put it, his cow-sh-t covered vehicle. And that was that Tim couldn't or wouldn't provide any more information about Belinda.

And that is where the records we have on Belinda's case. Stop leaving me, and I'm sure you, with so many questions. But we're not the only ones. Belinda's family has them, too. Last year, Belinda's siblings decided it was time to take action after being contacted by a crime reporter with The Vault podcast.

The reporter and host of the podcast, Tricia Tarinskas, was wanting to pursue a story on Belinda's case, and the family liked the idea of getting more exposure. But the reporter wasn't having any luck getting the Wright County Sheriff's Office to participate or play ball with a FOIA request, which same? It took us forever to get the files that finally were provided, so Belinda's family decided they were done, waiting for answers. I mean, at this point, it'd been 50 years. They'd watched their father, mother, even a brother, pass away without knowing what happened.

And in all that time, it hasn't just been reporters that the sheriff's office isn't forthcoming with the family. Wasn't getting any cooperation either. And listen, law enforcement doesn't have to be answering everyone's questions. Belinda's case was technically still an active investigation. They can be closed off if they want to.

But her siblings were tired of it, and with a journalist wanting to put the investigation under a microscope, they did something kind of unconventional. Belinda's siblings requested that the sheriff's office officially close their sister's case. This would open up the case for FOIAS. So that any member of the public, like a reporter with the Vault, or, you know, another certain true crime podcast, or even the siblings themselves, could obtain records without a fight. And, believe it or not, the sheriff's office agreed.

In April of 2023, Belinda's nearly 50-year-old case was officially labeled closed unresolved. And not long after, that is when we were able to obtain the thousand-plus pages of records and start piecing things together. Obviously, though, I'm still left with a lot of questions. Like, remember those women's clothes that Tim made his kidnapping sexual assault victim wear back in December of 74? were those kept?

If so, were they ever tested for DNA? I mean, heck, what size were they? what size was Belinda? And speaking of evidence, now that Belinda's case is technically closed? Does the sheriff's office have to keep any of the evidence that they have, or are they permitted to discard it or destroy it?

We tried asking an investigator we know in another state, and he said he didn't know. Closed unresolved isn't even an option for them. So if you're an agency with that designation, please reach out to us. We want to know what the possibilities are with evidence, though many questions that we have may never get answered. We are grateful for the opportunity to tell Belinda's story.

I'm sure her siblings decision to officially and permanently close their sister's case wasn't easy, but hopefully that choice pays off. And now that Belinda's story is out there and gaining traction in the media, I hope that someone out there does the right thing and comes forward. Maybe that person who holds the last piece of the puzzle is you or someone you know.

If you know anything about the disappearance or murder of Belinda Van Lith in 1974, please call Crime Stoppers of Minnesota at 1-800-222-tips. That's 1-800-222-8477. You can also submit a tip online through Crime Stoppers. I'll put a link to that in the show notes and the blog post. Belinda was 5'5, 110 pounds, with blue eyes and light brown hair.

She was last seen wearing a leather-strapped necklace with a troll pendant. She would be 66 years old today.

The Deck is an audiochuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast..com. So what do you think, Chuck, do you approve? I approve?