DULUTH – Michael Carbo Jr., who was convicted in the long-unsolved murder of a Chisholm woman, will get another chance to plead his case, the Minnesota Supreme Court said Wednesday.
Carbo was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder in 2022 in St. Louis County District Court, closing a cold case from 1986 that had never, before Carbo, seen an arrest. He was sentenced to life in prison with a chance for parole in 17 years for the death of Nancy Daugherty, a 38-year-old mother of two and well-liked aide at an Iron Range nursing home.
Daugherty, who was strangled, was found beneath bed covers in her modest Chisholm home on July 16, 1986 — the same day she was scheduled to move to the Twin Cities to study to become a paramedic. At the time, Carbo was 18 and lived less than a mile away. He had gone to school with her children.
The state high court said the District Court erred in not allowing Carbo an alternate perpetrator defense — though the "defendant's proffered evidence clearly had an inherent tendency to connect the alternate perpetrator to the commission of the crime," according to the 57-page opinion written by Justice G. Barry Anderson.
The case will be sent back to Hibbing, where it was originally tried with Judge Robert C. Friday presiding. The trial date has not been scheduled.
Dave Haggard, who is married to Daugherty's daughter Gina, had no comment. At Carbo's sentencing in September 2022, Gina Haggard said she only felt partial closure: Carbo's conviction answered who killed her mother, but not why.
Richard Jenkins, Carbo's stepfather, described Carbo's supporters as "ecstatic" at the news on Wednesday.
"Half the town and none of his friends ever believed he did it," said Jenkins, who lives in Chisholm.
Carbo, 56, is currently in the Rush City prison. His family, with whom he checks in weekly, had not yet heard from him at midday. St. Louis County Attorney Kimberly Maki said she expects he will remain in prison while waiting on the rescheduled trial.
Daugherty's murder went unsolved for decades, until a renewed push in 2020 from local law enforcement officials. They worked with a company that uses genealogy databases to make matches with suspects. DNA from the scene — pulled from Daugherty's nails and the lid of her toilet — was used to narrow their search to Carbo.
Carbo had lived quietly in Chisholm, a city of 4,900, for years and didn't have a significant criminal record until he was linked to Daugherty's death. Over the course of decades, there had been more than 100 other suspects considered. Reward money went unclaimed.
Carbo didn't deny he was at Daugherty's house and had consensual sex with her, but maintained that he did not kill her.
In District Court, defense attorney JD Schmid was not allowed to present his alternate perpetrator defense, which was directed at someone Daugherty knew: a man who had been her friend, but after moving away from Chisholm continued to send her letters indicating he wanted a romantic relationship. They had gone out for drinks the night before she was found dead. When she didn't respond to his knocking, he went to a neighbor who called the police. He was among those who found her body.
The man, described as a "scorned lover" in the opinion, was a witness for the state during the trial and told an investigator: "I've often wondered, 'Jeez. Did I wake up in the middle of the night, drive over there and kill her?'"
The Star Tribune generally doesn't name suspects unless they have been charged.
The Supreme Court heard Carbo's challenge in October 2023. At the time, Assistant State Public Defender Adam Lozeau told the justices that the court prohibited the jury from hearing a complete defense.
According to the Supreme Court's opinion, there was evidence to link the alternative perpetrator to the crime and a motive, threats or other facts that proved he did it. It agreed with Carbo that the District Court "abused its discretion" in excluding this defense.
"We agree," according to the opinion by Anderson, "and we further conclude that the exclusion of this evidence was not harmless beyond a reasonable doubt."
