A night out with good friends...
The music was nice and low that night.
Everybody was out on the dance floor.
Takes a very dark turn.
She was... was gone.
We didn't know if she was being held someplace
or if she had actually been a victim of a homicide.
The suspects are endless
as the evidence leads investigators
down a chilling path.
The bedding appeared to have bloodstains on them.
I could see hair
and what looked like part of a face.
The circumstances just looked so grim.
Will a killer be caught?
We had to find the culprit
in this horrendous crime.
It could be anybody walking around amongst us.
Before another night
ends in murder.
If it happened once, it can happen again.
A beautiful but bitter cold sky
hangs over Maplewood, Minnesota.
Maplewood was just a nice,
safe developing community.
There was always something going on for night life
and always something to do.
But a disadvantage with Maplewood
is that the winters
can be colder than the Arctic.
So subsequently, if something happens outside.
Nobody witnesses it.
On the night of Friday, November 7th, 1986,
best friends Morna and Shannon
brave the cold to hit up a local hotspot.
M.T. Pockets was a popular bar
in Maplewood.
The locals liked to hang out there
and enjoy a relaxing night with friends.
It was very busy that night.
We were already at max capacity
by 8:00.
There was a lot of young women
and subsequently, that brought out
a lot of young men.
The music was nice and loud,
everybody was out on the dance floor.
I had six bouncers,
eight bartenders going, and ten waitresses.
We couldn't find a seat sitting at the bar.
On this particular Friday night,
most of the people out in the bar
knew each other.
It was, bar people perceived as safe.
That night, Morna and Shannon,
they were sitting at Kelly's station
in the bar.
Kelly was a popular bartender.
She has really nice personality.
Morna and Shannon
enjoyed her company.
Because they're regulars,
we'd have frequent conversations with them.
Morna, to me, seemed a little more reserved
and quiet.
Shannon was more outgoing,
talked to other people in the establishment.
There were a lot of locals who would go to the bar.
There was a man named Terry who was a local barber.
He used to throw parties after the bar closed
at his barbershop.
I've been over to Terry's
probably eight, ten times.
Everybody knew where it was
because it was close to the bar.
It was only a few blocks.
There was another man who was referred
to as Karate Guy.
The Karate Guy,
thought he was a black belt in karate
and he liked to make his moves
on the dance floor.
He seemed a little eccentric,
a little out of the ordinary.
He would go about the bar,
hitting on women, pestering them,
buying them drinks,
expecting them to give him special attention.
There was a man who was blonde,
about 28 years of age,
he was pestering Morna and Shannon to dance,
but the girls weren't interested
in dancing with him.
I didn't, uh, have enough conversation
with this person to even know his name.
He had a tan leather jacket on.
I thought he looked like a young Bruce Springsteen.
The beers are cold and the music infectious.
Morna and Shannon eventually feel the pull
of the dance floor.
The DJ on Friday nights was very popular.
The dance floor was the right size.
They had a few beers,
uh, did some dancing, and then around 12:30
in the morning decided to leave.
As they're walking to the parking lot,
someone calls Shannon back into the bar
for a conversation.
It was 17 degrees with a 10-degree wind chill.
And Morna's not wearing a jacket,
so she continues to walk to the car.
Fifteen minutes later,
Shannon comes out of the bar
and Morna is gone.
Before Shannon left, she went back to the bar
and looked for Morna.
The bartender helped her out, went through the bar,
but couldn't find Morna anywhere.
Shannon gets in the vehicle,
drives around the parking lot, looking for Morna.
After 45 minutes, she finally gives up
believing Morna found a ride home
with someone else.
Early Saturday morning,
around 9:30, a jogger
in the Phalen Park neighborhood
found a purse discarded by the trail.
The jogger actually brought the purse
to the police department and turned it over to us.
There was a driver's license inside the purse.
The name on the ID was Morna Jean Brennen.
At that point, the parents
of Morna Jean were called,
and they were concerned
because the M.T. Pockets
was about three miles west
of where the purse was recovered
but, uh, well, maybe she went with some different people
to a party or something.
At that point, she wasn't reported missing.
I was a sophomore in college
and the phone rang and it was my mom
um, asking me if I had heard from Morna,
and I could tell from the tone of her voice
that something wasn't right.
And so she explained to me
that, uh, Morna had gone out
with her friend Shannon the night before,
left her friend at the bar.
It was not a typical scenario for Morna.
She wouldn't leave and not tell somebody
where she was going.
Shannon just assumed that she'd get a phone call
with some logical explanation
but the phone call just never came.
The hours pass painfully slow
for Morna's parents who can't reach their daughter.
It was 4:00 in the afternoon
and Morna still hadn't contacted her parents.
So the next step was to call
the Fridley Police Department
and file a missing person's report.
Investigators needed to work quickly.
There were concerns that perhaps she was abducted,
maybe she was injured and still alive.
Maplewood Police searched the park area
and found some items
with bloodstains on them.
I was 99.9% certain
that what we're looking at are real body parts.
Could this possibly be a hunter?
Was it a surgeon?
I want anyone
who goes to places,
and I know young people do,
um, to be just... To be extra careful,
to realize that everyone there
may not be a friend.
After a night out with her girlfriend
at a local dive bar,
22-year-old Morna Jean
has now been missing
for more than 24 hours.
Forty-eight hours is a critical timeframe
investigations because if you don't recover the person
within forty-eight hours,
typically you're not going to find them alive.
On the night of the disappearance,
Morna Jean was wearing
a white belt
and two gold necklaces.
The fact that she had disappeared
leaving the bar
and her purse found
relatively close to the bar
raised concerns that perhaps
she had been taken.
We needed more information
about that evening.
So, I went and interviewed Shannon,
the girl friend of Morna Jean Brennen,
and she told me that they arrived at M.T. Pockets
at about 10:15.
A blonde-haired guy
tried to talk to Morna Jean
and she declined the invitation.
At one point,
Morna was not feeling very well
and said that her neck hurt
and he started to rub her shoulders.
At that point, Shannon told him
to knock it off.
Another man came over and started hitting
on Morna and Shannon.
The man was in his mid-20s,
was six-foot tall.
He bought them drinks.
Morna never thanked him for the drinks.
But Shannon didn't remember their names.
Without names, investigators have no way
to track down these two potential suspects.
Desperate for a break in the case,
they return to the spot where a jogger
discovered Morna's purse.
The Maplewood Police went back down
and searched the park area
for more evidence.
And they find white garbage bags
on the bank by a creek.
It appeared that someone had attempted
to throw the items off a bridge
but had missed the creek.
In those white garbage bags
are pantyhose, sheets,
and bedding,
a white belt,
plant leaves,
cigarette butts,
there are bird feathers.
What concerned us was that the bedding
appeared to have bloodstains on them.
We gave the evidence that we collected in the park
to the lab for them to determine
if the blood on the evidence
was human blood.
The blood was analyzed. It came back...
as being human...
and type O.
We didn't know my sister's blood type, you know.
They didn't have DNA matching at that point.
So, they couldn't confirm
that that was her blood.
I took the belt that was found in the park
down to Shannon.
And she identified it as the belt
that Morna Jean was wearing the night
that they went to M.T. Pockets.
I think we're all a little bit in shock.
I remember just sort of feeling frozen in time
and just, uh, just in your gut,
you just knew
that something awful had happened.
I went back to M.T. Pockets
and started interviewing the bartenders,
the managers
uh, and other people I could find
that were frequent guests up there
to try to determine which one
of the three hundred fifty to four hundred people
might be considered suspects.
I spoke to the bouncer and he said that he...
He recalled them leaving the bar
at about 12:45.
But the exterior of M.T. Pockets,
no security cameras and it was very dark.
So, we have no witnesses to what happened that night
in the parking lot.
While investigators tirelessly work their case,
Morna's family quietly retraces her steps
the night of her disappearance.
Our family had a need to see
where Morna had disappeared from.
So, we all piled in the car
and we drove to M.T. Pockets and...
the bar was closed at the time,
but we walked outside just looking
for something of hers that maybe other people
would've missed,
something that would give us
any piece of information.
And of course we wanted to hang on to that hope
that she would turn up just fine
and she would be okay.
But the circumstances just looked so grim.
Maplewood Police embarked on their aerial search
for Morna Jean Brennen,
a 22-year old Fridley woman
who was last seen at this bar November 8th.
Police believe Brennen may have been the victim
of foul play.
It's now 48 hours later
and the investigators were worried
because they have no legitimate suspects.
So now they needed to work quickly
or most likely she wouldn't be found alive.
Morna was a really good big sister, you know.
We would have our share of fights and arguments
but, you know, when it came right down to it,
she would always be the first to defend me
if I was ever in trouble.
Uh, she was always my protector.
She was just a very good big sister,
and always looking out for me.
Morna was closer to my dad.
She'd be down in the shop with my dad
um, kind of puttering around with whichever
new muscle car that she had.
She, you know, had a lot of junkers
that she was trying to fix up.
She was planning on going back to school.
She knew she wanted to go into the tech sciences.
And she just really knew what she wanted to do
and who she wanted to be.
Morna Jean is a 22-year old
with her entire life in front of her.
Her family can't imagine anyone
who might have wanted to harm her.
Morna Jean's family begged the public
to come forward with any information.
I just want her back safe.
I can't imagine the rest of my life without her.
Just two days into the search for Morna,
detectives get their first solid lead.
When a tip call in about a Terry Brandon.
He was a local barber.
He used to throw parties after the bar closed
at his barbershop.
We found out that Morna and Shannon
had, in the past, been guests at Terry Brandon's parties.
An interview was conducted with Terry.
And he said, "I know why you're here."
Terry admitted that he was at the bar
M.T. Pockets that evening
and he had invited Morna Jean
and Shannon back to his party.
He was not very cooperative
and made some statements
that didn't seem quite right
for somebody who was totally innocent,
which made him even a little bit more suspicious.
Investigators aren't about to let Terry
slip through their fingers
and turn up the heat
on their most viable suspect.
The next day, police interview Terry again
and then directly ask Terry
where Morna could possibly be.
And he actually became more cooperative
and he said that he had nothing to do with it.
The investigation of the party
turned out that Morna Jean
and Shannon weren't there...
but Terry Brandon was.
So he had an alibi that evening.
And we were able to clear him
after investigating him thoroughly.
So we were back to square one.
At that point, the police did not have
any solid leads.
They were very frustrated and concerned
that this was going to end badly.
In my heart, I knew
that I wasn't gonna see her again.
Um,
it was just really so hard
to think about a scenario that made sense
where she was gonna come out of this and be fine
and that we were all gonna be fine again.
And that, you know,
life was just gonna continue
because it just... Everything just changed
at that... kind of at the moment
she was gone.
You're hoping for the best
but you're preparing yourself
for the worst.
At this point, nobody has any information
regarding Morna's disappearance.
Nobody saw her leave with anybody.
Nobody saw her get into a car.
So I went back to M.T. Pockets
and interviewed people all over again.
And Kelly, the bartender,
gave us more information
about the Karate Guy.
And she told us his name
was Robert Monkenhamf.
Kelly also shared
that Robert is a volatile character.
On the night Morna disappeared,
a bartender asked him to stop harassing women
and he threatened
to kick the bartender's head through a TV screen.
Six days into the investigation,
detectives have a new person of interest.
After some searching, they locate him in town
and bring him in for questioning.
When we first interviewed Robert Monkenhamf,
They admitted he was at the bar,
but he said that he didn't remember
anything about that night.
Didn't remember who he was talking to,
couldn't recall anything
that occurred that night at the bar.
So, we investigated Robert and found out
he had been convicted of auto theft
and worked in a linen company.
Which is a red flag
when you consider all the bedding that was found
with blood on it.
Robert, the Karate Guy,
has now moved to the top list of suspects.
We weren't in the loop as far as any
particular people that the police were looking at
as potential suspects.
I think at that time we were just too immersed
in our own grief.
We went back and interviewed Robert
the second time.
He had regained his memory about what happened that night.
He remembered Morna Jean's name.
He remembered Shannon's name.
Robert also remembers the girls leaving the bar
while he was still there.
He actually gave an alibi and...
that was all verified and checked out.
And he was eliminated out as a suspect.
However, he did say that
he remembered the blonde haired guy
that was rubbing Morna Jean's shoulders.
He said he kept on trying to talk to Morna Jean
and Morna Jean didn't acknowledge him.
And later kept on trying to get her to dance
but she declined him.
And then he said, "Well, you're dancing
with your girlfriend." And she said, "Yeah,
that's because I don't wanna dance with you."
Based on that, we knew we had to find
the blonde-haired person's real name
to find out whether or not he might be a suspect in this.
Investigators get to work,
determined to uncover the identity
of this mysterious blonde man.
But just days into digging,
they get another tip
that takes the case down a chilling path.
On November 24th,
my immediate supervisor asked myself and another officer
to go to a location off of Highway 96
that a citizen had come across
some bags on a frozen pond
that looked like they might contain body parts.
On November 24th,
I was on patrol in the North Central Area, Washington County
which was five miles west of Maplewood
and at approximately 3:45, I got a radio call.
I had been told that I was to meet a state trooper
and a trapper who had been on the ponds and lakes out there
looking for areas to set-up his trap lines,
and he had discovered what he thought
was a plastic bag full of body parts.
At the time I headed for the area,
I was thinking that,
the guy found a doll or a mannequin
because there have been times
when we've had calls about a body laying in a ditch
that's turned out to be nothing
more than a store mannequin.
As I drove up, I could see the bag out on the ice,
approximately 20, 25 feet.
I wanted to get closer
but I had no idea how thick the ice was.
I went back to my squad, got my camera out,
put my telephoto lens on it
so that I could get up close and personal
without actually getting on the ice.
And at that distance with the telephoto lens,
I could clearly see that the plastic bag
had been ripped open,
I could see hair,
and what looked like part of a face
and then clearly laying on the ice next to the bag,
within a few feet was a hand
and a foot.
And I was 99.9% certain
that what we're were looking at are real body parts.
When they determined the ice was hard enough
to support a human being,
we walked out and took some photos from that spot.
Is that a ring on that hand?
- Yeah. - There's another foot...
but where's the rest of it?
The rest of the torso was not there.
This was one of the worst crime scenes
that I have been to in my career.
It was extremely scary
and there's was a certain
that the person was still out there running around
and they could do something like this again.
Then just 24 hours later,
a second grisly discovery is made.
The next day,
a woman walking her dog about two miles east
of where the body parts were found,
she saw something down an embankment
towards a lake.
And she thought at first it was just a gunny sack
and when she was checking it, it was actually a torso...
of a white female.
Which was then given over to custody
of the Ramsey County Medical Examiner.
When the autopsy was performed
by the medical examiner's office, I was there
and when I first saw the body part,
it just struck me that, that was probably
from our victim Morna Jean Brennen,
who had been missing for two weeks.
The body had a lot of indentations.
It looked like maybe she had been
put into a construction site with two by fours,
and with her body laying in there,
it made impressions into her body
and then as it froze the impressions stayed there.
I noticed that where the head was sawed off,
you could see there was a very fine razorblade cut
so you could tell that she had her throat slit,
the right side of her face was badly bruised,
broken jaw,
and she had a L-shaped cut on her temple area.
My belief is that she was alive
when those things happened to her
and that slicing of the throat,
that was the ultimate cause of death.
The cuts in her body,
removing her head and her hands,
and her two feet were very clean cuts.
This is a very aggressive, sadistic crime.
There were concerns,
could this possibly be a hunter,
was it a surgeon?
This killer is an angry and violent man
who felt a strong need to overpower this woman.
In the autopsy room,
looking at the body parts laying on top of the table,
I thought we have to find this guy.
We received the dental records out of our missing person
and the medical examiner was able to verify that
the body parts were indeed Morna Jean Brennen.
I was just absolutely in shock,
you know, there's no script for how to respond to that,
there's no normal way to act,
or to feel,
all I can see is my mom just collapsing.
No parent should ever have to hear that,
that happened to their child.
It was just such a level of brutality
and to think that, that had been done
to somebody that you loved,
and that they had been put through that,
was just absolutely horrifying.
My sister was a kind, loving, warm person,
there was the wondering
who in her life could've done such a thing.
During that time period,
Maplewood was...
your typical nice American town.
There are not too many serious crimes
that occurred in Maplewood in the 1980's,
and so it wasn't uncommon to have your doors unlocked.
People were afraid of a possible serial killer,
people stopped going out.
There was a mental fear that everybody kind of gets
that if it happened once, it can happen again.
The public
The public was horrified
when the dismembered body of Morna Jean Brennen
was discovered in Washington County.
Police say they still have not found
any witnesses who saw Brennen leaving M.T. Pockets.
People stopped going out,
there was fear of a possible serial killer.
Well, I was scared to come up here
because I was afraid that I might know the person
because it was kind of weird how she disappeared.
Business at M.T Pockets bar
dwindled to basically nothing.
You know, who, who could've done something like this
and everybody suspected everybody.
Everybody was wondering who could this person be?
And it's made it really uncomfortable
to work at the bar.
He's still out there, you know, so they were out,
everybody's afraid to even go out their door at all.
We had to find the culprit in this horrendous crime
before it happened to somebody else.
Investigators continue to canvas every corner of town
hoping to reach someone with information
about the night of Morna's murder.
I received a call from Kelly the bartender
about the same blonde suspect that Shannon told me about
that was rubbing Morna Jean's shoulders.
She's thought his name was Randy.
One night I had served him a cocktail and
he was clearing off a patron's tables,
he had a towel on his arm
and acting like he was part of the establishment.
He was making a scene
and expelled from the establishment at that time.
The management tells Randy
he's no longer welcome at the bar
but Kelly recalled seeing him there
the night Morna disappeared.
She also said that he, he had a girlfriend
that was up north, some place,
and that he worked at a marble company
that was a very good lead.
And we have one marble company, it was in St. Paul,
Drake Marble Company.
Police contact Drake Marble Factory
and they find out they don't have a Randy who works there
but they do have another man who is blonde,
his name was Rickie Kiger.
It's a shot in the dark,
but with nothing to lose
investigators run a background check on Kiger
and what they find is stunning.
Back in 1976, Rickie Kiger was a orderly
in a mental institution in Rochester.
While working as an orderly at the hospital,
Rickie is accused of assaulting a 25-year-old woman.
She claimed Rickie choked her until she passed out.
He raped her,
and then attempted to cut her throat.
She managed to survive the attack,
ultimately the charges were dropped
because she couldn't be considered competent
to make a statement against him
since she was a mentally ill resident
in a state hospital.
Based on the assault of the woman,
slitting her throat, raping her,
and leaving her for dead
is Modus Operandi
fit almost perfectly with Morna Jean Brennen.
And once we determined who Rickie Kiger was,
we also found out that he lived in the city of Maplewood
less than a mile from where the evidence was found
down by Phalen Park Lake.
And then we immediately went to Rickie's apartment
and interviewed him.
As they talked to him, they observed his apartment.
I looked over
and I could see that he had birds,
very similar to the bird feathers we collected.
And hanging from the ceiling was the plant
that was identical to the plant leaves
that we found down at the park.
Police directly asked where he was
the night Morna disappeared, and Ricky denied
even being at the M.T. Pockets Bar that night.
This sends up a red flag because,
there are multiple witnesses who put him there.
The police, they also saw two earrings
that were in his apartment
but he said that those earrings were his girlfriend's earrings
and that, uh, she had left it there.
Investigators collect the earrings,
curious as to whether they really do belong
to Ricky's girlfriend.
So, the police followed up with the girlfriend
and asked about these earrings
that were seen at Rickie Kiger's house.
And she said yes, in fact those were her earrings.
Margareth, she was extremely forthcoming.
She said that about 2:00 in the morning,
the night of the disappearance of Morna Jean Brennen,
she got a call from Rickie Kiger
and he was very emotional.
Rickie called his ex-girlfriend
and told her, "I hate you.
I hate you. I love you.
I hate you."
He felt she didn't have the right
to walk away from him
and subsequently someone was going to pay for that.
One friend said
the family is not looking for...
And they said Brennen was excited about...
On news would travel fast.
Van reporting for the Eyewitness News update.
And then right after Morna Jean was missing,
he started to watch the news all the time,
never missed a news channel.
He was totally obsessed with the case.
What comes out of the girlfriend's mouth next
is chilling.
And then she said,
"Was Morna Jean wearing any jewelry
when she turned up missing?"
I said, "Yes."
And she said, "Well...
could it be a chain with a heart on it?"
And I'm looking at Morna Jean's picture
and she's got a chain with a little heart on it.
And she said that Rickie Kiger had given the necklace to her
a couple of weeks earlier as a present.
And at that moment, I knew,
that Rickie Kiger was our man.
Now that Maplewood Police
Now that Maplewood Police had the necklace
that was identified by Rickie Kiger's ex-girlfriend
as being Morna Jean's necklace,
Sgt. Dave Arnold was able to draft
a search warrant for Rickie Kiger's apartment
to find out what evidence they might locate there.
On December 2nd,
I went to Rickie Kiger's apartment in Maplewood.
And the police executed the search warrant.
They found over 80 pieces of evidence
that they could connect back to, uh, the disappearance
and the murder of Morna Jean Brennen.
We found blood splatter on top of his dresser.
And he had a phone with a quail cord on it.
And, but when you extend the cord,
we could see that there was actually blood splatter
on the inside of the cord also.
In the bathroom,
we found blood stains on the bathtub,
on the sink,
on some tile in the floor.
In his car, we found blood splatter
on the passenger door.
And the inside of the speaker also.
There's blood on the piece of chrome
that was in the same exact shape
as the cut on the side of her head.
We had a lot of evidence.
But he denied knowing anything about,
the murder of Morna Jean.
Murder suspects often lie,
but blood evidence rarely does.
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension,
did determine that, the blood splatter
was indeed of our victim.
So I said to him, "Rickie, you are under arrest
for the murder of Morna Jean Brennen."
The suspect is identified
as Rickie Laverne Kiger.
I'm just real thankful.
I mean, to think that someone that ill
was out in the streets,
it's just real frightening.
With a mounting pile of evidence,
investigators are finally able to piece together
the night of Morna Jean's murder.
On the night of the disappearance,
Morna and Shannon arrived at the bar
between 9:30 and 10:00.
Rickie approached her,
bought her a drink,
asked her to dance,
attempt to rub her back,
and she dismissed him.
But he didn't feel that she had the right to reject him.
So he waited for her outside the bar.
About a quarter to 1:00,
Morna and Shannon, they walked out the front door and
somebody called Shannon's name.
Shannon turned around and went back to the bar.
Morna continues to walk to the car.
She's unable to get into the car
because Shannon drove Morna to the bar that night.
It's cold,
and Morna's not wearing a jacket,
so Rickie has his opportunity.
Rickie asked her to come into his car to warm up.
Once she got in that car
that was the end of it for her.
It's my belief that he grabbed her by the hair,
slammed her head into the door,
that would've rendered her unconscious.
She was unable to defend herself at that point.
Rickie took Morna back...
to his apartment.
He has taken a blitzkrieg approach to assaulting her,
busting her jaw,
cutting up her face.
At that point she was still alive.
He brought her into the bathroom
and she was put in the bathtub.
The evidence indicated that Rickie Kiger
cut her throat and bled her out in the tub.
He now had to make decisions about how
he was going to cover up his crime.
I believe Rickie Kiger then
left her body in the truck for two days,
trying to figure out what he's going to do.
He decided to put the body
under a pile of marble and rocks
where he worked at Drake Marble.
And then she froze there.
And the chunks of marble ended up on her body
leaving indentations in it.
And the body stayed there for several weeks.
My belief is when Rickie Kiger realized
that he might be the suspect, he knew...
that he had to move the body.
So he sawed up the body.
Put the severed head and the body parts in a bag,
and then tossed them out in the lake
and discarded the torso
off the side of the road off of Highway 96
out in Washington County.
On December 3rd, our office charged Rickie Kiger
for first-degree murder.
Just before trial, he decided to plead guilty.
So he was sentenced to life in prison.
And by law in Minnesota,
if you have life in prison, you are not eligible for parole.
Rickie Kiger gave no explanation today
for why he killed a woman who simply refused him sex.
He said only that he was sorry
and that he wished it had never happened.
The most satisfying thing that happened in my 31 years
on the Maplewood Police Department
was taking this guy off the street.
If he was out of prison, he would end up killing again.
I believe him to be just...
plain evil.
To this day, none of us have seen the crime scene photos
nor do we want to.
I wanna remember my sister as she was.
Morna Jean was a responsible young woman.
Went to M.T. Pockets Bar with her friend Shannon.
They were just two friends going out
for a typical night out just like anybody does.
It never crossed our minds that something bad could happen
into my sister.
As I have dreams of her regularly
and she just kind of shows up out of nowhere.
And I'm like, "Hey, what you've been doing?
Where you been?"
That's the sister I wanna remember.
For more information on Murdered by Morning,
go to oxygen.com.