90-year-old unsolved murder

Today’s forecast

Federal regulators visit Monticello, one week following news of nuclear reactor leak

Federal regulators doubled down on the public notification process, following a leak at the Monticello power plant in November.

Officials with the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission were in Monticello Wednesday, as part of the license renewal process for the 50-year-old power plant, and answered questions about why it took four months for news of the leak to become public.

According to Xcel Energy, the leak occurred in November when a cracked pipe likely led a bi-product of the nuclear reaction process called tritium to leak into the ground water. State regulators say they continue to monitor the water in and around the plant, and say the tritium remains contained to wells on site.

While Xcel Energy followed proper notification protocol, executives say they’ve heard from neighbors who would have liked to know of the leak sooner.

Xcel Energy recently applied to renew its reactor license, which is set to expire in 2030. The plant will be subject to an extensive safety and environmental review as part of the renewal process.

Catch Up Quick 

📱 If you receive a panicked call from someone who sounds just like a family member or friend asking for money, there’s a chance it could be a scam using artificial intelligence, U.S. federal regulators warned this week. The Federal Trade Commission issued an alert on Monday about voice cloning, in which a bad actor uses AI to fool the person on the other end of the phone line. 

❄️ Crews were working Wednesday to prepare for the possibility of damaging floods this spring in Stillwater.

🏀 For the first time in 113 days and 52 games., Karl-Anthony Towns was on the basketball court with the Minnesota Timberwolves Wednesday night. The Wolves had a 125-124 win over the Atlanta Hawks at Target Center. 

⚽ Minnesota United added a new young attacking talent to their squad: Twenty-year-old South Korean international Sang Bin Jeong.

Case remains unsolved 90 years after Minnesota mom, 7 kids were murdered

The suspected murders of a 29-year-old mother and her seven children in Chisago County topped headlines nine decades ago. Decades later, the town is still talking, and a Twin Cities author has made it his mission to sort rumors from reality. 

On April 11, 1933, a farm home in Harris, Minnesota, burned to the ground. The remains of 29-year-old Alvira Lundeen Johnson and her seven young children, ranging in age from four months to 10 years, were found inside. Investigators determined they were dead before the fire started, and a murder investigation began.

“It’s one of those stories that just kind of grabs at you and doesn’t let go,” said Brian Johnson, a Twin Cities journalist.

Alvira Lundeen Johnson, who is buried at First Lutheran Cemetery in Rush City, was Brian Johnson’s great aunt, his maternal grandmother’s younger sister. And what does a journalist do when the best story comes from his own bloodline? He writes about it.

Brian Johnson published an article in a local newspaper in 1992, and then, more than 20 years later, a group of people from Rush City contacted him about the article, peaking his interest in the case once again. His true crime book, “Murder in Chisago County: The Unsolved Johnson Family History,” was published in 2019.

Through his research, he learned investigators also suspected foul play because Alvira Lundeen Johnson and her children were still in their sleeping positions when they died.

His 2019 book includes family photos and interviews with his mother, who was 12 when the murders happened, and his mother’s young sister, Betty. 

Despite the memories, these murders remains unsolved. To add to the mystery, he got permission from a Chisago County judge to review the grand jury records only to find out that they had gone missing. Though even he has doubts that a 90-year old cold case could be solved, he hopes his work may bring the answers his family and the people of Chisago County have been seeking all this time.

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