[ birds cawing ]
Experiencing January in minnesota is
Something I really kind of dread.
The darkness of the winter
And the cold bring back so many memories.
♪
Dickhaus: We had car chases, shoot-outs.
This guy is dangerous.
He's armed and doesn't care.
Mortenson: It was just nonstop crazy.
That was a wild ride.
He informed me not to do anything stupid.
He said, "or I will shoot you."
I was in it till the end.
[ crying ] they're just...
It's what my nightmares are made of.
♪
I was 24 years old.
My world was very small.
My life was brian and katelyn.
Brian was a really good dad.
No matter what it was -- changing diapers,
Giving baths, feeding bottles --
He would do it all.
He was in love with every minute of it.
We were the happiest either of us had ever been in our lives.
♪
Brian had gotten a job working for the police department.
That was quick. You got her down for a nap?
Yeah. Her first christmas really tuckered her out.
All I had to do was rock her, and she fell right asleep.
Oh. Well, you've got the magic touch.
He would ask me,
"what would happen if I got killed tonight?"
Hey. If I don't come back,
Promise me you'll wear black for a whole year.
Full black for a year. Got it.
I never took it seriously.
I really didn't think that something like that
Was gonna happen in a small town in minnesota.
One night changed all that.
♪
It was so cold and so brutal outside.
Shh, it's okay.
It's okay.
Brian was working the late shift.
Where's your daddy?
He was gonna be home around 9:00.
He should be home by now.
[ pounding on door ]
[ baby crying ]
I thought it was brian, that he had forgotten his keys.
I was relieved, like, "oh, he's finally here."
[ crying continues ]
And I go to the door, and I look through the peephole,
And it's not brian,
But I heard the police radio.
[ police radio chatter ]
As a wife of a police officer,
This is every wife's worst nightmare.
I almost wish I could pause
Right before
'cause life was so good.
♪
Mrs. Klinefelter?
Something has happened.
Brian's been shot.
I was just frozen.
No.
And then I asked them, "is he alive?"
And he just said, "we have to go."
I have an officer here to help take care of your baby.
You have to come with me now.
I went from the highest point in my life
To the lowest in an instant.
♪
In '96, I was working at the high school.
I worked probably five or six hours a day there,
And then I'd work a couple nights at the liquor store,
And it was pretty dead for most of the night,
And then I heard this white pickup
Come through the parking lot.
Man: Yippee!
Do it!
I thought, "some kids from school recognize my car,
And they think they can come in and get some liquor."
They all had ski masks on, so it was a cold night,
So I didn't think anything of it.
Open the till and give me the money.
There was a panic button right where I was standing.
But I'm thinking it's still some kids from school
Playing a trick on me.
Put that toy away before I rip that ski mask off your face
And call your parents.
He probably thought I was a dumb old lady.
Who would argue with a person with a gun?
Open the till and give me the money, or I'll shoot.
♪
Then I think it hit me that, "holy crap.
This was for real."
[ whimpering ]
Quicker!
Just -- just -- just --
There was a total, I believe,
Of about $380 from the whole day.
Just -- just take it. Don't hurt me.
- I need a bag. - What?
I said, "bag it."
[ whimpering ]
This way.
Back room.
The guy with the gun says, "well, then go in the back room.
We'll put you in the cooler."
They won't find me till the morning.
I'll die there.
I told the guy I would not go in the cooler
Because I would freeze to death.
Go! He sounded agitated.
I was scared and shaking.
[ whimpering ]
♪
Okay, fine.
He said, "fine. Sit on these beer cases."
Tie her up. Hurry!
He said, "put your hands behind your back, and I'll tie you up."
I was in a state of shock.
Go.
Well, then they grabbed their stuff and left.
[ grunting and crying ]
I do thank my lucky stars that I was not hurt.
I started wiggling my hands loose,
Rubbing them together, and...
Ah!
...The rope fell off.
Then I went to the phone and called the police.
Narrator: Dispatch alerts all available officers.
[ siren wails ]
This is unit 2582.
I'm in close proximity, on my way.
Robbery is very unusual in stearns county.
I had never investigated one.
It was kind of a big deal.
I was the young officer, brand-new on the street,
So I was a little nervous but pretty excited to get going.
Brian was a brand-new, fresh officer
That was aggressive,
And I thought to myself, "oh, boy.
He's gonna stop every pickup that comes through town."
[ police radio chatter ]
While I was responding to the call,
I heard officer klinefelter on the radio
Advising that he was behind a white pickup.
♪
Dispatch asked him for the plate of the vehicle.
Alls he replied back was that it was snow-covered.
Brian, buddy, be careful.
I was concerned that he was stopping the vehicle
Without a second car with him.
If these people were armed, that's not a scenario
Any one of us wants to be in,
So I said, "I'll be there in a minute."
Hey, brian. I'm on my way to back you up.
I was going probably 100-plus miles an hour
As I went through there.
As I was going westbound on 75, I could see brian's squad car.
I could see the lights flashing,
But the pickup was gone.
As soon as I got parallel to his vehicle,
I could see him down.
Oh, my god.
♪
I got out of the car, and I ran up.
No, no, no, no, no.
It looked like he just landed flat on his back
And never moved from there.
Hold on, buddy. Okay? Hold on.
Brian had been shot several times,
And he was in bad, bad shape.
[ coughs ]
Stay with me. You're gonna be okay.
[ grunting and gasping ]
It's not that bad.
All of his gear was there.
His service weapon was just kind of laying in his hand.
The blood was dripping out of the wound in his head,
And it was literally freezing, you know, right next to him.
Hey, hey, stay with me. Stay awake.
It's something that I can picture today,
And I've -- you know, for 20-some years, it's...
I'll never forget it.
Unit 2582. Officer down. Repeat, officer down.
I need medical assistance now!
Just listen to my voice.
[ siren wails ]
The ambulance came down, and the medics were jumping out
To get to brian as quickly as they could.
They started cpr immediately, just jumped right in.
They just kind of grabbed on to one side,
Started pulling him up to get the backboard underneath him,
And when they pulled, his head wasn't moving.
His head was frozen to the ground
In just that few minutes.
Oh, my god.
It was gruesome. It was tough.
It wasn't something I want anybody else
To have to ever deal with.
We got you, brian.
I just grabbed onto his head and helped ease it up.
We just put him right on our backboard,
Straight into the ambulance, and he was gone.
I should've said, "don't approach that vehicle."
I should've said, "I'll be there in a minute.
Just wait for me,"
But that's the guilt.
♪
I wanted to catch and kill these guys.
Klinefelter tragiai: The only thing I remember
About the drive to the hospital is the extreme cold.
It was so bitterly cold, but it was beautiful.
The stars were out.
Things take on a little bit of a shimmer when it's that cold,
And it was...A beautiful night
For something so tragic.
♪
I felt brutally alone.
Narrator: Officers around the county are looking out for a white pickup.
♪
When this call came out, the suspect vehicle
Was coming in potentially on county road 134.
This is unit 34.
I'm in close proximity en route.
I was the closest officer working the road that night,
So that's where I started heading to.
So I tried to put myself in their shoes
Of where I thought they'd pop out at,
And as I got to that intersection
That I had in my mind, there was a white pickup truck.
The initial description was an older white truck,
And this appears to be a newer white pickup truck.
I start following them on county road 4.
It's occupied with three individuals,
And the license plate is snow-packed.
It's them.
And then I advised dispatch,
"I believe I have the right vehicle in front of me."
I wholeheartedly believe they intentionally covered
The license plate with snow
So no one would be ever to grab a license-plate number.
I felt lucky because if I would have been,
You know, 30 seconds later,
That vehicle would've been gone.
Oh, you're not getting away.
I just had to make sure that I was gonna
Keep them in sight until my backup got there.
What I can say is I was on a mission.
Being in the right place at the right time,
It was for all the marbles.
♪
Klinefelter tragiai: Walking into the hospital,
The waiting room had a bunch of people in it,
But the first person I saw was brian's mom, and...
Oh!
[ voice breaking ] ...She was crying.
And I said, "is he dead?"
And she said, "yes."
♪
Oh.
And I just remember collapsing.
♪
Oh.
♪
I don't know who helped me to the couch.
I...Just remembered somebody telling me
To put my head between my knees,
And I'm thinking...
[ crying ] "my husband is dead,
And you want me to put my head between my knees?"
And they asked me if I wanted to see him.
Ma'am, would you like to be with your husband?
And I was so scared to go back there and see him.
I actually called my mom, and she said,
"you absolutely go, and you stand with him.
And you tell him you love him."
So that's what I did.
♪
Narrator: On the other side of the county,
Officer mortenson is following
The unidentified white pickup truck.
It was very quiet that night
Because of the extreme cold temperatures,
And so it was just me,
And it was them out there on the roadway.
[ police radio chatter ]
We were going slow.
They knew that I was following them.
Finally, they pulled over to the shoulder of the road.
And I'm like, "well, here we go.
They're gonna try and suck me into
The same type of traffic stop that they sucked brian into."
I stopped a couple hundred yards behind them in the traffic lane,
Didn't turn on my red lights.
I knew that these guys had enough balls
To shoot an officer.
No doubt that they would do it again.
I knew it was a trap.
Oh, damn it!
Their intentions was to get me into a traffic stop,
Just like they did with brian,
And I was afraid they were gonna get out,
And I would have three people shooting at me.
What are you doing?
You just feel all alone, you know?
And you kind of feel helpless.
I was just making sure that I was not providing them
With the opportunity to get into a gun battle with me.
They probably stayed there for about 15 seconds,
And then they slowly moved back out and then continued on.
Now we're heading into a portion of the city
That was completely foreign to me.
I followed the pickup for what seemed like a lifetime.
My main goal there was to keep them in view,
And they pulled into the neighborhood
Off of the main thoroughfare.
The neighborhood was desolate. It was just me and them.
And then they pulled into a driveway.
I had no idea where I was at,
And he jumped out of the truck and started running.
Suspects are out of vehicle.
Repeat, suspects are out of vehicle!
♪
I know I have officers coming my way.
I know the cavalry's coming.
But the roads were complete ice,
So it was -- I knew they'd be coming slow,
And I knew they were a long ways behind me.
I've lost sight of them.
The only protection I had was the glass of the window
And the door, and that wasn't gonna stop anything.
And I got my shotgun in hand and waited to see
If they were gonna ambush me.
♪
It was just a few minutes, and then my backup got there.
Everybody in.
We'll have units stationed around
The perimeter of the neighborhood.
Once they're in place, we'll go door-to-door
Following their footsteps.
They had a fairly decent jump on us,
But while we're waiting for all that team to get assembled,
We had a lady run down the road at us in a bathrobe.
Oh, help me, please!
Ma'am, what's wrong?
He -- he's been taken.
Th-there was a gun.
Mortenson: Initially, we couldn't understand
What she was saying,
But you could tell she was just scared to death.
Ma'am, I need you to calm down.
I need you to tell me what happened.
It's my husband.
He's been kidnapped.
In my entire career, I can only count on one hand
How many times I was truly scared.
This night, I was terrified.
♪
Klinefelter tragiai: When I went to see brian...
[ machines beeping ]
...Ugh. He had been shot under the chin,
And the bullet went out the back of his head here,
And [cries] his eye was very mangled...
...And protruding from his head.
♪
I knew at that moment that the brian I knew,
The soul of the person I knew, was gone,
And that body laying there was just what held it.
And I didn't need to be with that
'cause he wasn't there.
♪
Well, not only did we have an armed robbery
And an officer get shot.
Now we have a kidnapping,
And we have a hostage situation.
It just keeps getting worse and worse.
♪
Thomsen: It was just a regular night,
Regular Monday night.
Heck of a storm out there.
My daughter was down in the basement.
I was in my bedroom watching the news.
My wife was redoing her fingernails,
And we were waiting for our son to come home.
[ pounding on door ]
I heard somebody pounding on our door.
[ pounding continues ]
♪
- What are you doing? - Aah!
What do you want? What do you -- oh!
I wasn't expecting to see that.
What are you doing? Oh! What do you want?
I need a car.
Okay. We can help you.
Please, there's no need to hurt anybody.
Wait. Oh, please.
Oh! Please, don't hurt anybody.
Well, I saw the gun, and that's all I needed to see.
I said, "there's keys for three vehicles there.
Help yourself."
Take the keys and go.
You're coming with me.
I was concentrated for my safety.
I was concerned for my wife's safety.
I was concerned for my daughter's safety.
I don't know how I stayed calm.
I just did.
All I wanted to do was get him out of my house.
That's all.
Just -- just let me grab my coat.
No.
You don't want to be out there in the middle of the night,
Though, in just a sweatshirt.
You'll freeze to death.
It's almost 40-below out.
Okay. I said no.
Now, let's move. Now.
Then I grabbed the car keys, and we headed out to the garage.
We start driving.
He was in the back seat, and I couldn't really see him.
He had that gun pointed at me.
♪
As we drove down the road,
I knew why he got in the back seat.
There were police officers in both directions from my house.
Don't even think about it.
He informed me not to do anything stupid.
He said, "or I will shoot you."
♪
You're sure?
It's just one person that took your husband?
Yes.
Okay.
That means the other two are still on foot.
She knew that her husband was in a very bad place
With a very bad person.
Do you think this guy would really shoot someone?
Now we have a hostage situation and a kidnapping.
Ma'am, I need you trust me.
We're gonna find your husband, okay?
Unit 34 for dispatch.
I've got a kidnapping here.
It just put a whole new twist on this.
Narrator: Crouched down in the back seat of the vehicle,
The gunman orders doug thomsen to drive out of town.
Take a left up there.
He directed me to drive the car down a country road
That I had never been on.
I had no idea where we were going.
Where are we headed?
[ gun cocks ]
Ooh.
The road conditions were typical of minnesota --
Compacted ice and snow.
There was no traction with the front wheels.
They were not gripping as you turned,
And this car was swerving.
What was that?
Oh!
You better keep this thing on the road.
I'm trying.
I'm not a choirboy, but he said,
"quit **** with me, man, or I'm gonna shoot you."
He was as panicky as I had seen him.
I don't ever want to hear those words again,
"I will shoot you," but, again,
I just concentrated on driving the car as straight as I could.
♪
This has been one hell of a Monday night, hasn't it?
And I just responded. I said, "yeah.
It's been one hell of a Monday night,"
And then it was just a short time after that
That he said... Pull over.
I had no idea what was gonna happen then.
Please, I've done everything you've asked.
Please.
I was just reacting to what he had instructed me to do.
I said, "pull over."
Just let me go home to my family.
You aren't going home to them.
You're getting in the trunk.
Crawling in that trunk,
I didn't know how I was gonna get out of there.
♪
This must've been taken just...
Just before...
He was supposed to go home.
♪
[ crying ] oh.
♪
I'm sorry. I wasn't expecting that.
Just takes my breath away,
Knowing...That he had no idea.
♪
Oh.
[ exhales ]
That...
It's just really hard to look at.
Oh.
♪
Narrator: The other two suspects on foot remain at large.
Mortenson: It was quite a while before we actually started
The ground search.
I knew they had a fairly decent jump in front of us.
These two sets of tracks split off here.
This must be the two that are still on foot.
We got to follow them.
Stay here.
We needed to keep on the trail of these two
That were still out on foot.
The temperature was about 40-below.
I didn't care what my body was telling me.
I would've kept going.
I was in it till the end.
It was pitch-black out.
We could only see so far out in front of us,
And that's a scary feeling of going into a situation
And not knowing what your surroundings are.
They had every opportunity to ambush us,
And every corner we go around,
We got to wonder if this is the corner
They're waiting for us at.
Looks like the tracks stop here.
As we were walking through the yards,
We followed the trail until it hit the pavement.
The snow on the ground in the yards was waist-deep,
But the roads were plowed.
Now I have no idea which way they went.
We must've gone at least half a mile.
They could be anywhere out here.
I knew they just made this whole scenario a lot harder.
We're completely exposed.
They took on a distinct advantage
'cause now we're vulnerable.
Thomsen: When I got into the trunk, I knew we were going north.
It was cold in the trunk.
There was no heat back there.
I'm in a sweatshirt and blue jeans,
And you don't last very long
Out in cold weather like that.
I don't fear winter. I don't fear things like that.
But I respect the hell out of it,
I'll tell you that.
You couldn't see anything.
15 minutes I was in the trunk of that car.
♪
I was lost.
I had no idea what direction I was going anymore then,
So I'd given up on trying to figure out where I was.
And I'm christian,
So I went through my prayer list.
I recited the lord's prayer, the 23rd psalm.
There was another little ditty that came through my mind.
♪ god of mercy god of might ♪
"help to get me through this night."
"god of mercy, god of might,
Help to get me through this night."
That went over and over in my head.
[ crying ] ♪ god of mercy god of might ♪
♪ help to get me through this night ♪
[ tires screech ]
And all of a sudden, the car stopped.
I heard the car door open right away,
And I heard footsteps on the compacted snow.
[ footsteps crunching ]
I had no idea what was going on.
I was just laying there listening,
And that's when I heard a female voice yell,
"drop the gun."
Woman: Drop the gun!
Oh.
And I've watched enough cop shows and other things to know
That that was the command brought forward
By a law-enforcement official.
It was very quiet for probably another...30, 40 seconds,
And then I heard the command again,
"drop the gun."
Drop the gun!
[ gunshot ]
And then all of a sudden, there was one single gunshot.
Then I heard nothing.
I thought I would die that night.
That was the most frightening moment of my life.
Woman: Drop the gun!
[ gunshot ]
It was dead silence after that gunshot.
I don't know how long of a time I laid there,
But it was... Very short period of time.
[ sirens wailing ]
And all of a sudden, I heard sirens
And cars approaching, radios, voices.
[ police radio chatter ]
And that's when I had thought to myself,
"those are all good sounds,"
And that was at the point I pounded on the trunk.
I -- I'm in here.
I'm in here.
Oh. Oh! Thank god.
The best way to describe what I saw then
Is something from "the twilight zone" --
Rod sterling's "twilight zone."
It was exhaust from cars, breath, flashing lights.
And then laying just, I guess, 20 feet behind me
Was this body in front of the police car
That I recognized as my assailant.
♪
A police officer shot him,
And I think it went down as a cop-assisted suicide.
Are you hurt? Let's go.
Come on. Let's get you out of here.
♪
I thank god for her.
I do.
♪
I'm sitting here today because I think god answered my prayers.
I believe that with all my heart.
♪
With that phone call, we knew where we were going,
And we were heading in the right direction.
We had stayed on their trail to the back of a house.
Trying to trudge through snow that's waist-deep is like
Tying a 100-pound weight on a rope to your waist
And trying to walk.
You're basically like a snowplow.
♪
But we were absolutely determined
To take them into custody.
♪
Freeze! Don't move, or I'll shoot!
- Hands in the air! - Hands in the air!
- Get your hands in the air!
Hands in the air now!
Keep your hands where I can see them...
- Because we will shoot you! - ...And drop your weapons!
Do not move! - Keep your hands in the air.
Against the wall!
Mortenson: They gave up.
As much as we were tired of trudging through the snow,
They were probably just as tired.
The weather conditions beat them into submission.
They were done.
We finally took them into custody.
We all high-fived each other, and we had a victory.
We avenged brian's death,
And that was, you know,
My greatest accomplishment in my career, hands down.
♪
You can see that it even makes me, you know,
Tear up a little bit just talking about it.
It's -- I don't know.
It's, you know, it's -- to get there --
His killer and the people that were involved with this
And end that nightmare for everyone,
That was a big deal, definitely.
Reporter: Kenneth roering and brian ederhoff
Are being held in jail, charged with first-degree murder
In connection with the shooting death
Of police officer brian klinefelter.
Their ringleader, thomas kantor, shot and murdered the officer,
Stole a vehicle, and took a local man hostage.
Kantor was shot by police later that same evening.
He was a fricking **** head.
He's a nowhere, just a punk kid that had nothing going for him,
And, honestly, I believe that he was suicidal.
I believe that thomas kantor had a death wish.
He wanted to go out in a blaze of glory,
And I think he got his wish.
Mortenson: Ederhoff and roering were the followers.
Kantor is pure evil.
When they pulled over to the shoulder of the road,
That was a life-or-death moment.
Somebody died in this.
Was it gonna be just brian, or was it gonna be me?
There's many of us that were touched with the potential
Of getting into a gunfight that night.
The incident started out as a death moment,
So I don't struggle with the fact that kantor died,
You know, from something that he started.
He got instant justice.
Thomas kantor was the driver of the vehicle
And the one who shot brian five times.
Someone told me that the person who shot brian was dead,
And I said, "good."
Oh, there are a lot of things I would love to say to him,
To thomas kantor,
The most basic being, "why?
Why?"
♪
[ bagpipes playing ]
The funeral for brian was very large.
♪
[ crying ] oh, there were so many people there.
♪
Those bagpipes.
Oh.
[ bagpipes playing ]
♪
I can't hear them
And not be brought back to that day.
♪
Oh.
They're just haunting.
It's what my nightmares are made of.
♪
[ normal voice ] I remarried four years later.
I was...
♪
I was ready to move forward with my life.
I wanted katelyn to have a dad,
And I knew I had a good guy, one that brian would've liked.
♪
And it felt right.
I still see brian in her all the time.
I see brian in katelyn.
♪
It makes me proud and nostalgic
And happy and sad all at once when I see that.
♪