KARE 11 investigates: Crime scene evidence provides evidence of a murder case with wrongful conviction

MCGREGOR, Minn. – Brian Pippitt is still in prison, four months after the Minnesota Attorney General's Conviction Review Unit (CRU) recommended his full release in a 1998 murder case.

His release was delayed because the Aitkin County prosecutor is challenging the CRU's findings.

The dispute has sparked a new legal battle over whether to release a 62-year-old man who has already served 23 years in prison for a murder he maintains he did not commit.

KARE 11 Investigates obtained never-before-seen crime scene video, the recorded recantation of a key witness and reports from forensic experts who investigated the case. All of this calls into question whether Brian Pippitt actually murdered Evelyn Malin.

Malin owned a roadside supermarket in rural McGregor, Minnesota. The 84-year-old woman lived in a bedroom at the back of her shop. She was found beaten to death in February 1998, a brutal murder that shocked the small town.

Pippitt and four other men were arrested and charged with the crime. While three of them received plea agreements and one was acquitted by the judge during a trial, Pippitt fought the charges, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

But a re-examination of the evidence by forensic experts – and the recantations of two key witnesses who linked Pippitt to the crime – call his conviction into question.

“No part of the state's case holds up at all,” said Jim Cousins, an attorney who has advocated for Pippitt's release for years. “Pippitt had nothing to do with it, he is completely innocent.”

Cousins ​​persuaded the attorney general's office to conduct a detailed review of the evidence.

When the case went to trial, prosecutors alleged that Pippitt and four other drunken men broke into the store through a small basement window to steal beer and cigarettes. They said Malin was beaten to death during the robbery.

But experts who reviewed the evidence for the CRU concluded that the crime could not have happened that way.

The first problem: the basement window – the supposed entry point.

Linda Netzel, an experienced crime scene investigator, said when she reviewed the evidence, big questions immediately came to her mind.

She was impressed by the small size of the window and the fact that, despite the jagged glass and nails, there were no traces of clothing or human blood on the frame.

“If they went through the window, how did they manage not to scratch their clothes or kick up a pile of material in the window well?” she wondered.

Additionally, crime scene photos show that boxes stored directly beneath the window were undamaged – although someone climbing through the window would likely have landed on them.

Netzel also said the glass didn't break the way she would expect if someone kicked it from outside.

“It doesn’t add up,” she told KARE 11. “It definitely doesn’t add up.”

A second expert also came to the conclusion that penetration through the basement window was “not plausible”.

And what about the beer and cigarettes – the alleged motive for the break-in? Crime scene photos and videos also raise doubts about this.

“If it's true that these gentlemen went into the store to steal beer and cigarettes, then why weren't there any beer or cigarettes missing from the store?” asked Tom Murtha, who served as Pippitt's public defender at his trial. “The only room that was vandalized was Evelyn Malin’s.”

Murtha, who later served as an Aitkin County prosecutor and is now in private practice, spoke with KARE 11 about the case.

He says it was his first murder trial. He had graduated from law school just two years ago and was trying the case alone, three hours away in International Falls.

The CRU report concludes that Murtha was too “underexperienced and overworked” to successfully challenge the prosecutor's theory. He says he would have liked to have had access to the experts and analysis the CRU conducted when he tried the case more than 20 years ago.

“As public defenders back then, we had to work on a tight budget,” he remembers. “So you rely on the state not to overtax you. And I think the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office has proven that’s exactly what happened.”

Murtha says the state withheld key evidence, including information about the deadbolt lock on the front door. In fact, the CRU found evidence that the prosecutor intentionally kept the door “out of sight of the jury.”

According to the review unit, the prosecution presented “unreliable evidence” – suggesting the killers could have escaped through the front door, although a photo from the crime scene shows a deadbolt lock still in place.

A key was required to lock the latch from the inside or outside. This means that if the men had gone through the door, they would have needed a spare key to lock it when they left. When authorities searched the scene, Evelyn Malin's deadbolt key was found still hanging in its usual place in the store.

“Did Brian Pippitt get a fair trial?” KARE 11 Investigates asked. “No,” Murtha said firmly.

Since there was no physical evidence linking Pippitt to the crime scene, prosecutors relied on witnesses to blame him for the murder.

But these two key witnesses have since retracted their statements.

The first, Raymond Misquadace, was one of five men arrested for murder. Misquadace agreed to plead guilty to manslaughter in exchange for a five-year prison sentence. He testified that Pippitt was one of the men involved in the murders.

The Attorney General's review described his testimony as the “most damning piece of evidence against Pippitt” during the trial.

However, in an interview with the attorney general's office last year – and in a separate signed statement – Raymond recanted. He claimed he was pressured into giving false statements by the original investigators in the case.

Now he says he was not present at the supermarket the night of the murder and has no first-hand knowledge of the crime.

The second witness who has since changed his statement is Peter Arnoldi.

Arnoldi testified that Pippitt confessed to him while they were both being held in a mental institution. But in a videotaped statement, Arnoldi said he did something wrong.

“I now believe that Brian Pippitt told me at the time what he was accused of doing,” Arnoldi said in the recorded statement obtained by KARE 11 – not what he actually did.

Additionally, the CRU concluded that the physical evidence at the crime scene did not match what Arnoldi described to police.

The Aitkin County District Attorney's Office challenged Pippitt's request for post-conviction relief, arguing that the CRU report should not be classified as “new evidence.” Rather, they argue that it is simply “another theory of the case.”

Aitkin's district attorney declined to comment on camera – but noted that both the Minnesota Court of Appeals and the state Supreme Court had reviewed the case years ago and upheld Pippitt's conviction.

In court filings, the district alleges that the now-deceased Arnoldi only changed his mind after being “pressured by Pippitt's attorney.”

The District argues that Raymond Misquadace's original statement in court was supported by other evidence.

Regarding the front door and its latch, the district denied that it had hidden evidence and wrote that a decision “not to show the jury a particular piece of evidence was hardly bad faith.”

As for the window and the CRU's finding that it is unlikely that drunken men could have entered via this route in the middle of the night without leaving evidence behind, they point to a recent BCA re-enactment.

Two men were filmed climbing through the basement window. Proof, prosecutors say, that a person can enter the store that way.

KARE 11 obtained a copy of this reenactment. It shows that the man has successfully entered the store. But one of the videos shows a man's clothing getting caught on the window twice – exactly what Linda Netzel, one of the CRU experts, predicted.

“That window, in my opinion, is not the entry point,” she said.

Evelyn Malin's children have died in the years since the trial. Her son's wife, Mary Malin, says the crime was traumatic for the family and this new investigation into the case “brings back many terrible memories.”

Mary Malin remembers watching Pippitt's trial every day. She and her husband were angry about the other men's plea deals. She has not read the CRU report recommending that Pippitt be exonerated, but she is against his release from prison.

“I feel like justice has been served. You can’t come back so many years later and start digging in again,” she told KARE 11.

The case is now in the hands of an Aitkin County judge, who will likely hold an evidentiary hearing to determine whether Pippitt is eligible for post-conviction relief.

No hearing has been scheduled yet. Pippitt's lawyers are demanding that the district attorney turn over physical evidence for DNA testing.

Meanwhile, Pippitt, who has maintained his innocence for a quarter of a century, remains in prison, waiting.

“There are a lot of emotions in it. “There's a lot of frustration and some anger,” said his attorney, Jim Cousins.